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

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1293 points rmason | 9 comments | 06 Mar 19 20:30 UTC | HN request time: 1.22s | source | bottom
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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.

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time0ut ◴[06 Mar 19 22:14 UTC] No.19323443[source]▶
I deleted my account years ago, but ended up creating a fake account under a fictitious identity for the odd event organized through Facebook. I log in every so often just to see what's up. It appears to be a mixture of paid content and two random friends posting memes.

I have to think people are deriving some value from it, but I cannot imagine what it is.

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1. kristopolous ◴[06 Mar 19 22:25 UTC] No.19323544[source]▶
Just like with twitter, it all depends on who you follow; Some content is dramatically better than others. And just like with twitter, most of the content is essentially garbage.
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2. rconti ◴[06 Mar 19 22:50 UTC] No.19323782[source]▶
Agreed. And I think this is one reason I love FB and can't stand Twitter. I kept buying into the "follow important people on Twitter" and it's just crap. I don't care what a noted Icelandic volcanologist retweeted about canaries. I don't care what my favorite F1 driver retweeted about english football. I don't care. I don't follow "influencers" because I don't care what they think, but I thought at least getting things from the horse's mouth, as it were, would be interesting, but it's just not.

I follow friend and family on facebook. If they post crap, it's because they have stupid things to say. I don't have many friends who I think are stupid.

Obviously you can follow celebrities on facebook and only follow friends on twitter but it doesn't feel like they're made for that use case, the 'reverse' of what I use it for.

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3. zf00002 ◴[07 Mar 19 00:01 UTC] No.19324292[source]▶
I feel the same way about twitter. The only time I ever visit is when some service I use isn't working and I want to see if they've said anything about it being down (or it's just me).
4. dvtrn ◴[07 Mar 19 00:19 UTC] No.19324422[source]▶
Obviously you can follow celebrities on facebook and only follow friends on twitter but it doesn't feel like they're made for that use case, the 'reverse' of what I use it for.

Someone here not long ago on HN opened my eyes to the 'lists' feature of Twitter, it's been a remarkable improvement for me with the platform. "IRL" friends in one list, "Net" friends in another, sports commentary (because that's a thing I'm into), etc. etc. Crap is more or less 'siloed'.

I wish twitter promoted the feature more, to be honest, I think it can help with some of the gripes you have, if not for you maybe for others as it did with my experience on the platform.

5. Retric ◴[07 Mar 19 01:35 UTC] No.19324850[source]▶
Following interesting people generally has nothing to do with following celebrities.

People could post the same stuff on FB, Twitter, or email lists the hard part is finding stuff worth subscribing to. It’s really more about what platform creators use, and Twitter’s lightweight nature means a lot of interesting things end up on it.

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6. hesk ◴[07 Mar 19 09:32 UTC] No.19326700[source]▶
You can turn retweets off for the people you follow. I follow maybe 100 people who post regularly but only allow retweets from a handful of them. Since I've done so, the quality of my feed has improved dramatically. Usually, when I follow a new person I leave retweets on initially but turn them off after two or three retweets because I'm only interested in what they say originally.

Incidentally, the iOS Twitter client also shows tweets in your feed which your followers liked. And you can't turn that off. I don't understand that feature at all and it made me switch to a third-party client.

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7. drdeadringer ◴[07 Mar 19 18:09 UTC] No.19330446[source]▶
Years ago I deleted my Facebook account [the "please everything" request, for what that's worth]. I felt so much better after doing so.

I then soon joined Twitter and consciously curated who I followed. I felt [and still do feel] fine about being on Twitter.

Some months ago I rejoined Facebook. I am consciously curating who I do and don't "friend" or follow. So far, so good. Yes, I am noticing the now-expected targeted ads ... but I prefer them, to be honest. Market me tickets to the Fandango showing of 'Logopolis' please; even if I don't buy, that's much more useful than the usual random jar of some guy's snake oil you'd offer me 20 years ago. Is this me being Institutionalized on tracking? Maybe, but there is an "after the uncanny valley" for tracking/advertising just like there is for robotics and AI. I'm interested to see how that works in relation to echo chambers.

8. rconti ◴[08 Mar 19 19:30 UTC] No.19341288{3}[source]▶
Thanks! I didn't realize that, good advice. Didn't notice the 'likes' .. I mean, I'm sure it's bothered me, I just didn't realize why it was happening, just closed twitter every time i saw too much junk.
9. rconti ◴[08 Mar 19 19:31 UTC] No.19341297{3}[source]▶
TBH, twitter's UI is so atrocious and takes up so much real estate, it's less information-dense than FB, somehow. Neither one is good, though.