I read “it’s dying” by people on Discord and Reddit all the time, but the numbers prove otherwise. It’s been going up this entire time and sitting over 3 billion MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS!
I feel like the bubble around people on other platforms saying “who uses Facebook anymore lol” is kind of wild given the numbers. Keep in mind these are active users not just abandoned accounts.
It is a general purpose platform: it has personal posting, business listings, messaging, groups, communities, photos, news, clip format video, live streaming, p2p sales, business sales, event coordination and advertising, payment processing and cash sharing, games…
Most other platforms do one or several of those things much better than FB, but FB is good enough for lots of people. It’s a one stop shop, and it does a fair job at cross pollinating the various aspects of its platform. It has enough stuff to keep to keep users engaged even if their interest wanes from one or more particular platform components.
I literally have to use Facebook to know what’s happening in my small community. It’s the most convenient place to learn about what’s going on and I hate it
I use Facebook. I am not in touch with very many of my relatives. The few that I am in touch with are all on Facebook. I also live a significant distance from pretty much all of my friends and that’s a way I can keep in touch with them. On top of that, my brother, who is on the spectrum, prefers to communicate with me that way. In fact, I would probably never hear from him until my mother died if I didn’t because he’s never called or emailed me.
But… here is how I use Facebook: I only follow select friends and relatives who aren’t too annoying- which means following about 10-15 people and unfollowing all the others, I tell it every time I see an ad I never want to see again, and I am only in groups that are either small and personally significant to me (like the group for my relatives) and a couple of others that I mostly just look at and don’t participate in.
No arguments, no political unpleasantness, nothing that makes me angry or upset unless something bad is happening to someone I care about, and honestly it’s not unpleasant. I think I’ve maybe blocked three people the entire time I’ve been on Facebook and all three did something personal to me offline that made me decide to cut off contact with them.
Sure, they’re hoovering up my data, but so is everyone else.
In most of developing countries (Africa and SEA) is free and dosnt require an active internet connection, so literally everyone with an old phone has access to it
I literally only still have my FB account until I can sell all of the stuff I have listed on marketplace. Every other aspect of my FB account was deleted years ago. At first I kept the account because of the broken promise of never requiring a FB account for the Quest. They finally changed that(sort of, they require a meta account instead), but I still kept the account for marketplace. It’s the only place I’ve been able to successfully sell anything for at least 3 or 4 years. Once I sell off the last few items I have listed there(really need the money at the moment), I can finally delete my account fully.
Hobby groups. Marketplace. Business page for companies. Everything except its original purpose of keeping up with the lives of your real life friends.
It’s dying in the sense that no Millenials really uses Facebook the same way we did as when it first started, and most Gen Z would treat having a Facebook page to be a completely alien concept.
I’m one of those people. I’m only using messenger, but since I message people from desktop (and I don’t want to install their client, they know enough about me already), I still have to log in to the base Facebook page. After a while I started using the Feed Eradicator plugin (or what), but unfortunately I still have to log in if I want to be able to message my acquaintances.
Why am I still using Facebook messenger? Back when most of the users were still unaware about their practices, all of my friends and family joined and now it is their main way of communication. There’s no way everyone important to me would just start using a second social media platform for me. Also, I can’t make calls from desktop WhatsApp (which could still have a chance to become a substitute for most of the people I know). Anything else is just too niche for most of them to install for the sake of one person. Or three.
I wish there was a good practical solution because I’d prefer not being part of this ugly machine, but until then, I’ll have to stick with it.
I know. I mentioned WhatsApp because at least it’s big enough for many of them to know or be comfortable with. Even I don’t know the rest of the options too much, but apart from my brothers, not many of my relatives and friends know about Signal or Telegram (or whatever could be any better - note that it isn’t even an English speaking or big country). And with that, we’re back to square one with the niche problem.
EDIT: And I also don’t know if I can make calls and share media both from PC and phone. It’s a plus if I don’t need a separate client on PC. Even more of a plus if I can just use a website without an app on phone.
It looks to me like “social media” breaks down into a few categories: Video/image sharing (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Douyin, Kuaishou); Messaging (WhatsApp, WeChat, FB Messenger, Telegram, Snapchat, QQ); Microblogging (Twitter, Weibo); and tangled fog of pulsating yearning (Pinterest).
Then, there’s Facebook, which defies easy categorization. It does all of the above, plus more. It’s how people maintain loose connections with other people that they may not talk to every day. What is its competition? Basically, I think it remains popular because it’s the default, nothing else can replace it.
Because people have those family members who insist on doing everything on Facebook Messenger, and that Signal or even fucking Whatsapp is too fiddly for them. So everyone ends up with the lowest common piece of shit network, and it counts them as active users whether they actually use it or not and just happens to be checking for messages in the background.
That is exactly it for me. I use Messenger to talk to friends and family in Thailand and they refuse to use Signal or Telegram. A few do use Line but 90% will only use FB and Messenger.
Yea but like… why are they allowed to refuse services and you aren’t? Like, I refuse to use whstsapp out of principle (I live in a country where it’s the de facto standard but fuck facebookmeta). Some people I communicate with refuse to use telegram or signal out of convenience. Why should I be the one to budge and give up my principles? I‘m even providing options…
Yea, I’m not. And I’m not telling them they have to download anything. I just tell them I’m not on WhatsApp. And either they use one of the other services, including SMS and e-Mail, or it wasn’t that important. Most people manage.
IMHO popular culture is not popular because it’s the best, it’s because of some combination of corruption and being the “lowest common denominator”. Popular culture is cultural detritus and Facebook is a prime representation of it.
Network effect. That’s why we need to keep the fediverse alive: so futur generation aren’t forced to signed into Facebook, Discord or whatever would be (or would have been) trendy.
Because non technically savvy people get comfortable and it’s always difficult to get them to move, so everyone who wants to change, can’t because they end up alone and social media only works if you have people to be social with. Younger people will have the same problem with TikTok and the like when their friends age and they want to move. Only new generations start with a clean slate and can get all their friends to start out at the new sites.
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