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.

  • MuffinHeeler@aussie.zone
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 months ago

    I use it because it has what I want.

    It has my local community group who discuss ideas and plan events. It has my mother’s group who only use Facebook messenger to communicate. It has my extended family who live overseas. If I left and asked them to send me pictures I would only get a few a year, this way I see pics every week.

    Do I hate the idea of it? Yes. Would I like to delete my account? Yes. Is the trade-off worth it for me to stay? Also yes.

  • irotsoma@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    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.

      • bruhSoulz@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        8 months ago

        Ahhh yes i remember now, the educational version or whatever? Been thinking abt checking it out for a while xD

  • pseudo@jlai.lu
    link
    fedilink
    Français
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 months ago

    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.

  • Bluefalcon@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 months ago

    Many overseas countries have Facebook preloaded on a lot of their phones. They also have data caps but Facebook is exempt from counting towards their data cap.

  • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 months ago

    It’ll probably stay insanely popular until the boomers die off. They’re not gonna switch to another one, but I don’t any of the younger gens gravitating toward it.

      • laverabe@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        8 months ago

        You joke but Lemmy is at the same point as Reddit was when they first started. Reddit just IPO’d at 34/share, up to 68 now. 12 billion USD valuation.

        I think Lemmy has a lot more potential than most people think it does… The idea is laughable, but so was $10 billion reddit in 2008 . Not in monetary terms, but in how information could be communicated throughout the world in 20 years.

  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 months ago

    It was years ago, but I used to work for a US based ISP. I’m a Canadian and the place I was working at had a contract to suppliment their support team.

    My team did enhanced support, beyond what the ISP would deal with. Basically it was remote geek squad type service for people’s computers.

    While I was working there in the mid 2000’s, there was a Facebook outage. All of Facebook’s services were unavailable. We broke records with how many calls we got that day. Almost all of them went something like this:

    Client: “the internet doesn’t work!” Tech: can you open a browser and… Client (interrupting) “it says page cannot be displayed!!11” Tech: I understand, can you tell me what it says at the top in the address bar? (Insert some explaining of how to find the address bar) Client: “facebook.com” Tech: okay, I want you to click on that and erase it, then type in google.com, hit enter, and tell me what the page says. Client: " it says Google, with a (some bad description of a text entry field)" Tech: this is Google’s website, it loaded from the internet, so your internet works. Facebook is down. Client (without missing a beat): “can you fix Facebook?” Tech: No. (Call ends)

    I’m certain my employer made bank that day, since clients had to pay an extra monthly charge on their internet bill to speak with us, and their support made a point of dumping calls to us whenever they could. If someone wanted to speak to another tech, sure, but you have to buy this service…

    I did not like that job. I actually got a call from an inexperienced Linux user who couldn’t get DNS resolution. I tried to coach him over the phone to determine if his internet was working at all. Before I could actually give him an answer, my manager dropped by (he was monitoring the call) and told me to tell him we could not help him, that the support center only supported Windows based systems, since, out of everyone there, I was the only one with enough Linux knowledge to know what to do, and he didn’t want to give anyone the impression that we could help with Linux.

    All the guy needed to do was change his resolv.conf to valid DNS servers and he would have been fine. It doesn’t work that way anymore, but it did at the time, and I knew it. I did not feel good getting off of that call. It’s like, I have the answer, this guy needs the answer, he paid to speak to me, and I really want to help him out, but I would probably lose my job if I do. I was very blunt with him. I said that I could help him, but I wasn’t allowed to. He understood, but I still felt like shit. I was too timid to realize my worth, which was part of the reason I was there to begin with… Now, I would have just made it clear that he’ll only get help on this once, and when we hung up, never expect to reach me again, and that nobody here knows what I do about this stuff, then helped him anyways. Fuck that manager. I’m so glad I don’t work there anymore.

  • Evotech@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 months ago

    This says nothing about how much they use reach platform though. Just logging into Facebook and checking what’s up over a month will count here.

    People don’t really delete their facebook account. Just keep it around

    • XM34@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      8 months ago

      Even worse, I think I’m part of that number because I’ve unsuccessfully tried to delete my Facebook Account three times now. But every time I check in to make sure it’s finally been deleted, it’s still there. I’m at the brink of suing them for a GDPR violation at this point. F*ck Facebook!

    • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      8 months ago

      This is my wife.

      She visits once a month for about fifteen minutes because her aunt and uncles only use Facebook to keep everyone in the loop about things like their cancer treatment or something else.

      She’s in this image.

  • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 months ago

    It fulfils roles as

    • first place - as some sort of virtual home
    • second place - as you can conduct businesses in it
    • third place - as people congregate in it

    It’s large enough that any amount of enshittification is compensated by network effect.

  • NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 months ago

    Facebook was extremely aggressive in getting their software preloaded on all hardware sold in developing areas over the last 20 years. So countries like India (with one and a half billion people by itself) have a large segment of users that think Facebook is the internet. It’s Zucks ultimate walled garden.

    3 billion of those people likely access Facebook for everything that we think of as online. Commerce, social networking, music, videos, it’s all on Facebook.

      • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        8 months ago

        Exactly. We’ve come full-circle. The likes of AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve were practically eradicated by the open internet, and it’s taken 30+ years to get even close to clawing it back into some kind of walled garden. But it looks like they’re making progress.

    • niktemadur@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      8 months ago

      I remember that, about a decade ago, Facebook including free access to their services on cell phones in India; there was concern and pushback about creating this walled garden monopoly, obviously to no avail.
      My guess is that is why many memes from India from back then involved screenshots of the older generations using Whatsapp as a sort of social network, the subcontinent’s own version of “ok boomer” humor.

    • spiderman@ani.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      8 months ago

      So countries like India (with one and a half billion people by itself)

      Also old people use Facebook a lot here. It was their first social media and they have settled on that. There are some set of people who are switching to Instagram day by day but the rate isn’t any threat to Facebook.