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US Users Are Leaving Facebook by the Millions, Research Says (marketplace.org)

Posted by msmash on from the good-riddance dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: All the bad press about Facebook might be catching up to the company. New numbers from Edison Research show an an estimated 15 million fewer users in the United States compared to 2017. The biggest drop is in the very desirable 12- to 34-year-old group. Marketplace Tech got a first look at Edison's latest social media research. It revealed almost 80 percent of people in the U.S. are posting, tweeting or snapping, but fewer are going to Facebook.

27 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Nuke it from orbit. by Virtucon · · Score: 4, Funny

    It's the only way to be sure.

    Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter.. All of it.

    --
    Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
  2. Obligatory Hipster Comment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    People still use Facebook?

    1. Re:Obligatory Hipster Comment by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 3, Funny

      People still use Facebook?

      I didn't use Facebook before it was cool to not use Facebook.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    2. Re:Obligatory Hipster Comment by OneHundredAndTen · · Score: 2

      People still use Facebook?

      Facebook can be very useful - as a garbage container. I use it for writing comments in web sites that require you to register - Facebook makes that straightforward and painless. I am guessing that, by virtue of this fact, those sites send a lot of trash to my Facebook account. I don't really know, as I don't log in to that account. An account that, on the other hand, I created with fake data throughout. By now it probably is nothing but an ever-growing cesspool. Facebook can deal with it.

    3. Re:Obligatory Hipster Comment by CaptainDork · · Score: 4, Funny

      I deleted Facebook Feb 7 this year. I'm 73 and a retired IT guy.

      I was never cool.

      Until now. I got 17 cool points.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    4. Re:Obligatory Hipster Comment by runningduck · · Score: 2

      I hope that you realize that Facebook has very likely been able to tie that fake account back to you. They have found ways to synthesize accounts tied to people's real identities for people who have never had Facebook accounts. Connecting you to your fake account would be trivial by comparison.

      --
      -rd
  3. No, they're not by DogDude · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They're just moving from one of Facebook's data collecting websites (facebook.com) to a different one (instagram.com). They're still giving Facebook roughly the same amount of data.

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
    1. Re:No, they're not by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And once people actually jump ship to a completely different and new platform, FB will just buy that. With promises to not harvest data or share it with other divisions, and the founders quitting in disgust (and a couple billion richer) when FB breaks that promise.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    2. Re:No, they're not by L_R_Shaw · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem for Facebook is the amount of personal data that is uploaded to Instagram is vastly less valuable.

      Instagram accounts are for the most part just a username, some banal tag line, and a bunch of emojis along with the stream of lifestyle photos. Valuable, yes, but nowhere near the comprehensive personal data that Facebook users were uploading to their accounts.

    3. Re:No, they're not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They're not even leaving because of the "bad press," which is what TFA is implying. They really don't give a shit about that. The reason they're leaving Facebook is because they've moved on to the new "shiny thing". They don't really care about bad press, or that they're moving from one sector of data-mining to another. They only care what everyone else is connecting with and keeping up with their peers.

    4. Re:No, they're not by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem for Facebook is the amount of personal data that is uploaded to Instagram is vastly less valuable.

      Instagram accounts are for the most part just a username, some banal tag line, and a bunch of emojis along with the stream of lifestyle photos. Valuable, yes, but nowhere near the comprehensive personal data that Facebook users were uploading to their accounts.

      With improvements to photo recognizing algorithms, those photos could become more valuable than text.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    5. Re:No, they're not by DogDude · · Score: 2

      I don't know about that. They still get all of their location and contact data from their phones (and maybe audio/video?). They can still track them all around the web, since they probably all use their Face/gram logins. I don't know if the data they explicitly put into Facebook ("I like bananas. My favorite color is blue") is more valuable than all of the tracking data they get. And of course, now they can mine those photos, as well, so my bet is that Facebook doesn't care which portal people use, as long as they're using one of them.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    6. Re:No, they're not by apoc.famine · · Score: 4, Funny

      Probably like a thousand times more valuable, eh?

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
  4. "Users" by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've seen very few people actually leaving Facebook...

    I wonder how many of those leaving are real users, vs. some kind of bot accounts that are not getting the traction they used to?

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:"Users" by OffTheLip · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Can the users even truly "leave" Facebook? It's like the Hotel California, 'You can check out any time you like But you can never leave',

    2. Re:"Users" by timholman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I've seen very few people actually leaving Facebook...

      There's no need to shut down your account if you simply stop using the platform, which is very much what I am observing. I have unfollowed so many people (because they couldn't resist screeching about politics or religion, or sharing clickbait memes), and blocked so many clickbait sites (e.g. "only 0.1% can answer this correctly", "what dog do you look like", etc.) that my feed is a pale shadow of what it used to be. My real friends (as opposed to FB friends) report the same thing. I simply don't feel a need to check Facebook much anymore. There's nothing interesting going on. If I need to reach out to friends quickly, I message them instead.

