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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

#281

Post by throwawaymath »

rizzin wrote: post #263
naravara wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been a common refrain from a lot of people. Facebook seems to have a lock on community it’s discussion forums for all sorts of small groups. It works since basically everyone is on it and you don’t have to make people register and create an account as a barrier to entry. People used to have email listservs instead, but I think there is so much email marketing now that the signal to noise ratio on most people…

This is why I liked Reddit so much when I have discovered it. You get thematic subreddits for these kind of discussions, and you didn't even need a full-fledged account. Just a nickname. No email confirmation, no phone authentication, no anything.

Although now Reddit requires an email address for signup.

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

#283

Post by elliekelly »

rootusrootus wrote: post #264
elliekelly wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if I was unclear as I was trying not to malign baby boomers but I was referring to the 50+/not tech savvy crowd on Facebook, not the young internet users of today.

Ah, I misunderstood. Please be careful with the "50+" comments, ha! Not there yet but closer than I'd like to admit, and I grew up during the sweet spot of modern computing. My biased opinion is that Gen X had it best in this regard.

Yes I was trying not to specifically say baby boomers because I know even the oldest user on HN is very much not the type I was trying to refer to.

I meant the users like my 60 year old father who was recently "Facebook hacked" when he accidentally hit the "insert" button on his keyboard.

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

#284

Post by adamweld »

resters wrote: post #275

It's obvious that Facebook is having some challenges from the dramatic increase in the number of inline ads (promoted posts). FB is scrambling to generate enough revenue to avoid spooking investors. What the investors will be missing if they abandon Facebook, however, is that Facebook has one of the most valuable data droves in history. Long after the kind of dark patterns and data collection policies used by Faceboo…

Spooking investors? Aren't they kind of past the point of needing to raise money, and onto the challenge of completing world domination?

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

#285

Post by jaxn »

naravara wrote: post #254
rmason wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was never that engaged in Facebook, just checked it once a week. Then I started helping managing a private forum (for Michigan entrepreneurs) and got invited into another one. Now I'm on FB a couple of times a day. Having the chance to engage with bright people who share my passion was the key. But the majority of my family has never been on Facebook.

This has been a common refrain from a lot of people. Facebook seems to have a lock on community it’s discussion forums for all sorts of small groups. It works since basically everyone is on it and you don’t have to make people register and create an account as a barrier to entry. People used to have email listservs instead, but I think there is so much email marketing now that the signal to noise ratio on most people…

My SaaS company has a user group on Facebook. It has been great and allowed us to build a strong community among our customers.

And one of my goals for 2019 is to shut that group down and move the conversation into our app.

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

#286

Post by shostack »

resters wrote: post #275

It's obvious that Facebook is having some challenges from the dramatic increase in the number of inline ads (promoted posts). FB is scrambling to generate enough revenue to avoid spooking investors. What the investors will be missing if they abandon Facebook, however, is that Facebook has one of the most valuable data droves in history. Long after the kind of dark patterns and data collection policies used by Faceboo…

They'd actually somewhat recently taken steps to reduce the number of posts, and instead push advertisers to bid more for fewer impressions. If successful, this has the impact of getting them more revenue with a better UX since there are fewer ads and in theory higher-quality brand advertisers who can afford more for those impressions.

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

#287

Post by no_wizard »

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 different ways, it turns out.)

Instagram provides that illusion by not injecting opinionated content into your feed (The most obvious example: you aren't seeing injected news stories in your Instagram feed, generally its only ads and people you follow, and the ads are marked)

Rest assured, they're getting their data's worth, maybe not the same way, but photos (particularly metadata on the photos that most smart phones, for instance, default collect) are just as (if not more so) valuable, not to mention there are still a myriad of other ways of collecting privacy intrusive data about users.

Hows about that?

(just to show my assertion is not completely unfounded, check out this survey:

https://www.pewinternet.org/2015/05/20/americans-views-about...

The survey says: 9 out of ten americans care deeply about privacy (particuarly around data privacy and collection)

Yet, our actions, even faced with the outright knowledge of those very things being actively and routinely violated by services, is not enough for people to leave platforms for good, simply, people shift between social media outlets, like those leaving Facebook over privacy concerns yet still continue to use Instagram, in fact, Instagram is projected to grow as noted in this article, in part because of people migrating away from Facebook)

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

#288

Post by cageface »

fullshark wrote: post #124
standardUser wrote: post #109

It feels like Facebook now contains all of the negative parts of social media - complaining, arguing, chain posts, fake news, relatives, etc. While Instagram now has all the pleasant parts - pretty photos of families, vacations and food! So these days I find myself using Instagram regularly and Facebook almost never. Having said that, I'll never leave Facebook until something else replaces it. It's the only place I h…

Instagram to me seems like the worst parts of social media, in that it's a vanity feeding mechanism amplified. Which in turn makes it an anxiety inducing experience if you aren't doing "cool things" that make other people jealous.

I travel a lot and enjoy taking pictures and sharing them with friends so Instagram was a lot harder for me to give up then Facebook. I just disabled my account though and so far it feels like a positive move. Instagram isn't entirely without benefits but overall it just started to feel like an obligation and a distraction.

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

#289

Post by rcpt »

kojackst wrote: post #10

Note: personal opinion bellow It seems to me that the overall interest in Facebook is decreasing. The social network hasn't had any interesting feature added to it in the last couple of years. It's becoming boring and boring, so that's why I believe people are leaving. Still, Instagram and WhatsApp are running strong with barely no competition. We don't see any news about their user base decreasing and news channels…

> Instagram and WhatsApp are running strong with barely no competition

TikTok

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

#290

Post by Spooky23 »

magduf wrote: post #140
Spooky23 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Craigslist was tainted by the unsavory element of prostitution and stolen goods and isn’t a resource that I seek out. Facebook marketplaces seem like what eBay was in the 90s.

If I'm buying a used piece of furniture or whatever, I don't give a shit about prostitution going on elsewhere on the site. What's really hurt Craigslist is all the scammers. You can't post anything of value on there without some scammer responding and telling you they're going to send you a cashier's check and have a personal assistant pick it up. You don't have this problem at all on Facebook AFAICT. When someone r…

The scammers aren’t there because of prostitution, both categories are there because Craigslist attracts unsavory parties and does little or nothing to police them.
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