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Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

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Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#391

Post by cmpb »

irrational wrote: post #224

I have teenagers and college-age kids and I'm not surprised in the least. They openly consider Facebook to be a platform for old people. They seem to have moved to more of a distributed social media system. That is, they don't seem to have a central place where they communicate with friends. They seem to move between texts, facetime, tumblr, instagram, phone calls (!), etc. in a fluid manner. Anything except for Face…

Knowing that my 2-year-old son will very likely not even consider participating in Facebook (when he gets to that age) is pretty refreshing. It gives me hope that in the time between now and then, we'll be able to figure out how to communicate effectively in the distributed internet age. In the same vein, it worries me because it's totally plausible to think that the problems of today will be dwarfed by the problems of my son's age.

From my perspective, the very best action that I can take, in order to limit his vulnerability later on in life, is to just start educating him on how to act appropriately online. But I can only base that education on the view that I've built up of these gargantuan and ever-multiplying systems of manipulation, which leads back to my main worry: I know that there will come a time when I can no longer keep my view of these systems up-to-date, and by extension, help to keep my son educated about his and my own vulnerabilities to them. I find myself worrying a lot about his future these days...

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#392

Post by kingbirdy »

Zelphyr wrote: post #148
_sdfo wrote: post #96

There's just no way I could keep myself up to date with local events without Facebook. I live in a post-soviet country so Snapchat and Instagram are considered pretty niche here so every social event is always documented on Facebook. I also hold a monthly gamedev meetup, which would be utterly impossible without Facebook. The attendance has grown from 5 to 30 people in a few months and is now helping jump start the g…

It is evil but it's really not as necessary as you think. I'm known to ALL of my friends and ALL of my family as someone who will not ever be on Facebook. You know what they do? They call me. Or text me. Or email me. And I never miss out on events. Even people I rarely interact with know how to, and do reach me outside of Facebook. People make such a big deal out of how impossible their social lives would be without…

As a counterpoint, I've made it clear to my friends I don't check facebook, and have missed out on events or only found out about them because they came up in passing conversation, specifically because they sent out a facebook invite and assumed it would reach me. Then when I mention I hadn't heard about it I always hear "Oh right, I forgot you don't check facebook". As the only person in my friend circle who doesn't use the platform, it seems almost unthinkable to the rest that someone would do that. Is it poor behavior on my friends' part? Perhaps, but it's not a hill I'm willing to die on.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#393

Post by nickrivadeneira »

erickhill wrote: post #380
duxup wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even know what Twitter is for except mutual high fives over the most superficial "look at me" memeish stuff. It's worse than facebook as far as the "get attention" vibe. Granted all social media is about getting attention, and I don't think there is anything wrong with it necessarily. Attention is nice, there is good reason for it, but when the message is so tailored to just that and there isn't anything else…

It took me about 10 years to finally "get Twitter". I used to use it for professional reasons, posting what I considered relevant content. For the most part no one really cared. The engagement was almost always nil. Sort of like saying something intelligent, out of the blue, to a crowded stadium of people doing the same thing. Then, 2 years ago I created a new account that ONLY focused on a personal hobby of mine: re…

I use Facebook in the same way you do - for participating in local motorsports. All the clubs organize via Facebook groups, so it's the only practical way to stay active in the sport. I'm using the personal account that I've had since 2005 but I don't post anything publicly anymore.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#394

Post by r00fus »

buboard wrote: post #41

Why is HN so eager to document the downfall of facebook? First, realize that for a large part of its demographics, facebook is the internet , and when they quit they 'll leave the internet altogether (provided that there 's not another new platform that absorbs them). Second, other social media are having far bigger leakages (snapchat) but that doesn't seem to concern anyone.

> First, realize that for a large part of its demographics, facebook is the internet, and when they quit they 'll leave the internet altogether

Isn't that hyperbole?

Or rather, that might be a demographic they never lose. Might explain why they were big on "internet.org". Anyone with options seems to have found better places to hang out (shocking - even IRL).

Maybe the better prediction is quitting FB is like quitting the soi-dissant "social" network thing. Is that a bad thing?

