I'm a parent in my 50's. "Peak Facebook" is years in the past for me. But it was great for a while. My spouse, friends, friends' spouses, and I were all sharing stories and pictures of our kids, travels, and experiences, such as dining experiences or hikes. There was so much joyous sharing. And it wasn't done for clicks, views, or monetization. It was just friends, sharing their experiences, encouraging each other, etc. It all just went away, starting with the husbands.
> It all just went away, starting with the husbands.
I honestly can't tell whether I'm supposed to interpret this as "The dads lost interest in Facebook before anyone else", or "Everybody got divorced."
Personally I stopped using Facebook because even in the before-AI days it started becoming a glamour photo book of everyone you ever knew (and probably lots of people you only kind of sorta know), and while people certainly deserve to do and see great things, seeing it all shoved in your face every day becomes exhausting in a keeping-up-with-the-joneses kind of way.
I totally get that not everybody is like that, but I am, and so I stopped going to Facebook.
These days I'm in private Whatsapp groups for my direct family and so I learn about what they do, and not the random stuff that my neighbors and 20-years-past classmates did.
My wife is still active on Facebook and I actually do still visit occasionally to boost her posts but that's about it.
I'm a dad that stopped using facebook when I got divorced, so there's a bit of anecdata for you
I would say their priorities changed. They spent less time with social media and just did other things.
Or possibly 'men find the algorithmic/consumption based platforms relatively more appealing' and so were quicker to leave
> There was so much joyous sharing.
I'm sorry, but describing using a social advertising network as "joyous sharing" is blowing my mind. This is, like, what marketing people think normal people talk like.
> There was so much joyous sharing. And it wasn't done for clicks, views, or monetization.
All along, Meta was vacuuming that data to build profiles of you, your family and friends, to be sold to third parties. You have been duped.
What do your social groups use nowadays?
Similar experience for me and it’s just been replaced with… nothing. My gaming buddies talk on Discord but I just don’t really hear from my aunts and uncles and cousins anymore. It’d be a hassle to even figure out how to contact them. Only 13 people showed up to my high school reunion last year from a graduating class of ~400.
It’s returned to nothing. Losing touch with people you didn’t contact regularly was the norm until the mid 2000s.
For someone who grew up in the ‘golden years’ of social media, it’s kinda weird to see.
The thing is, before social media, we did have a culture of periodically reaching out and calling people. Those muscles completely atrophied though, so when we fall off social media, the result is even less connection than we had before Facebook et al existed.
It just keeps tumblring down, tumblring down, tumblring down. I just keep logging me out, logging me out, logging me out.
I joke, but the internet I knew as a youth going the way of the dinosaurs really has had a deep impact on me. End of an epoch.
"…I just don’t really hear from my aunts and uncles and cousins anymore…"
Yeah, actually why I left Facebook a decade ago: finding out what horrible people my relatives were.
This applies to “friends” also. And discovering how many of them are actual idiots. Oh, these people can’t put 5 words together to form a coherent sentence and their spelling grammar suck to top it off? I don’t miss it at all.
Same. Idk how college communication work now; we had class groups and planned everything over FB events/pages back then.
For friends, I started a few text group chats to stay in touch. It's really annoying because someone has Android and RCS is broken on someone's end. Some also use FB Messenger, but nobody 2 years younger or older than me is on that.
When I finished my undergrad a few years ago, we were relying heavily on GroupMe chats, with the occasional Slack and one or two LinkedIn groups mixed in. Discord was just starting to exit the gaming sphere and hit the mainstream though. I'm willing to bet it's absolutely dominating the space now.
How long ago was that if you don't mind me asking? I was in college 2014-2016, and GroupMe existed but was on its way out. I asked our college interns around 2022 what people use for class groups, and I think they weren't sure what I even meant, but the answer wasn't Discord.
Folks around me use mostly Instagram which ironically is also from Meta.
Zuck is always one step ahead.
I have an IG account that I barely use, whereas my Facebook account I do (regrettably) still spend time on, and have put in the effort to silence/hide the worst of the baity type content that it wants to throw at me.
But interestingly my experience of IG when I do occasionally go on it is similar to what TFA describes: lots of engagement-bait / thirst trap content that I never asked to see but also haven't been around to hide, so I guess the baseline algorithm is just matching me to what others in my demographic bracket have found, um, engaging.
And as a sibling comment says, also WhatsApp. The guy is always two steps ahead.
There's two separate things at play here.
One is "I don't want to use Meta products as a matter of principle", and WhatsApp's a no-go if that's your posture.
The other is "I don't want to drown in horrible, algorithm-curated junk content". Instagram is just as bad as Facebook there, but WhatsApp is definitely not the same.
