Facebook loses users for the first time • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#891

Post by mongol » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:45 PM UTC

oezi wrote: post #874

peckrob wrote: post #831

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, Facebook has their tentacles in so many places that walking away from it is difficult, especially if you are involved in local community activities. My neighborhood exclusively uses Facebook for neighborhood communication. My kid's school PTA exclusively uses Facebook. Most of the local food trucks only post their schedules on Facebook. Since the pandemic started I have been taking the opportunity to go through…

I am from Europe so I may not get it, but what communication does a neighborhood do that is important? Yard sales? Do people really participate in something like school PTA and eat often at food trucks? I guess electronic platforms are more fragmented here in Europe. Google Maps owns business hours, various classified sites (such as Ebay's) own selling stuff locally. But everything might be different in each country…

Super-local news and gossip may be very relevant. I am not on Facebook, but I think I am missing out on it. For example, why was there a police car parked two blocks away last Thursday? Someone might have posted about it.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#892

Post by papito » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:47 PM UTC

dionidium wrote: post #865

randomsearch wrote: post #504

This is how the narrative of Facebook looks to me: Zuckerberg got lucky and then executed brilliantly, transitioned from nerd hacker to CEO amazingly well. He deserves a lot of credit for that. Since then, Facebook have innovated very little. Zuckerberg recognised this, and bought Instagram and Whatsapp in lieu of building an innovative company. The latter is clearly really difficult to do. Without a stream of new id…

> Zuckerberg got lucky and then executed brilliantly, transitioned from nerd hacker to CEO amazingly well. He deserves a lot of credit for that. I used to work for an extremely unfashionable website that nevertheless was one of the most visited on the web (even though you'd probably be surprised by that if you knew the site) and my experience there was that leadership tried to replicate that success with dozens of ot…

Look at all the massive tech companies that took root in 2000s. Most are tied to privileged kids who won the birth lottery, had access to computers, and the financial cushion to "try shit". Google, Facebook, PayPal, and earlier - Microsoft.

Convincing my parents to buy a computer so I could program was a struggle. We were on public assistance.

I am not saying that it's all like winning a lottery - you still have to take advantage of the opportunity, but they were born in Earth's orbit when trying to launch to the Moon, while most of us had to overcome gravity first.

Luck is not everything, but it IS a factor.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#893

Post by CaCtUs2003 » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:48 PM UTC

oezi wrote: post #874

peckrob wrote: post #831

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, Facebook has their tentacles in so many places that walking away from it is difficult, especially if you are involved in local community activities. My neighborhood exclusively uses Facebook for neighborhood communication. My kid's school PTA exclusively uses Facebook. Most of the local food trucks only post their schedules on Facebook. Since the pandemic started I have been taking the opportunity to go through…

I am from Europe so I may not get it, but what communication does a neighborhood do that is important? Yard sales? Do people really participate in something like school PTA and eat often at food trucks? I guess electronic platforms are more fragmented here in Europe. Google Maps owns business hours, various classified sites (such as Ebay's) own selling stuff locally. But everything might be different in each country…

>I think people have become more vary to post personal things online. I know very little parents that would be okay to publish pictures of their kids online (including on Facebook).

I have a few Facebook friends that refuse to post pictures of their kids on Facebook. I also have a LOT of friends that post nothing but.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#894

Post by tpmx » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:49 PM UTC

jmacd wrote: post #812

msluyter wrote: post #790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with most of this, but I'm curious where Facebook groups fit in here. We recently moved to Florida and have been scrambling to find non-religious home school friends for our daughter (homeschooling because of Covid). Facebook has been pretty much only resource available, and I've joined a number of local groups that have proved somewhat helpful. I'm wondering whether groups may provide a level of stickiness and…

Facebook Groups and Marketplace are both good examples of content graphs. Your social network is irrelevant to them, in fact you may prefer NOT to see the listings made by your friends/family as the negotiation/purchasing is often nicer when it is relatively anonymous. Facebook's one moat is very shallow in this space. Unlike high attention media with placement and interstitial opportunities, Marketplace and Groups a…

The social network graphs of the people contributing to e.g. a local group or marketplace helps in making sure that people behave somewhat honestly, I've found. At least in locales with like < 5k people.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#895

Post by beart » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:49 PM UTC

My children's school communicates a lot of information through their Facebook page. I had to reactivate my dead account after years when my kid started kindergarten. There was particularly important information that they did not send out anywhere but on Facebook. Meanwhile, they have a "news" page on their actual school website that has not been updated in years. I hate it and I think it should be illegal to force the use of a private, ad-driven platform for public/governmental information.

