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Facebook loses users for the first time

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#431

Post by spookthesunset »

Calist0 wrote: post #231
notyourwork wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone else find this on the level of batshit crazy insane? Meta, are we really going to divest so far from the physical world that the a virtual reality is worth that much? I mean VR is realistically a video game. I just don't see it but I do see desperation from FB.

I think this pandemic has proved how sane the idea of a Metaverse would be. Imagine meeting someone online, dating or friendship, you put on a lightweight VR headset and get transported to a replicated NYC rooftop bar, where loads of people from around the world are sitting, drinking and chatting. Socializing with a date or a group of people at the comfort of your home, going on outings, inviting your friends to your…

Who the hell wants to do that? After this BS over the last two years? People will absolutely laugh at the idea. Most people are sick and tired of this virtual shit. FB could not have picked a worse time to hype up some unreleased virtual reality world.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#432

Post by simonswords82 »

j4yav wrote: post #398
dzink wrote: post #357

The big reason behind losses was likely the iOS 14 tracking update. Right after it a ton of Facebook Advertisers groups on Facebook started complaining all of their carefully crafted campaigns were not producing revenue anymore. Targeting and regathering stopped making sales for advertisers and they quickly stopped spending on FB. The people who still spend are now doing videos as ads. Small advertisers were the cana…

That makes sense for revenue but how would that drive a loss of users? I’m not seeing the connection and would like to understand.

There are only 24 hours in a day and if a person spends those hours on TikTok it’s less likely they’ll have time to spend on Facebook or instagram

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#433

Post by jb1991 »

dzink wrote: post #357

The big reason behind losses was likely the iOS 14 tracking update. Right after it a ton of Facebook Advertisers groups on Facebook started complaining all of their carefully crafted campaigns were not producing revenue anymore. Targeting and regathering stopped making sales for advertisers and they quickly stopped spending on FB. The people who still spend are now doing videos as ads. Small advertisers were the cana…

This article is about losing users.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#434

Post by [deleted] »

spookthesunset wrote: post #393
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there are 2 major differences: 1. Even if FB isn't forced to divest their recent acquisitions, the regulatory environment will make it much more difficult to do the equivalent of buying Instagram in the future. 2. Any good ideas on how I can short "The Metaverse"? I still think the Metaverse is bullshit and will continue to be bullshit for the near future. The very first time I got on Facebook I was pretty ent…

The thing doesn’t even exist. It’s all just smoke and mirrors at this point. Not even that—where is the tech demo?

[deleted]

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#435

Post by noduerme »

wsc981 wrote: post #371
nradov wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's what your friends were sharing then maybe you need better friends?

I don’t think all friend need to share political views. Just from my own group of friends, I know our views vary wildly. I am libertarian, I don’t buy the COVID and climate change narratives and I just want to live my life and want to deal with as little of the government as possible. However most of my friends like big government (socialist welfare state) and do buy in the COVID narrative as pushed by big media and…

>> I don’t think all friend need to share political views.

This is the #1 thing, and I upvoted because you said this.

I'm also mostly a libertarian, but I think anyone who doesn't get a vaccine is extremely stupid. I'm also prone to conspiracy theories - I tend to think 9/11 was an inside job, for example. But let's say you believe in conspiracy theories, like, let's say the government wants to kill a few million people. Who do you think they want to kill? The people who line up and take the vax? No way!! Those are compliant people (according to this kind of reasoning). The people they'd want to kill - hell, the people I'd want to kill - would be the people who refused the vaccine. So they can just let them die from the virus, or let out a stronger virus next year. Anyone who thinks they're "smart" for avoiding a vaccine has not thought about what the government would do if they really wanted to kill the non-compliant people.

But having said that: I don't believe that this is all being coordinated. I think there are just a lot of countries and health agencies that all have partial information and do the best they can with it. And a lot of individuals who try to make political impressions with it. But if it were coordinated, if it were a conspiracy, then the only logical people to kill would be the ones who refused vaccination. And again, I mean this as a libertarian. If you think this is a "test run" for when a really bad virus comes out, you can bet that if you're unvaccinated for covid you're considered an enemy. I don't know why a rational person would put themselves in that position when you look at all the evidence. And I know my balls still work after having a vaccine. To me the biggest proof was Israel being first up front to vaccinate the population. (I'm Jewish). I know Israel isn't in the business of killing Jews. It's in the business of keeping Jews alive. So when I talked to Israelis who were asking why I wasn't vaccinated yet, and I had to explain it wasn't even available in America, I was sure the vaccine was nothing to worry about.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#436

