[antiSingularity]

Everyone now knows upper management of FB (the company) are awful human beings. FB as a website / app is dead. Instagram is becoming much more widely known as a source of terrible online addiction problems for young people. It's really annoying how deeply ingrained Whatsapp has become into life (especially where I live), but they will have to squeeze a lot of money from it to make up from the decline of the first two platforms. Yes, I think the article is completely correct.

[jsonne]

>FB as a website / app is dead

According to whom? Hacker news doomsday predictors? They have literally over a billion MAUs right? Just because the demographic skews older doesn't make those users less valid.

[humanlion87]

> They have literally over a billion MAUs right?

I wonder how accurate that number is though. FB is not really known for providing accurate statistics [0].

To clarify, I don't think they are dead and are humungous irrespective of how accurate the numbers are. But considering the history of the company, I don't think any of their metrics/statements can be trusted.

0 - https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/17/17989712/facebook-inaccu...

[neutronicus]

Yeah, in my city (Baltimore, MD) Facebook has basically eaten

1. Craigslist (via Marketplace) 2. meetup.com (via Groups) 3. NextDoor (also via Groups - this is probably a local thing because in Baltimore there is a perception that NextDoor and its userbase are racist) 3. The Yellow Pages (via Pages for Local Businesses)

Maybe it's dead as a social platform for cool young people, but ... if we're thinking of doing work on our house, my wife asks for contractor recommendations on the Facebook groups for our neighborhood and HOA. I bought a bike on Marketplace, I'm constantly driving around to get free / cheap kid stuff my wife found on Marketplace.

My wife and I were never "Facebook people" (we met on Reddit), but now we use it a lot just because it seems like Facebook completely owns the social-local space, for young-/middle-aged adults, especially those with kids.

[victor106]

I agree with this 100%. I hate FB and deleted my account 10 years ago.

However, I lived in the HN bubble for a few years and came to conclusion that FB is dead. Over a few months last year I realized how active FB is and was shocked to learn that lot of people use FB to form new relationships, sell things and discover new stuff.

I don’t plan to activate my FB account but the view that FB is dead is utter nonsense

[pessimizer]

As another person who left over 10 years ago, I haven't even seen much of a change other than that baby boomers took over (meaning that the wealthiest people in the world piled in.)

Not only have they never seemed in danger for a moment from the outside looking in, but all of the issues and controversy around facebook a decade ago that caused me to quit have been replaced by entirely different concerns every few years, increasingly based on political winds. The content of anti-facebook sentiment has been ephemeral, and the backlash always disorganized.

And above all, nothing has stopped people from at least logging in once a day, checking their messages, checking their groups, organizing events and responding to event invitations, and angrily responding to right/left wing comments from friends-of-friends. People continue to do thie like a chore, even if they get their all day dopamine hits from somewhere else like reddit/twitter, facebook's own instagram, or even the google news feed. Meanwhile, the suburban white-wingers who get their dopamine hits from facebook spend all day generating the content that pisses off the "barely use facebook anymore" people, extending their single or twice-daily visit, and also providing the cultural strife that they're reacting to on reddit/twitter/instagram/google news.

[Uberphallus]

It's always someone's opinion until confirmed. If it were facts the stock would reflect so.

There are browser plugins to filter out groups, pages and ads from your feed. That removed, it's basically a ghost town, at least for everyone I know that tried. It's become a glorified web portal/forum from the dot com boom at this point, and not a particularly good one at that. Within 5 years FB (the website, not the company) as it is will disappear or become irrelevant.

[quenix]

> If it were facts the stock would reflect so.

As an aside, I’m a little uneasy with this statement. We always get reminders of the disconnect between the stock market and reality.

[Uberphallus]

Can't disagree. But even with a relative disconnect, there are always corrections, be it in form of crashes or booms, when people finally know or accept the facts.

[kypro]

> Just because the demographic skews older doesn't make those users less valid.

Observing younger people in my family I think there has been a shift in recent years. When I was growing up being able to connect with friends outside of school, etc was a real privilege and something we had not had before services like MSN and MySpace.

These days kids are connected primary via online interactions from what I've seen. The young guys in my family spend hours chatting to friends on XBox while the girls play games like Roblox together and message on apps like TikTok / Snap. They don't need a Facebook because they're already connected through their other online activities. In fact when I've asked them about Facebook they don't even get why it's a thing and have told me flat out that it's a site for old people.

Even among people my age there is no long the desire to share things publicly and instead to connect via private messaging services which as OP suggested isn't going to be as easily monetisable.

