Ask HN: How many of you still have a Facebook account? Just wondering, if HN community still have a Facebook account? |
Ask HN: How many of you still have a Facebook account? Just wondering, if HN community still have a Facebook account? |
Edit: done.
So, yes. Still popular here. I wouldn't know where else these communities would form at the moment.
I have an account that I have not logged into for 10 years - I do not think that really counts.
It doesn't help that you asked the question in the middle of the weekend night.
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.
Second to trad email/pass
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For me the downside was addiction.
I spent 30-120 minutes scrolling the feed every day.
I’m also surprised nobody else seems to be asking this.
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.
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 was horrified at the level of information you could scrape using the API and vowed to never have a personal account.
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.
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.
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.
whois their domain and ip range.