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#396

Post by hunter2_ »

sterlind wrote: post #314
lostgame wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, so put a WebKit wrapper around that?

Is there some one-click way to "bottle" web apps like this on demand? I'm thinking of something that does some light crawling, fills its cache up, shims xmlhttprequests for static data, and sandwiches it in a shell. It wouldn't be perfect, but it could always fall back on the real site when its cache falls through..

You don't even need a native bottle. The site just needs to offer a PWA manifest and associated service worker functionality. https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#397

Post by y_tho »

Zelphyr wrote: post #148
_sdfo wrote: post #96

There's just no way I could keep myself up to date with local events without Facebook. I live in a post-soviet country so Snapchat and Instagram are considered pretty niche here so every social event is always documented on Facebook. I also hold a monthly gamedev meetup, which would be utterly impossible without Facebook. The attendance has grown from 5 to 30 people in a few months and is now helping jump start the g…

It is evil but it's really not as necessary as you think. I'm known to ALL of my friends and ALL of my family as someone who will not ever be on Facebook. You know what they do? They call me. Or text me. Or email me. And I never miss out on events. Even people I rarely interact with know how to, and do reach me outside of Facebook. People make such a big deal out of how impossible their social lives would be without…

> I'm known to ALL of my friends and ALL of my family as someone who will not ever be on Facebook. You know what they do? They call me. Or text me. Or email me.

That only works if they already know you. If you wanna start something new, it might benefit from having the outreach that facebook has.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#398

Post by octorian »

starpilot wrote: post #383
jwally wrote: post #298

Note I wrote my father in law when he had gone too far down the rabbit hole and legitimately worried about the poison it spreads around his demographic: I left Facebook when I read some press release about it being designed from the outset to make you feel bad because it keeps you engaged; hoping someone agrees with something you liked or shared and the dopamine hit it releases. I don’t like feeling manipulated and m…

My sister has gone down the same rabbit hole. She really thinks she's "fighting the good fight" by posting a fresh outrage every day. She's glued to a changing handful of posts, replying rapid-fire to anyone who disagrees. I used to post (4-5 times per year) photos of my vacations, but I don't want to feed the whole lifestyle porn/envy cycle.

> She really thinks she's "fighting the good fight" by posting a fresh outrage every day.

I have a few people in my feed who do this, from both sides. It almost feels like they've turned into nothing but meme/share-bots. It gets so annoying that I should probably block them already.

If you try to call out the content, you either get childishly shouted down because you're on "the other side", or called out as "the problem" because you don't agree with their group-think.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#399

Post by Spooky23 »

jwally wrote: post #298

Note I wrote my father in law when he had gone too far down the rabbit hole and legitimately worried about the poison it spreads around his demographic: I left Facebook when I read some press release about it being designed from the outset to make you feel bad because it keeps you engaged; hoping someone agrees with something you liked or shared and the dopamine hit it releases. I don’t like feeling manipulated and m…

IMO talk radio is far worse than Facebook. It’s just a constant stream of vitriol and nastiness with no end.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#400

Post by spookthesunset »

fblistener wrote: post #338
rigged-system wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen this first hand. At one point, I think I had figured this out because I the Facebook app had access to "Siri results", and "Siri results" is just about anything you do on your phone. We turned off Siri results, but we would still be discussing something out loud like "maybe we should go to Bali some day" and lo and behold, my wife would see ads for Bali in her Facebook stream within 1-2 hours.

I've seen this firsthand as well. I don't know that it was Facebook, but that was the only thing that seemed plausible at the time. My wife had been saying that she'd been getting creepy ads that appeared to be based on things she said out loud. I dismissed it as, "Oh, but you were talking about that because you read about it earlier, and the app noticed you read that story." She wasn't convinced. Then we watched a r…

Some "smart TV"'s can phone home with TV usage data. I wouldn't be too surprised if there was a shazzam like thing in some smart TV's that can detect certain advertisements.

eg - https://www.cnet.com/how-to/disable-vizio-smart-tv-spying/

Once you match the public IP address of all your devices you can link up the identities and do fun advertising stuff.

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