[input_sh]

I'm sure that number would drop quite a lot if you decouple MAU that are only using Messenger. I'd go as far as to say that there's a reason that it's still not completely separated from "Facebook proper" after a decade or so since Messenger became a separate app.

[HenryKissinger]

They're losing millions of users in the free world. Most of their gains are from places like South America and South Asia.

[rmsaksida]

I live in South America and virtually everyone I know has moved to Instagram. People still keep their FB profiles around but they don't use it much. Also, I was not aware I don't live in the "free world". You learn something new every day...

[randiantech]

South America and South Asia are not "free world"? What does that mean?

[spywaregorilla]

Pretty sure they're still gaining, slowly, in the US

[elzbardico]

Trouble for them is that even with WhatsApp Telegram is on their heels. My wife has a lot of her professional and academic groups in telegram and she loves things like bots and channels, not to mention their Mac desktop application

[ornornor]

There are countries where whatsapp has pretty much become a utility and synonymous with „phone/sms“. Portugal is one of these countries.

[simiones]

Romania as well. Just to give an example, I recently needed some documents printed (WFH = no printer...) and found a corner shop where I just shared the docs over whatsapp with them.

[jsonne]

Pretty much all of LATAM Whatsapp is more ubiquitous than anything else.

[Semaphor]

Phone calls still exist, but for most people Whatsapp seems to have overtaken SMS even here in Germany (From what I’ve heard, I’m not a WA user)

[kapilkaisare]

And India. Most businesses run their customer service off Whatsapp, including nation-wide telecom outfits.

[iruoy]

Netherlands too. Some companies (KLM for example) offer WhatsApp as another channel for customer support over these days. And you can even contact the Dutch government over WhatsApp (plus Facebook, Twitter, email and phone).

[jraby3]

Israel too.

Although doing my best to get as many people as possible to use signal.

[mschuster91]

Telegram has image issues though, in Germany it's most widely known as a safe haven for drug dealers, Islamist terrorists and especially the far-right and anti-vaxx faction since its reluctance to intervene against problematic content and its non-compliance with the German anti-hatespeech law NetzDG.

As a result, there are discussions about fines which can reach up to 55 million € and even a complete ban (https://www.br.de/nachrichten/netzwelt/telegram-droht-aerger...).

[officeplant]

And here I am just using Telegram for Tech, Furry, and Kink servers. Most of the people I know only use it for that as well lol.

[whywhywhywhy]

>FB as a website / app is dead

Literally doesn't matter, it's time to realize that FB, Whatsapp, IG are all the same data bucket. Doesn't matter which you use, which you boycott if you touch any of these you're a FB user and if a single person who knows you IRL uses any of these and allows contacts access you are at least a shadow profile in their system.

Saying that I do believe both FB and IG will be surpassed by other networks within 10 years. The only thing up in the air is if those networks accept FBs offer of not.

[PoaMk]

I had to babysit a classroom of 8-10 year olds recently and asked how many used smartphones everyday. All of them raised their hand. What do you guys do on the phone? Games and Whatsapp. WTF are you guys doing on Whatsapp? Oh we chat with each other.

[dr-detroit]

Its well publicized that Steve Jobs wouldn't let his kids use iPad because the project is engineered to manipulate your brain and/or harm your brain.

Anyone who uses facebook or an iWatch or any of this garbage has all the information they need. They choose to be a victim. Its a cultural problem not a Zuckerburg problem.

[AndrewBissell]

> They choose to be a victim.

Did they choose to have decades of behavioral and psychological research weaponized against them in order to lash them to these systems? Did they all choose for their friends and family and huge swaths of their social life and day-to-day communications to be subsumed?

[smoldesu]

Frankly... yes. That has been the gambit with Apple products for decades: it's not a computer, it's consumer technology. Steve Jobs owned up to this outright, championing this idea that the computer needs to disappear altogether. Everything Apple has done over the past 20 years is about abstracting detailed, rich information away from a user, which indeed leaves a lot of developers scratching their head. If you've ever seen "how the sausage" is made, you're probably twice as skeptical. Putting that much faith in any company of that size is a good way to get all of data compromised.

So yes, I'd argue that they did choose that. Their complacency is their consent.

[9935c101ab17a66]

You should maybe rethink your attitude and tone, it's needlessly combative and your comments are both pointlessly reductive and unnecessarily critical.

[antiSingularity]

It's well known that Zuckerburg won't let his young kids use any FB products. Obviously - dealers don't get high off their supply, and definitely don't give it to their own kids.

>“Congresswoman, My daughters are five and three and they do not use our products. Actually that is not exactly true my eldest daughter, Max, I let use Messenger Kids sometimes to message her cousins,” said Mr Zuckerberg.