Post by gpt5 »

Calist0 wrote: post #287
r0fl wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trillion dollar tech giants are expected to GROW to justify their valuations. Look at the numbers alphabet and apple posted the last few days. Huge growth. Facebook is not only growing but much worse, shrinking. I’ve been bullish on FB from the ipo date but this seems like the beginning of the end unless the meta verse is out of this world

Facebook is doing great. To put things in perspective: - On average, they net around 35 billion a year. With a valuation (MC) of 887 billion. - On average, Google net around 51 billion a year. With a valuation of 1.8 trillion. Facebook is making 68% as much as Google, with its valuation at less than half the price. And over the past 4-5 years Facebook's revenue has grown on average 32%/year, while Google grows 23%/ye…

The problem is of course, that Facebook is directly threatened by TikTok, while Google has a much stronger hold on its market segments. Google could continue growing, while Facebook actually shrinks.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#437

Post by legulere »

grujicd wrote: post #395
iamthemonster wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so interesting how different people's Facebook feeds are so different. I do have excessive ads for products, that's fair enough, but I have absolutely nothing political. My only issue with Facebook is that it's poorly designed, actually very dated and cluttered, and none of my friends really use it for personal posts except me. I suspect that each Facebook user exists in a different bubble. Possibly they see som…

FB is RSS for non-tech content. In my experience FB is what you make it to be. It requires some curration effort but you can mold it to be useful. But you can’t just add, you’ll have to block as well, including ads - each ad source can be turned off. For me, FB is the main source of news about local concerts. Sure, you’ll find about major ones anyway, but there’s no way to effectively track small ones. It doesn’t hav…

It’s not. With RSS you are in charge, as you select exactly which feeds you subscribe to and see everything from those feeds. Facebook hides posts from things you subscribed to and shows you stuff you didn’t subscribe to, to keep you hooked.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#438

Post by t_christensen »

haskal wrote: post #363
sujesh wrote: post #327

I deleted my FB a while ago and it truely helped my online mental health. The fb feed was full of false news and hate speech. I reported as much as I could but nothing happening. There wasn't any regulations and I felt more toxic on the contents. I am not gonna lie there was a positive side like knowing the news instantly but It's not worth it apparently.

Why not just stop visiting FB? You might lose access to things you logged in with "Login with Facebook" or lose out on some connections that are only on FB. Doom-scrolling FB is a bad idea, but whenever I log in to FB, I do it with a purpose (usually to text someone on FB) That's a big jump from the time when typing "facebook" in the address bar used to almost be a reflex on opening a new tab.

Another approach is to unsubscribe from everything (friends, groups etc.). You feed is empty, but you can still visit profiles/groups etc. but nothing will be pushed to you.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#439

Post by Lamad123 »

sujesh wrote: post #327

I deleted my FB a while ago and it truely helped my online mental health. The fb feed was full of false news and hate speech. I reported as much as I could but nothing happening. There wasn't any regulations and I felt more toxic on the contents. I am not gonna lie there was a positive side like knowing the news instantly but It's not worth it apparently.

The only useful thing about it was messenger but they disabled that on mobile browsers, so I stopped using the whole predict and then deleted it altogether.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#440

Post by winternett »

sujesh wrote: post #327

I deleted my FB a while ago and it truely helped my online mental health. The fb feed was full of false news and hate speech. I reported as much as I could but nothing happening. There wasn't any regulations and I felt more toxic on the contents. I am not gonna lie there was a positive side like knowing the news instantly but It's not worth it apparently.

At least the account blocking features still works for users, unlike with youTube and Twitter.

The UI is more and more horrid though on FB and Instagram with every update. My ability to do the most simple things is extremely frustrating, and I don't understand how they believe those changes help to inspire deeper engagement, It's getting really difficult to see any value in either platform as they shrink organic engagement of each post to 1-2 people when I have over 1k followers. I refuse to pay for ads just to reach the audience that has already chosen to follow me. Instagram shows a mile of ads and posts from accounts I follow on every news feed before my desired content now, it's totally outrageous.

Likes are completely worthless across the web right now, they mean absolutely nothing... and the stats aren't even accurate on so many of these sites, they're really showing desperation by pushing their user base away, I honestly can't believe that "brilliant minds" are at the helm any more... It feels like they sacked the experienced development minds and are just left with interns, marketers, and psychiatrists on staff. Something's either got to fail or change majorly before year end or I'm going back to IRC and local message boards for good, social media has become a total waste of energy.

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