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U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

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Re: U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

#401

Here's the kicker, which I think others have pointed out, but I want to say this succinctly: First, to quote the article: > The big gainer, interestingly, is under the same roof as Facebook. It's their co-owned Instagram Now, to my point: The average person does not care about privacy, just the illusion of privacy (I suspect people reading this site intuitively know this. At some level, nearly everyone is in differen…

If Instagram doesn't heavily customize the ads or the news feed, then how does it extract any value from the data it collects?

Using the data to personalize ads elsewhere? Does Facebook operate a conventional ad network out on the web? (I could not name it, but I assume they do)

Re: U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dear God I installed LinkedIn a couple months back and their endless bs notifications made me realize that I don't need it. It doesn't give me anything. Why is it sending me 2-3 notifications a day when I have 5 friends who's profiles arent even actively used? If it did something useful, like find me clients for the work I do then sure - I'll give them my attention. He'll, I'll pay good money for that! But I don't gi…

Investors want to see engagement metric graphs go up. Execs tie compensation to getting that metric up. Product delivers by mandating more alerts. Payday.

When cheating is allowed to win, cheaters will win

Re: U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

#403

By far the biggest factor that had me stopping checking Facebook, and indeed LinkedIn, is number of utterly fictitious notifications they generate. There was a time a few years back when that red dot made me drop everything to check FB, but these days it’ll be some completely bullshit message they’ve made a notification out of. Feels like they got greedy for my attention and killed the golden goose there. I check it…

I started like you, last year... then a couple days ago realized I hadn't checked it since mid January. And we're on March, that's a new record.

I'm not in the "I'm leaving Facebook once and for all", actually I don't have that intention whatsoever, I am (was) a normal, active user. But it stopped being interesting. The kind of interaction Fb promotes is similar to twitter; in the first years I could see my friends showing off their breakfast or sharing their thoughts about something, now everything is 3rd-party articles, photos, videos, and complaining... LOTS of complaining (via sharing a relevant article they just read).

Ironically I still write to share my thoughts on something, without photos or shocking videos, and it catcyes my friend's attention because of the "novelty" of writing something of my own instead of just sharing some link.

Btw I've NEVER wanted to install Fb apps, especially since they forced everyone to have the Messenger app if you want to chat. Always used m.facebook.com for checking out, and mbasic. for chat (with the added benefit of the crappy UI pushing me out from using it...). Similarly, Twitter is another service I use, and never wanted their app installed, instead I use their website. The same reason frequent use of Reddit is out of the question for me.

Re: U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

#404

By far the biggest factor that had me stopping checking Facebook, and indeed LinkedIn, is number of utterly fictitious notifications they generate. There was a time a few years back when that red dot made me drop everything to check FB, but these days it’ll be some completely bullshit message they’ve made a notification out of. Feels like they got greedy for my attention and killed the golden goose there. I check it…

Even more annoying is the same thing that they do with email notifications. They seem to keep inventing new "categories" of notifications all the time that I haven't yet opted out of - basically because I seem to be only able to opt out of just that specific category that they just sent me an email about, when I click on the "don't want to receive any more of these mails" link below the message. And every time, they…

I have a seperate facebook@ mail address and I simply never check it. Did so before switching hosters last year and saw that about 8k mails had piled up since 2011. Crazy folks.

Re: U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

#405

By far the biggest factor that had me stopping checking Facebook, and indeed LinkedIn, is number of utterly fictitious notifications they generate. There was a time a few years back when that red dot made me drop everything to check FB, but these days it’ll be some completely bullshit message they’ve made a notification out of. Feels like they got greedy for my attention and killed the golden goose there. I check it…

Totally agree. The three things which have driven me away are:

1) the proliferation of notifications

2) filling my feed with auto-play videos

3) the fact that fewer and fewer of my friends actively use it

Just as rising membership creates a positive feedback loop through network effects, so declining membership does the opposite.

The other main reason is that since buying a smart phone, I can access the one feature of FB that I use - messenger - while avoiding the rest. I now only log into my account to check my notifications every week or two, to see if I've been invited to anything.

Re: U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

#407

By far the biggest factor that had me stopping checking Facebook, and indeed LinkedIn, is number of utterly fictitious notifications they generate. There was a time a few years back when that red dot made me drop everything to check FB, but these days it’ll be some completely bullshit message they’ve made a notification out of. Feels like they got greedy for my attention and killed the golden goose there. I check it…

Dear God I installed LinkedIn a couple months back and their endless bs notifications made me realize that I don't need it. It doesn't give me anything. Why is it sending me 2-3 notifications a day when I have 5 friends who's profiles arent even actively used? If it did something useful, like find me clients for the work I do then sure - I'll give them my attention. He'll, I'll pay good money for that! But I don't gi…

LinkedIn is just a list of my previous jobs that allows recruiters to spam me with job offers. Completely disabled the notifications and was considering deleting the whole thing

Re: U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of things changed. Facebook began as an exclusive social network for upper-class students. Gradually it grew to encompass not just all of America, but the entire world. It turns out, many of us well educated people don't really want to network or socialize with poorly educated people. Police started monitoring our activities, so the events all but disappeared. The world changed, too. Facts used to matter; we rea…

What changed is FB had to make money - and they discovered "outrage" sells. That's the full answer. It has nothing to do with the lower-class crowding up your social network lol.

Outrage only goes so far though. Using Brexit as an example, when the vote first went through, everyone devoured every bit of content they could regarding it, and the media followed. Then they started printing nothing but outrage until people just gave up and quit following the news. Anecdotal evidence sure, but everyone I know seems to only follow the news in passing now. Every headline. Every article. Every political interview. It all now revolves around this one completely divisive topic. If it's not Brexit it's Trump. It's exhausting.

It's no surprise that Facebook also seemed to chase the golden goose, but now that the main page is nothing but outrage or divisive news people are leaving in droves because they're fed up with seeing the same, day after day.

Re: U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

#409
I have no mercy for them. I have no explanation other than pure evil for the thing which i describe below - happy to hear other thoughts on this.

1) On mobile Chrome, in a not private tab, I flag an ad served via the FB ad network, to be precise it was on imgur.

2) On my smartphone, I strictly and only use FB with https://mbasic.facebook.com in mobile Chrome in a private tab. I never logged in in the not private tab.

3) I log-in to FB in the private tab a couple of minutes later and I get a notification that they received and reviewed the complaint from 1)

That was a huge WTF moment for me yesterday - I would love to learn on how they do it and why they think that's something the user would be happy to experience.

Re: U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

#410
Yes but they're going to Instagram, and the Stories feed is not much better than the newsfeed in terms of developing strong, true interpersonal relationships, not wasting time, and improving onself vs mindless consumption.

The good news is facebook has failed at creating a product that is truly lasting, so they have to keep this charade up of constantly reinventing the time-waster product.

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