Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook loses users for the first time

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 1001 posts

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#371

Post by wsc981 »

nradov wrote: post #333
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.

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 government.

In the past we’d sometimes have very heated discussions around the COVID situation (initiated by a friend who shares my views), but as I noticed people becoming very “aggressive” in the debate, I asked everyone to just not discuss this issue anymore. And happily everyone agreed on this.

So now we’re still all great friends, but we just avoid this very sensitive topic, which I feel is for the better. It’s not worth it to lose friends just because you don’t agree on some issues.

We do our discussions over Signal by the way, I haven’t used Facebook for many years now. Most of my friends have quitted Facebook. In the past we mainly used Facebook to organize group events (weekend get-togethers), but we use Signal for this functionality now.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#372

Post by selfhifive »

nradov wrote: post #333
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.

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

It's not friends.

Facebook's boosted content/recommended content is what it is.

Having a friends only feed would actually save the product.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#373

Post by nradov »

Morgawr wrote: post #349
nradov wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I hear this very often and while deep down it's a reasonable take, the more you think about it, the less useful as advice it becomes. While I can't comment about Facebook specifically (I haven't been on it for over a decade by now), but I've seen the same happen on many other platforms as social media has become staple of life. I know people I've been friends with (and I mean, close friends) for almost two decades by…

It doesn't take any mental or emotional toll on me. It helps a lot to "hide all from" all third-party pages so that you mostly just see original posts from your friends.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#374

Post by KerryJones »

iamthemonster wrote: post #355
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.

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…

This is exactly what happens. What's worse, I thought it was doing that because I had responded to some political post, but FB just sees "you engaged with person-X, I will now alert you when person-X posts, and when people respond to his posts, even if you haven't looked at it"

This led to increasingly divisive messages literally showing up in my notifications that I had nothing to do with. This still happens months after I stopped responding to any of those messages.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#375

Post by vegetablepotpie »

kajaktum wrote: post #116

People like to hate on Facebook, but how is any other social media different? They are all free services that profit from your personal information. Some just have better PR than the other.

The problem is that there is social media. Facebook is the biggest success, which is why people focus on it. Facebook displaces other forms of communication I prefer to use. I used to use email heavily to communicate with friends. Email was the best format for me, now no one uses it. Everyone is on 12 messaging platforms, Facebook started that trend with messenger.

I used to be able to go to business websites and get the information I needed, now everyone primarily uses Facebook pages to post information, which means I have to log in on many occasions to view the content. The Internet before Facebook was much more convenient for me.

Facebook hasn’t resulted in any positive interactions for me. Something about the platform drives people to be confrontational. Years ago when I participated on the platform I would reply to friend’s posts. Sometimes I would get replies from their friends and they tried to argue with me. It boiled down to them believing I said something in my post that I did not write. That drove me to not write my thoughts about something, and when I did reply, it was with shallow positive comments. That is a very boring way to interact with people, so I stopped using the platform.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#376

Post by scarface74 »

buitreVirtual wrote: post #370
scarface74 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your FB feed is full of false news and hate speech, that says a lot about who your “friends” are.

It says a lot too about FB having no qualms in amplifying and profiting from propaganda and hate.

Yet I never see propaganda or hate on my feed. If your feed is full of hate and propaganda, it’s coming from the people you choose to allow to enter your feed.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#377

Post by pjerem »

romeros wrote: post #352
batiudrami wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article is literally about their daily active users number dropping.

HN Users typically read the heading and jump to the comment section..

Well, ${WEBSITE_NAME} users also typically read the heading and jump to the comment section..

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#378

Post by heavyset_go »

wraptile wrote: post #307
adewinter wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's even a metric for that: Daily Active Users. I bet Facebook does not publish that number (or the historical values for it). I bet that number has been going down lately, at least for North American users. There's a reason they changed their name.

That also would be skewed imho. I use messenger to communicate with my family and I do click on facebook links they sends me but that's about it - am I an active user?

Sounds like you're actively using Facebook's products, so I'd assume so.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#379

Post by erehweb »

friendlydog wrote: post #335
erehweb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stat being referenced is daily active users, so not counting people who have an account but never login.

Does it count people who have messenger but never open it, but their device is signed it? It is cramware on a lot of android phones.

https://backlinko.com/facebook-users claims "Official Daily active users (DAUs) definition: Daily active users or DAUs is defined as a registered and logged-in user to Facebook who visits the site through a mobile device application or web browser on any given day."

So according to that, no.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#380

Post by heavyset_go »

distribot wrote: post #292
agumonkey wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please tell her how she feels when 23 and whatever websites she uses are replaced by some random new fac simile with a different css.

You think TikTok is facsimile of Facebook?

Vine
Post reply on HN