Facebook may count me as a user, but my account has absolutely no information listed about myself and the only pages I subscribe to are for the school.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#896

Post by ubermonkey » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:50 PM UTC

bko wrote: post #876

ubermonkey wrote: post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reminded of a Twitter joke from (according to the WaPo) @KevinFarzad: "HEY IT'S ME your facebook friend from high school who never left our hometown & thinks Olive Garden is fancy. Anyway, here's a racist article."

How is that a joke? It's just looking down on someone because of where they live, eat and their politics (assuming very lose definition of "racist"). And when did the role of journalists start including dunking on random people?

You seem fun.

It's funny because it's something many, many people identify with. A good chunk of Americans with the ability to do so leave small, provincial areas they grew up in for better opportunities in larger, more diverse cities. This leads to a pretty huge disconnect between them and those who, for whatever reason, stayed in their hometown.

It wasn't something that you noticed as much until Facebook exploded, and then everyone got re-connected with people from high school that, in some cases, you'd neither seen nor thought about in 20 years. And then the sort of post that prompted the joke happens, and you see it clearly.

And I assure you, as someone who grew up in and later left arguably the MOST racist state in the US south, the articles these archetypes are sharing are often quite explicit in their racism.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#897

Post by wegs » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:53 PM UTC

dionidium wrote: post #863

BaldricksGhost wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Facebook is where you find out your highschool friend is super in to a MLM, your uncle has drastic political views you don't share, and that your historical social class and network is largely irrelevant to your life a decade later." This is probably the most accurate description of Facebook I've seen.

This probably sounds like a real zinger to a certain kind of young person who moved to Brooklyn and thinks everybody back home is a total loser, but this is not the modal Facebook user, so I'm not sure it matters much.

I won't argue whether it's accurate, but I think you missed the point. You can swap words around, and get the same for any demographic.

The friend's perception of the poster would be "HEY IT'S ME your facebook friend from high school who went to New York and thinks is better than you. Anyway, here's a woke article."

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#898

Post by drewwwwww » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:56 PM UTC

dionidium wrote: post #863

BaldricksGhost wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Facebook is where you find out your highschool friend is super in to a MLM, your uncle has drastic political views you don't share, and that your historical social class and network is largely irrelevant to your life a decade later." This is probably the most accurate description of Facebook I've seen.

This probably sounds like a real zinger to a certain kind of young person who moved to Brooklyn and thinks everybody back home is a total loser, but this is not the modal Facebook user, so I'm not sure it matters much.

i mean you can easily write the obverse joke and it has the same overall point - “hey, it’s me, your friend from high school that moved to brooklyn and got a tattoo and thinks he’s better than you. here’s an article about how big yogurt’s assumption you can use a spoon is Ableist” still underscores the fact that facebook is a pipeline to deliver brain poison.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#899

Post by earthboundkid » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

BaldricksGhost wrote: post #782

jmacd wrote: post #774

There is something else going on around FB. Almost all activity online has shifted away from the Social Graph to a Content Graph. Almost nobody wants to see what their friends are doing online anymore. In a lot of ways it can be cringey. People just want the latest, catchiest content. TikTok and Youtube are the OGs here, but it's everywhere when you start to look. Twitter timeline changes being an awkward but working…

"Facebook is where you find out your highschool friend is super in to a MLM, your uncle has drastic political views you don't share, and that your historical social class and network is largely irrelevant to your life a decade later." This is probably the most accurate description of Facebook I've seen.

A girl I thought was cute in college was totally convinced T***** would retain the Presidency on 1/6, so I guess it was useful as a sign something was going to happen.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#900

Post by mullingitover » Thu, Feb 03, 2022, 6:01 PM UTC

jmacd wrote: post #774

There is something else going on around FB. Almost all activity online has shifted away from the Social Graph to a Content Graph. Almost nobody wants to see what their friends are doing online anymore. In a lot of ways it can be cringey. People just want the latest, catchiest content. TikTok and Youtube are the OGs here, but it's everywhere when you start to look. Twitter timeline changes being an awkward but working…

> Almost nobody wants to see what their friends are doing online anymore.

Fact. I unfollowed pretty much every person connected to me on facebook, and now my feed consists primarily of posts from 'This cat is C H O N K Y', 'Foods with threatening auras,' and the like. Huge quality of life improvement, second only to basically never using Facebook at all.