I closed mine out in about 2014 and never looked back.
I don't have many... any friends from my early life, specifically from school. In fact I haven't kept any friends from before 5 years ago. Maybe I'm a dick? Maybe people naturally drift apart? I dunno. It makes me wonder. I've never been great at maintaining relationships over time or distance.
I've always thought I was weird like this. My partner has a ton of friends and works at maintaining friendships. I read all the time how humans are social animals and need a group of friends, etc etc. I've never felt this, and have come to accept that's just the way I am. I still often wonder if this is something I'll regret when I'm old, whether I'll be lonely... No idea.
I've come to realize that I do need a social structure, but somehow I've managed to not keep friends. Maybe even not have friends until recently? I don't know. The word friend is nebulous, and I tend to qualify friend as someone I would help bury a body. I only have a few of those now.
Can't remember the year, but I created a facebook account when it became possible to do so without invitation. A bit later, more people started to join and I got these friend requests, or whatever they were called. There was one in particular that stood out as uncomfortable, which made me think: is there anything I want to share with these people? It's going to sound phony. At which point I deleted my account. Never looked back. No need to, since there's still phone, email and text for more "personalized" conversation.
My SO created her account at the same time, and still uses it, and it has always looked terribly superficial to me. Keeping up appearances.
I’ve never had one. Never had an IG account. I’ve sadly not been able to escape WhatsApp.
An interesting side effect of this: I don’t have contact with any childhood friends. I have no idea what anyone became.
Creepy thing: I was once made aware of an IG account with my usual online handle and my first and last name. No pictures, and seemingly completely inactive, but it’s there. I tried to reach out to IG, however they didn’t care.
I had a Facebook account until recently and so knew what people I was childhood friends became, sort of. The ones who were successful seemed to not really use it so you didn't really see what they were up to one way or the other, but peoples whose life didn't really work out seemed to spend a lot of time advertising that fact there.
Recently, I received a blocking request from facebook at the moment here in Norway - pay 110 NOK and my data will not be used for ads or keep it for free and my data will be used for ads. They say at the top of the box for this: "Laws are changing in your region, so we're introducing a new choice about how we use your info for ads." What laws? Meta is being fined actually: https://www.reuters.com/technology/norway-data-regulator-fin.... (In Norwegian about this offer: https://www.tek.no/nyheter/nyhet/i/GMEqym/facebooks-abonneme...) Datatilsynet "doubts strongly this is legal".
So I still have it, but I think now it's time for a break. I like to just look at old pictures in some local groups. I can still use the mobile site though.
No Facebook account, no Google account, no Reddit account, no Twitter, no TikTok, no Instagram, no WhatsApp. My last parasite to remove is Microsoft/Hotmail and frankly this place.
Deleted my hardly used Facebook in 2018 after a breakup to make things easier. Figured anyone who would want to keep contact would call or email me. I also made an effort before deleting to save friends' info in CardDAV. This worked out fine because I naturally like checking on people here and there to catch up or get lunch.
Don't miss it at all, but occasionally use my fiancee's Facebook to buy things on Marketplace.
EDIT: While we're talking about Meta products, I've never used Instagram BUT I do regularly use WhatsApp as much as I'd prefer Signal/Matrix to be able to message my grandma and parents.
Likewise here in Victoria, BC. I don’t look at anything other than what I’m trying to sell. Unfortunately, other means of selling locally are virtually dead.
Facebook marketplace is about on-par popularity-wise with kijiji these days. Not too long ago I had to sell a used car and put it on both and received about the same number of genuine interest responses from both sites. Kijiji is a better site in my opinion; better layout, ux, search options and filtering etc. But facebook has more people already on it so network effects.
I use it and I like it. My feed is 40% animal posts, 40% what’s up with my family, friends and their families; and 20% physics and math jokes. Hard to see the downsides.
I do have heavy ad blocking so fb can’t follow me around the web. The ads I do see seem poorly targeted to me, so it seems like things are working.
I am continually mystified that Ozempic reduces consumption of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs; reduces or eliminates certain OCD like nail biting, reduces of course eating, yet doesn’t reduce doomscrolling.
I’m also surprised nobody else seems to be asking this.
Still do but mainly for participating in groups that are for specific interests. Easiest way to connect with, learn from and teach others interested in similar things.
Never had one, no Instagram or WhatsApp either. The latter sometimes makes it harder to find out what's going on along my former study mates as they (read: the whole year's worth of members of the student society I was part of) all and until relatively recently only use that to communicate but so be it. No Zuck, no Google, no Microsoft, no Apple, none of that all. I use a combination of mail, xmpp (running my own server and getting others to do so as well) and Telegram which keeps me in contact with those I care about the most.
I have one now. I started helping out at a local sports club and facebook is one of the channels of communication. There's an email list too, but that isn't discoverable.
I feel like this is what FB is good at and should be - there's posts about the group and about the sport. And that's it. I don't post anything on my personal feed and I don't read anything from anyone's personal posts.
Never used Facebook (technically I set up an account a very long time ago and then eventually deleted it).
I'm generally not into social media at all. Don't use X, don't use Instagram, TikTok, whatever.
