Most active commenters

    ←back to thread

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

    (www.marketplace.org)
    1293 points rmason | 14 comments | 06 Mar 19 20:30 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
    Show context
    kojackst ◴[06 Mar 19 21:48 UTC] No.19323205[source]▶
    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 don't seem to dislike them. Facebook is doing a good job making sure their biggest three platforms are seem as independent from one another, keeping Instagram and WhatsApp almost free from controversy.

    Personally I see no loss for them here. Besides, they will promptly acquire any new players that look promising, or shamelessly copy them as they did with Snapchat.

    replies(25): >>19323310 #>>19323407 #>>19323409 #>>19323443 #>>19323459 #>>19323471 #>>19323680 #>>19323683 #>>19323767 #>>19323778 #>>19323795 #>>19324014 #>>19324017 #>>19324063 #>>19324111 #>>19324152 #>>19324240 #>>19324493 #>>19324617 #>>19324644 #>>19324719 #>>19324922 #>>19325233 #>>19327219 #>>19331109 #
    1. tombert ◴[06 Mar 19 22:17 UTC] No.19323471[source]▶
    > Instagram and WhatsApp are running strong with barely no competition

    You're not wrong, but I find it a bit frustrating how much resistance I get whenever I try and suggest using Signal instead of Whatsapp. As far as I can tell, it has pretty much all the features of Whatsapp that I use, without all the spying.

    replies(6): >>19323765 #>>19323891 #>>19323933 #>>19324174 #>>19325036 #>>19328755 #
    2. JohnJamesRambo ◴[06 Mar 19 22:48 UTC] No.19323765[source]▶
    I'm having some pretty good success getting people to switch to Signal in my family. Keep up the good fight!
    3. nategri ◴[06 Mar 19 23:02 UTC] No.19323891[source]▶
    I think there's a lot of "chat app fatigue." I've personally had 5 or 6 on my phone in the past year and you'd have to drag me kicking and screaming into installing even one more of the damned things.
    4. jjrh ◴[06 Mar 19 23:07 UTC] No.19323933[source]▶
    No one wants to install ANOTHER app just to talk to you. Most of us already have at least 3 messaging apps they use on a daily basis and probably a whole lot more they use on a weekly basis.
    replies(1): >>19324384 #
    5. frosted-flakes ◴[06 Mar 19 23:45 UTC] No.19324174[source]▶
    Signal work all right, but it doesn't feel very polished. Notifications are a bit wonky, and the unread message icon never shows up on the home screen icon.
    6. sm4rk0 ◴[07 Mar 19 00:14 UTC] No.19324384[source]▶
    But why WhatsApp is one of those 3 and Signal is ANOTHER app? Not so long ago WhatsApp was ANOTHER. Now it's not. What changed?
    replies(3): >>19324682 #>>19325597 #>>19328091 #
    7. schwap ◴[07 Mar 19 01:00 UTC] No.19324682{3}[source]▶
    I don't remember WhatsApp ever being ANOTHER. It was the first cross-platform messaging app I ever used.
    replies(1): >>19327766 #
    8. elamje ◴[07 Mar 19 02:17 UTC] No.19325036[source]▶
    Genuinely curious, how is WhatsApp spying? I thought they were encrypted? Are they not end to end encrypted like Keybase or signal?
    replies(1): >>19326189 #
    9. webninja ◴[07 Mar 19 04:52 UTC] No.19325597{3}[source]▶
    GroupMe works fine
    10. fwn ◴[07 Mar 19 07:25 UTC] No.19326189[source]▶
    They are end to end encrypted. There's apparently a lot of meta data (like the people one communicates with, etc.) that can still be accessed by Facebook.

    It also nudges users to enable cloud backups which in practice means that everyone has them enabled (...which in practice means that all your messages are unencrypted in the other person's cloud storage.)

    replies(1): >>19331429 #
    11. sm4rk0 ◴[07 Mar 19 13:20 UTC] No.19327766{4}[source]▶
    Wikipedia says it was released in January 2009. Google Talk started in August 2005. For a GTalk user, it was "another".
    12. ◴[07 Mar 19 14:11 UTC] No.19328091{3}[source]▶
    13. magduf ◴[07 Mar 19 15:28 UTC] No.19328755[source]▶
    I would suggest LINE instead.
    14. elamje ◴[07 Mar 19 19:39 UTC] No.19331429{3}[source]▶
    Oh no. I see