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

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.

Comments

Nuke it from orbit.

[Virtucon]

It's the only way to be sure.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter.. All of it.

No, they're not

[DogDude]

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.

Re:No, they're not

[JaredOfEuropa]

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.

Re:No, they're not

[L_R_Shaw]

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.

Re:No, they're not

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:No, they're not

[Oswald McWeany]

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.

Re:No, they're not

[apoc.famine]

Probably like a thousand times more valuable, eh?

"Users"

[SuperKendall]

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?

Re:"Users"

[OffTheLip]

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',

Re:"Users"

[timholman]

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.

Leaving Versus Inactive

[L_R_Shaw]

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.

The 'Gram

[PopeRatzo]

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.

bad press is not the problem

[jsepeta]

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

Re:Obligatory Hipster Comment

[CaptainDork]

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.