I use messaging apps to stay in contact with friends and family. I don't need to publish my life to the world, and I don't need lots of pseudo friends who aren't really friends.
I have one, but I really only engage in groups. Groups on Facebook are so underrated. They made a big push for them a few years ago, but totally missed the mark. After that push, most of the good content died, but I still stick around for the people I met.
I closed mine a few years ago. I still have a Messenger-only one, which Facebook offered for a short amount of time. It’s working but lacks even basic profile settings for some reason. I cannot even change the profile photo.
I use WhatsApp and IG daily, but stopped using Facebook in about 2018. Didn't close or delete the account, just removed the app from my phone and stopped using it on the web.
I didn't like that Facebook kept showing me content I wanted to argue about, even if that was 'just' the opinion of friends. I'm very glad I cut it before the pandemic.
I stopped Twitter for the same reason. That said, I'll still use it occasionally, but mostly just scrolling individuals feeds. It feels incredibly toxic there as well, particularly with the suggestions and everyone being verified. Feels more like "trust no one", which is a shame.
Still have mine. Everyone I know uses it to the point where I don't know most of my friends phone numbers or emails, and some people don't even check their email every day.
Outside of work, where we use WhatsApp and texting, I talk to very few people who don't have it.
But, most of my friends are not in the tech industry, I mostly work on small teams for companies that incidentally need tech, and don't meet many devs, and non tech people seem to like it more than programmers.
Wasn't logged into mine for couple of years, finally deleted it completely 2 months ago. Was still using messenger, lost couple of contacts there. No biggie
Around 2017 facebook decided I have to send them a scan of my ID (I registered in early days when most people used nicknames). This was last time I used it :)
Cancelled in 2021 having not used it at all for 10 years. I put in a message to say I was leaving and folks said they would miss me. I think that says a lot.
Because I help a senior with his online existence I made one I use exclusively to test things and explain to him later in his own account. Otherwise, nope.
I had one until a few days ago when I got a prompt that I had to pay to keep my privacy settings. I hardly used it for anything except messenger so I sent everyone my phone number and deleted it, along with an Insta account I occasionally posted stories to.
Still on WhatsApp though, so if not Facebook then still Meta. I'm in the Netherlands where WhatsApp has become the basis for messaging anyone basically.
Of course. All my friends and people I have ever met are on Facebook. Not even the privacy argument is strong enough for me to just delete my account out of spite. Do I use the platform? Not really. I use it to stay in touch with people I know, but not to post stuff on my wall or mindlessly browse through the algorithm.
Haven't used mine in ages but during Corona it was super useful. My local town has Facebook groups with over 10% of the population of the town. It's super useful to get local knowledge and details on new events etc.
So, yes. Still popular here.
I wouldn't know where else these communities would form at the moment.
I unfollowed everyone and everything using that chrome tool someone posted on HN a while back. News feed is now a ghost town except for generated content that I have no interest in. It makes it easy to not get distracted when I open the app to check Marketplace.
I still use Facebook Groups because they are great for Classic Gaming discussions. Oddly, the fact that Facebook is now largely used by older people made it a nice place for Nostalgia-related interests.
I don't have a Facebook account with my name attached to it, but I do keep an account with a fake name to follow community pages and updates to my gym etc.
I have one but only use WhatsApp and Messenger. When I opened Facebook.com recently it asked me if I want to subscribe to go ad free for 10 bucks a month.
Sunday morning is also a lull time for most. That said, there is more traction than I expected. That that said, bibinmohan made that followup comment about 18 minutes after posting the AskHN.
HN opinions are not representative of the general population.
There's definitely an echo chamber here, and as long as we recognize that and not think opinions here are normative, we can appropriately discount very emotional and contrarian opinions.
I use FB and so do many of my friends. Why? We're all older and people like posting pictures of their kids. It's also a lot less intrusive.
I'm sure we've all been at dinner parties where someone wants to show you your photo album and you have to pretend to be interested but it's a chore. FB lets them show their photo album in a way that is passive, and if something catches your eye, and you can comment but otherwise you don't have to engage. Win-win.
I unfollow or block friends that post politics or other stupid stuff. It keeps my feed fairly clean, and I get to see what my friends are doing. When I meet up with them, I have context for starting a conversation that is less surface level.
I think better answer would be it is no longer cool to have Facebook account specifically for people on HN. So even if we have account we would not come and accept.
Still do and I used to enjoy it until just a couple years ago when the suggested content completely overran my feed. I don't know how they've managed to make the alorithmic recommendations so bad - they range from boring and cringeworthy to ouright offensive (like pages praising Putin for his anti-imperial efforts for instance). I've tried to be a good user and engage with that stuff just the way Facebook recommends - marking what I dislike etc., but no luck - it's still mindbogglingly awful. I've stopped posting and reading the feed and now only ever use it to comment on a single page.
I have one but have not used it for very long time. While reading comments here I logged in and as others have been asked between tracking and subscription. So I will just delete it.
I don't have many... any friends from my early life, specifically from school. In fact I haven't kept any friends from before 5 years ago. Maybe I'm a dick? Maybe people naturally drift apart? I dunno. It makes me wonder. I've never been great at maintaining relationships over time or distance.