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Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

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Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#311

Post by chronid »

taurath wrote: post #119
buboard wrote: post #41

Why is HN so eager to document the downfall of facebook? First, realize that for a large part of its demographics, facebook is the internet , and when they quit they 'll leave the internet altogether (provided that there 's not another new platform that absorbs them). Second, other social media are having far bigger leakages (snapchat) but that doesn't seem to concern anyone.

For me its the general sense that Facebook + most mainstream social media has been having a negative effect on society, both in terms of socialization and unethical invasions of privacy. The fact that for a large part of the world that facebook is "the internet" is a rather negative thing in my mind - its a devil's bargain that the US and the west is grappling with, while the benefits are still outweighing the costs…

I fear we set that up with the "outrage" culture to trigger clicks for ads. Nuance disappeared from most public conversation on online newspapers, and things started getting black and white.

It was downhill from there.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#313

Post by Endy »

jwally wrote: post #298

Note I wrote my father in law when he had gone too far down the rabbit hole and legitimately worried about the poison it spreads around his demographic: I left Facebook when I read some press release about it being designed from the outset to make you feel bad because it keeps you engaged; hoping someone agrees with something you liked or shared and the dopamine hit it releases. I don’t like feeling manipulated and m…

So you're saying that Internet radicalization happens across all age demographics?

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#314

Post by sterlind »

lostgame wrote: post #287
djstein wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe they have focused on their web app for this. Turning it into a home screen based web application has been far better. Not as great as a native app, but better than the iPhone one scaled up!

Okay, so put a WebKit wrapper around that?

Is there some one-click way to "bottle" web apps like this on demand? I'm thinking of something that does some light crawling, fills its cache up, shims xmlhttprequests for static data, and sandwiches it in a shell. It wouldn't be perfect, but it could always fall back on the real site when its cache falls through..

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#315

Post by Mahn »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #199

My Mom and her generation are the only ones I know around me still using Facebook. They eat it up, they can't get enough of it like crack, since it is many of their first exposure to social media in their lifetime. I don't think that bodes well for Facebook, that's not the demographic anyone wants as far as I know. Like Snapchat after Kylie Jenner's tweet, this survey is the canary in the coal mine telling investors…

> that's not the demographic anyone wants as far as I know

On the contrary, that's the demographic everyone wants, older people have more money to spend. Of course, having only this demographic is not great long term, since the younger generations lead the way to adoption. But short term they'll continue to make money.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#316

Post by conradfr »

wgerard wrote: post #6

Anecdotal obviously, but I'm surprised at how pervasive the "Facebook listens to your conversations through the app" rumors are, even among the more technically literate. I'm curious how much of an effect that rumor had on this finding.

Here's my anecdote. In March my brother and I were visiting my father on holidays. My brother jokes to him that even on vacation he brings a soldering iron (he makes an esp* open source webradio player as a retirement project), and that was the end of it.

Later on in the evening my brother had ads for soldering iron in the Facebook app.

So it totally can be a coincidence, or not.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#317

Post by FabHK »

brational wrote: post #218
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #42

I did this. In the following sequence, over a few years, and am now to step 5: 1. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone; 2. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps on your phone; 3. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; 4. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone; and finally 5. Log out of Facebook on your desktop. It took me…

facebook owns whatsapp too. I already did all 5 of thsoe steps some time ago... but I have friends in certain parts of the world where whatsapp is the only app. Not sure how to curtail that one.

You could try and get them on Wire or Signal. But it's an uphill battle, unfortunately. Let's wait and see until Facebook fucks up WhatsApp, then try again.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#318

Post by derefr »

I want to delete the Facebook app, but apparently it's needed on iOS for other apps to "Login with Facebook."

So instead, I just leave it installed but with all push-notifications, location-usage, etc. disabled, and then kill it right after I'm done using it to log into something.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#319

Post by jganz »

I am 32 years old and had been a facebook user since I was in college (2004). I completely deleted all of my post history and shut down my account about 6 months ago and can say I feel really good about the decision. I realize now that I thought I was staying more connected with my friends, though I was just using it to keep an eye on what is going on in there lives. Whereas now, I find that I actually take the time to meet up with more friends and connect with them in person. It has obviously dramatically decreased the number of people that 'connect with' (watch through my news feed), but maximized the quality and depth of relationships with people I actually care about.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#320

Post by duxup »

jwally wrote: post #298

Note I wrote my father in law when he had gone too far down the rabbit hole and legitimately worried about the poison it spreads around his demographic: I left Facebook when I read some press release about it being designed from the outset to make you feel bad because it keeps you engaged; hoping someone agrees with something you liked or shared and the dopamine hit it releases. I don’t like feeling manipulated and m…

I don't even know what Twitter is for except mutual high fives over the most superficial "look at me" memeish stuff.

It's worse than facebook as far as the "get attention" vibe.

Granted all social media is about getting attention, and I don't think there is anything wrong with it necessarily. Attention is nice, there is good reason for it, but when the message is so tailored to just that and there isn't anything else, I don't know what the point is.

I recently switched careers from a long networking career to web development and thought I'd take another spin on Twitter, but rather I just get sites that paste a link to their website, and hordes of people posting programming truisms or career / resume / coding lifestyle fodder .... so little feels like that person wrote it, so much feels like what those people thing "a commercial about me" should be.

---

As for your other notes about the impact on people. It is horrifying. I see some relatives posting terrible things and I wish saying "but you've never met any of those people" had the impact that it should... but it doesn't.

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