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

Threads users down by more than a half

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 566 posts

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#551

Post by MrYellowP »

I don't know why this is even newsworthy, except for propaganda reasons.

Strong increase at the start, then a relatively quick drop, slowly declining to un-hyped levels of participation. This isn't news, this is common.

Strong initial growth is usually based on hype. There was tons of hype. The user count dropping so quickly means that the people, who joined because of hype (whatever sub-reason covered by the term), are leaving.

Given that it's facebook, the hype and potential participation rate was gigantic. It's a bubble. Bubbles pop.

More news at 11.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#552

Post by spacebear »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #407
dahwolf wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's an excellent point. Social media fatigue seems at its peak in this time of transition, further accelerated by the COVID era. People are becoming aware of their over-usage and the largely minimal or even negative benefits that come from social media altogether. Or just bored and indifferent about it. The fatigue is further strengthened when they soon learn that the alternatives are worse or at best just…

I’m so unable to relate to perspectives like this on social media. I have Insta and my connections on there are almost entirely my real friends, we all post stuff we’re actually doing in our lives, and send messages to each other, etc… as in, we actually use it for socialising. I follow a small handful of celebrity accounts, and browse reels occasionally, but the main reason I like using it is to interact with my fri…

That’s how I used Instagram in the first half of the 2010s. It seemed like the app was designed for that use case back then. Now it seems like it’s designed primarily for watching ads, so I text my friends instead.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#553

Post by matheusmoreira »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #486
matheusmoreira wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Journalists are typically the ones bringing any sort of credibility to topics. Not at all. "Journalists" are as biased as they come. They'll sing any tune prescribed by the hand that feeds them. That hand is most often advertisers but may also be governments. Chances are the articles they produce are actually hidden advertisements or propaganda. How could anyone with such massive conflicts of interest bring credibi…

> What makes you think these "journalists" aren't just randoms themselves? They're not really any better than any person on this site. It's pretty ridiculous to compare someone who has a university degree, years of training and experience, professional qualifications, and maybe a strong reputation, with a "random" posting on an internet forum.

> university degree, years of training and experience, professional qualifications, and maybe a strong reputation

Big deal. I have all of those things. Lots of people here do too.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#554

Post by matheusmoreira »

dessimus wrote: post #513
matheusmoreira wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Journalists are typically the ones bringing any sort of credibility to topics. Not at all. "Journalists" are as biased as they come. They'll sing any tune prescribed by the hand that feeds them. That hand is most often advertisers but may also be governments. Chances are the articles they produce are actually hidden advertisements or propaganda. How could anyone with such massive conflicts of interest bring credibi…

> "Journalists" are as biased as they come. So, you got any other account posting behind a pseudonym, being more unbiased than a journalist posting to Twitter/X using their professional name and attached to their organization? At least with the journalist, you gain some insight into what their biases might be. > They'll sing any tune prescribed by the hand that feeds them. You say that as though every dev working pro…

> you got any other account posting behind a pseudonym

This is my only HN account. I post pseudonymously and anonymously elsewhere on the internet but not here.

> You say that as though every dev

Devs on HN usually don't make it their business to present their biased version of the truth to vast amounts of people.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#555

Post by eertami »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #544
eertami wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no feature Twitter/X could bring to chat that would take users away from WhatsApp. It already covers 100% of it's users needs, is free, and has near complete market penetration in many regions. (If you are talking to anyone in Europe by text, you will always use WhatsApp)

Easy: End to end encryption that’s not controlled by Meta. It could take a while, but look at all the social media messaging apps from the past: ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, My Space, GChat, Orkut, Tumblr, Snapchat, FB messages etc They come and go. I sure don’t know what the ultimate chat/social media app looks like.

None of those services had even a fraction of the market penetration that WhatsApp has (in Europe and basically most places that are not North America.)

WhatsApp is used by teenagers, great-grandparents, businesses, everyone. When you give someone your number in Europe, they won't ask how to contact you, they will just send you a message on WhatsApp 100% of the time. Only tech nerds and small groups use Signal etc.

To be clear, I don't think this is a good thing. But it is simply the reality of the world. It's been like this for 10 years with no signs of changing. WhatsApp could of course die one day, but only if Meta does something categorically stupid or unpopular that forces people off the platform (eg, what Twitter is doing).

WhatsApp is not a social media platform and that's precisely why it is so universally used.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#557

Post by strangattractor »

ghaff wrote: post #330
strangattractor wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Musk did them a favor.

Lots of people used Twitter to keep in touch with professional peers and other non-outrage communities of interest. So that’s a cheap lazy take. But I do think there’s some regret that is similar in nature to the Eternal September. Things were “fine” before the plebes and political interests found the platform.

I'll never deny being both cheap and lazy however the number of people injured each year walking across the street while looking at their phones suggests that social media like Twitter might actually be detrimental to one's health.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#558

Post by aydyn »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #478
aydyn wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's the user experience" haha Yeah you couldn't do it by whatsapp, but you could do it with discord, slack, teams, skype and a bunch of other services that you failed to mention to create a strawman. That you get so defensive is really, and I mean REALLY, telling of the real reason.

You couldn’t create anything resembling the Instagram experience on any of those services, let alone using some of your other suggestion like email. If the only thing you think a substitute service requires is a way to send images, then you could replace Instagram with the postal service by that standard. The most absurd part of this argument is that discord, WhatsApp, messenger, etc… are all also social media platfo…

> You couldn’t create anything resembling the Instagram experience

I actually 100% agree with you here, but assuredly not in the way you meant it.

What it's NOT is that you couldn't replicate a simple media sharing experience between a tight nit group of friends. That's demonstrably false.

> This is by far the silliest “well actually” I’ve ever seen on HN.

No, it's... something else. Again, you're being extremely defensive when someone points out simple facts. Iykyk.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#559

Post by worthless-trash »

linza wrote: post #465
worthless-trash wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe one can make any decisive decision about bias in business funded journalism other than self interest.

I probably misunderstand your point, but if your point is that a given journalist can never be reliable then I agree, but that is also not the idea perhaps. We cannot hope to have only unbiased views, we can only average them out by consuming from multiple sources with known biases.

This is a kind interpretation of what I meant. They all have some kind of bias angle, maybe by researching enough data can we hope to achieve a measure of accuracy.

Re: Threads users down by more than a half

#560

Post by porkbeer »

_ea1k wrote: post #394

Where are all the articles questioning Zuckerberg's sanity because of all his bad decisions that led to this? I know that they'd be mostly false, but we get those about that other site, so why not about Threads?

Yeah, its just a popularity thing. You would get greyed into oblivion suggesting him or tesla were any less than god sent 5 years ago here. Its sad so much kneeJerk emotion gets attached to services based on users or owners. Im not a fan of either platform or owner, but I can relate to your interpretation.
Post reply on HN