100%. Whatsapp is still zuck, but it doesn't have a "feed" and that's the most important thing about it for me.
Now at the bottom it has a few tabs: Chats, Updates, ...
Updates are broadcasted, but they disappear after 24 hours.
Step 1) Keep updates for a week, later forever
Step 2) Mix Chats and Updates
Step 3) Add a few relevant patrocinated posts
Step 4) Change the css from green to blue
Step 5) Profit
I'm waiting for Whatsapp to go down the toilet too. I notice it is already advising me to beware of misinformation on forwarded posts and only to use official and trusted sources (the government and their mates basically).
You only ever need a Meta account. The next content format will be brought to your door by Zuck even before you know you need it.
In my part of Europe it’s all in private WhatsApp groups (one for inner family, one for friends, etc)
Unfortunately, those are also being surveilled by Meta, so the exodus from Facebook did not help. Consider Signal or a private XMPP server.
I convinced my family to try Signal, and after a month of not being able to connect despite knowing each other's numbers - silent errors - I had to apologize and join them on WhatsApp.
They all use iMessage primarily, but that's a whole other can-of-worms conversation. (Screw Apple.)
I am in my mid forties and most people around me seem to use instagram to share memes and stuff + keep contact with rarely seen friends and whatsapp groups for closest more tightknit circles.
I am still on whatsapp but I am planning on nuking my account in september after a large event involving people from various continents. I have no idea if I will be able to stay directly in touch with those people after that, probably not.
I am still unsure if I'll send a message to most of my contacts or if I'll just tell my nuclear family, in laws and closest friends.
Can't speak for OP but my spouse has set up a private GroupMe for posting events for a group, but otherwise everyone shares pictures using text messages. We don't post any pictures of our kid where strangers can easily get access to them and we've read the privacy policy of every service we've ever used.
I was considering self-hosting something for a while but she found it more sensible to do it this way.
Every once in a while she logs into Facebook to post something on Marketplace and immediately gets completely sidetracked by their algorithm and design. Then she gets frustrated and we just put the thing she wanted to sell on the corner instead.
Not parent, but, depressingly:
This list is presented in order of preference, and in reverse order of prevalence.Similar experience for me and at this point it's just a collection of private chats. Different groups use different platforms (mine are on iMessage, Whatsapp, Signal, Slack, and.. actually Messenger although apparently Facebook is taking that away soon). It kind of feels like real-name social media is a failed experiment at this point.
Nothing, the sharing has stopped.
Close friends and family: group chats (whatsapp, signal)
Distant friends and extended family: email threads
Almost all chat threads in messages, signal, or occasionally in slack or discord or something else.
Personally, it’s all through WhatsApp
Text messages, email. Same as ever.
I'm probably a bit younger than the gp, but I can confidently say that all socializing has moved almost entirely off "social media" and onto group chats. Most people have a dozen or more combinations of friends and families on multiple apps, all trying to replace what was once easy.
I'd love if somebody would make a site based on the ~2010 expectations (not reality) of facebook. Ban any commercial activity and make people pay for it. I just want to talk to my friends and say "happy birthday" to somebody I haven't seen in years, not look at ads and slop posts.
Several people have tried over the years. We all failed, because it doesn’t work.
The economics don’t work because no one is willing to pay.
The network effect doesn’t exist, because real people don’t post enough to get the flywheel started.
All the dark patterns exist because that is what users reward.
Sucks but it’s true.
Group chats on various apps
iMessages (which supports groups well with RCS), Signal, Telegram, GroupMe. Slack, IRC, and Zulip for online groups.
(early 40s)
What do you mean it all just went away starting with the husbands? Like people drifted away from the platform? Husbands started drifting away from it first?
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I think it's more like the husbands left the platform first.
Yes
Probably mean that their husbands were the first to quit Facebook.
Yes
The implication is that they got divorced.
My wife still uses Facebook sometimes but I have it blocked on my phone and laptop, I’d have to get on my desktop to even check it.
Not always
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Is there a problem with my name being green?
New user. To see replies THAT fast on a new user reply which generally isn't pushed to the top of the feed, I find that very interesting.
Idk. It was at the top for me, so I saw it.
>Is there a problem with my name being green?
Not as such, no. However, new accounts (which show up as green) tend to get less attention and more downvotes. When I first joined that annoyed and confused me, but after a while (when my name was no longer green), folks seemed more accepting of my comments and submissions.
As the eminent philosopher opined, "It Ain't Easy Being Green"[0]. Although I believe their ruminations predate HN.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRZ-IxZ46ng