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Facebook loses users for the first time

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#971
post #809

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Well I am writing this on a new M1 MacBook Pro which is the best laptop computer I have ever owned. And that is because Apple developed their own chips that are an amazing leap forward in power efficiency, so I can have a laptop which I do heavy, CPU intensive work on all day without worrying about the battery.

Do computer games work on this? (Emulation?) Does it have MS office with macros, or still only a limited version?

No idea, haven't tried either. In general anything you have to run under Rosetta seems pretty slow.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#972
post #963

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It's like that with me and having a phone number. Day to day I hate it. 95% of time I get scam calls from the "IRS" - actively harmful. Another 4% is marketing - unwanted, wasteful. Only the last 1% is potentially useful. Is facebook trending in that direction? Seems like it.

I wonder if there's a generalisable statement in there - say, that all communication media will eventually become so swamped in noise that the signal is lost almost entirely? Maybe too pessimistic.

It seems spot on to me. The fix is rather simple though, allow consumers to set some price that must be paid prior to sending the communication attempt. Want to call or email me and aren’t on my accepted list? $5 please.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#973
post #880

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I think there are a lot of people who are in my position, which is "I would absolutely love to ditch FB entirely, but I can't because of ____". The value of ____ might be "seeing pictures of family", or it might be "coordination of/participation in a group that has settled on Facebook as the easiest path" ( But none of these are positive reasons. There is no love of Facebook behind any of them. It's Facebook being to…

Seeing pictures of family and participating in group events are all positive in my opinion. My son's daycare has a facebook page. It's very convenient to stay up to date on my own schedule without having to deal with emails. My pizzeria also has a facebook page. It's an easy way to look up hours or any updates. My gym has an instagram page to post their workouts and schedule. It's very convenient. The owners aren't v…

Two of your examples can be done using a shared calendar, which is more fitting in these cases than facebook, and integrates more deeply into devices, and the third about looking up hours can be done using the maps app.

They try to make you think they invented the wheel but really they’re just offering the same services as elsewhere under their umbrella.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#974
post #853

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I think there are a lot of people who are in my position, which is "I would absolutely love to ditch FB entirely, but I can't because of ____". The value of ____ might be "seeing pictures of family", or it might be "coordination of/participation in a group that has settled on Facebook as the easiest path" ( But none of these are positive reasons. There is no love of Facebook behind any of them. It's Facebook being to…

I don't have any particular love for Facebook, but it remains the best way to share my underwater photography with friends. That's a positive reason. I appreciate how they give me a convenient distribution platform and it's all free.

Why could you not post all of your pics to a shared photo album that’s shared with your friends? It’d even remove the step of posting it only because as soon as it’s on your machine it’s uploaded to your cloud photo album. And it’s still free. Further what if you want to share this with those that aren’t your friends? You’ve required facebook usage with no real gain.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#975

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> 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.

well, chonky cats are always a QOL improvement (-:

I’m personally more interested in the food with threatening auras. That sounds…interesting

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#976
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…

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…

> have been scrambling to find non-religious home school friends for our daughter

Why do they have to be non-religious?

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#977
post #964

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I think at this point 'Groups' are single-handedly keeping fb alive.

I deleted my FB account and the only thing that I went back for was my residents association. I still have no FB friends - which is fun because I can see the algorithm trying to work out who I know. Eerily, it correctly identified my partner and suggests I friend her (and her mother!) every time I login.

> Eerily, it correctly identified my partner and suggests I friend her (and her mother!) every time I login.

That doesn’t seem that eerie to me. Your partner is most likely logging in from the same IP, and perhaps your mother-in-law has done the same at least once, or is friended to your partner. Making this association is pretty straightforward

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#978

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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.

I haven’t seen anyone voledermord trump b4

Just a couple of late night US talk shows, including the most viewed one, have done this.

Re: Facebook loses users for the first time

#980
post #816

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Re: metaverse, it's not really a handwavey after thought - they've been investing quite significantly ($10bn lost last year alone while all of Google's bets including deepmind and waymo lost ~1.45bn. >10k people working on it now AFAIK). I think Facebook just got burned by not having a hardware platform this cycle - Apple and Google control the phones and Microsoft has the PC, XBox etc. They just want control over th…

I just wonder where the software for it is at. Oculus is chugging along and I believe that can get quite good. But building a impressive MMO-like 3D world/game is probably a 5-10 year endeavor and runs a high risk that it won’t be fun or novel. I guess they’ll mainly build the platforms but then they need someone to build the worlds on top of it.

Zenith VR might fit your definition of MMO like 3D game.
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