      I do not doubt that Facebook engagement metrics are dropping in the U.S. Forget the bot accounts. It's the real users leaving who worry them.

  5. Leaving Versus Inactive by L_R_Shaw · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have 30-40 friends that I check their Facebook accounts occasionally over the past few years but find myself not even bothering anymore.

    All but a few have bother posting anything for months and in some cases years. Those few that are still active for the most part do so just with profile picture changes or other minor updates.

    I don't know anyone who has bothered to 'leave' as in deleting their accounts. It feels like a ghost town with food still left on the table from months to years ago when the people just left and never came back.

    Facebook's stock is going to be one of the greatest shorts in the history of the stock market. It's only a matter of when.

    1. Re:Leaving Versus Inactive by blahbooboo · · Score: 2

      I have 30-40 friends that I check their Facebook accounts occasionally over the past few years but find myself not even bothering anymore.

      All but a few have bother posting anything for months and in some cases years. Those few that are still active for the most part do so just with profile picture changes or other minor updates.

      I don't know anyone who has bothered to 'leave' as in deleting their accounts. It feels like a ghost town with food still left on the table from months to years ago when the people just left and never came back.

      Facebook's stock is going to be one of the greatest shorts in the history of the stock market. It's only a matter of when.

      Exactly what I've seen as well. People just aren't sharing and when they do it's hidden in endless sponsored posts.

      What was great about facebook a decade ago was it really was just your friends sharing stories. Now it's a newsfeed full of crap you dont care about. Additionally, people just added everyone on the planet as "friends", when they really were just people you met once or twice. Once you get to hundreds and thousands of "friends" your feed is going to be full of crap you dont care about once again...

    2. Re:Leaving Versus Inactive by weeboo0104 · · Score: 2

      Exactly what I've seen as well. People just aren't sharing and when they do it's hidden in endless sponsored posts.

      What was great about facebook a decade ago was it really was just your friends sharing stories. Now it's a newsfeed full of crap you dont care about.

      THIS! I've reported several "Sponsored" posts that were obviously clickbait or outright scams. Not a single one was found to be in violation of Facebook guidelines. It the sponsors check clears, all is good with Facebook.

      The final nail in the coffin for my FB account was when I was using the FB app on my phone this past December. I was commuting on the train to downtown Chicago and was watching about 2 hours a day of YouTube videos. Not surprisingly, I got a data usage warning about the 3rd week of December that I was within a gigabyte of my data limit. What was surprising was when I checked my mobile data usage, Facebook used more bandwidth than all my other apps COMBINED (including YouTube). I wasn't checking Facebook during the day at work and the hour trip each way downtown was spent on YouTube. So if I wasn't actively using the app, what was chewing up my bandwidth?

      --
      It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
  6. Great age group, guys by BringsApples · · Score: 2

    Seriously, 12-35 isn't an age group, it's the entirety of the best days of your life (not that life past 35 isn't good, it's great, but generally it's not as good as the previous years). If you're still using social media past 35, I feel sorry for you. If you need a real friend, I'm here.

    --
    Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
    1. Re:Great age group, guys by BringsApples · · Score: 3, Funny

      ok buddy, what should we do first?

      --
      Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
    2. Re:Great age group, guys by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 2

      ok buddy, what should we do first?

      Why did I hear that in Liam Neeson's Good Cop voice from The LEGO Movie...? And are you going to try to strap him in front of a giant laser...

    3. Re:Great age group, guys by swillden · · Score: 2

      not that life past 35 isn't good, it's great, but generally it's not as good as the previous years

      I think 35 is about when the best part starts.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  7. Alternate theory by chispito · · Score: 2
    Maybe it isn't that

    All the bad press about Facebook might be catching up to the company.

    Maybe it is that the attention spans of those 12-34 year olds have slidden even farther. Or maybe it's just that the platform was due to start declining anyway as people, finally, start to understand how advertising-based business models and OSINT work.

    --
    The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
  8. The 'Gram by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Did you know that the number of US users "leaving Facebook" is almost exactly the same as the number of US users joining Instagram? ...which is owned by Facebook.

    Sorry, Americans, you played yourself.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  9. Businesses will be the last holdouts by reboot246 · · Score: 2

    Businesses, at least those that advertise, absolutely love facebook. Seems that most ads end with, "Like us on facebook!" Which, of course, gives me just one more reason to dislike them and not do business with them.*

    If we can somehow get businesses to stop their facebook habit, then we could finally see the end of it.

    *If they're that unconcerned about their own privacy, then how could I ever trust them with mine?

  10. bad press is not the problem by jsepeta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Mark Zuckerberg's lack of ethics is the problem. We're the product and we don't want to be bought, sold, or processed.

    --
    Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.