I love me a good Facebook bashing article as much as the next guy, but these numbers have no context to implicate the CA scandal as causative. Is this related to seasonality? Is it outside the bounds of normal fluctuation month-over-month? Is it US-only or international traffic as well?
Through very complex math I was able to deduce that April is over 3% shorter than March and February is almost 10% shorter than either January or March. It probably isn't a good idea to base anything off of total visits during time frames that aren't uniform.
You can also zoom out and see that Facebook's web traffic has been steadily declining and the April drop has nothing to do with the CA scandal. https://i.imgur.com/e9Mgjby.png
Are there any numbers for that or is it just a assumption? Do we know API access doesn't count as web access in the numbers above? Facebook is begging people to download the app for a few years now, I am not to sure if we can still expect people adapting to this degree.
It's weird to think that a couple of years ago I too was using the facebook app. Since then, I've deleted the app, then deleted my account, switched from stock android to LineageOS.
Now I can't fathom how I accepted to carry that crap around with me, and sometimes forget that just because I don't use it, social media hasn't vanished from the world. I feel as if I was living in a post-social media era, because in my subconscious, social media is dead.
Good, now all we need is a few hundred thousand more personal anecdotes and we can start to grasp the rationale behind the 1.3 billion people who didn't visit FB compared to the month prior /s
A 3-10% drop is huge and much more significant than those deleting Facebook as I'd assume that most of those people used it infrequently if at all and decided the data exposure wasn't worth their minimal use.
But when people start using the service less that's significant especially at these higher traffic sites.
This is completely anecdotal, but the whole data privacy issue had me do a full audit of all of my own activity, overhauling a lot of my activities. I had mostly used Facebook as a news feed, and in the wake I purged Facebook from my devices (much better battery life, as an aside, but maybe a placebo), and visit maybe once a day, sometimes two, just to quickly catch up on friends. Previously I'd visit dozens of times a day to catch up on surfaced news, etc. It was my leisure and bedtime go to and now it's a fringe.
I subscribed to the NY Times and Washington Post. I re-bookmarked sites like Anandtech and Ars for periodic visits. I changed how I use services like Google at the same time. It's a whole other issue, but just the long contemplation about this had me switch from my GS8 to what was my development iPhone 8 as my daily driver.
I know I'm just one person, but quite a few people have made similar proclamations, and among peers I know several just finally abandoned the site (the whole fake news things already starting the flow). These sorts of periodic issues just blend away when a site is on a dramatic growth curve and it just gets drowned out, but Facebook had essentially peaked, so they're really in a position to only lose users.
I use FaceSlim myself, which seems to do much better, mostly a web view with a useragent that gets the older less-gimped mobile facebook website, and can send/view messages still.
I'm keeping messenger for now, only because my GF is in another state, and it's the most consistent way to video chat (which is a shame).
I've been increasingly successful in nudging my girlfriend to use Signal. She has a lot of old, close friends on the west coast and FB messenger has been the core of her communications with them.
Getting her to add it and see that a few people on her contact list were already on there, including her boss, and that you can audio/video chat was a big push. Still working on that, though.
Messenger is actually the worst variant from what I understand. Apparently this app's data collection practices are worse than simply using the browser or Facebook native app
There is enhanced awareness of some of these issues as there needed to be, no more calling users 'idiots' to diminish their own roles in exploitation and stalking by some self serving members of the tech community.
But it's only when there are negative consequences for people individually beyond collectives like Cambridge Analytica that people will dramatically change their usage patterns. Self preservation is one of the strongest human instincts.
Already parents are much more careful of their children's usage. Things can change suddenly and before you know it the tech stereotype of 'indifferent users' will be over and the conversation will shift to 'entitled users'.
Also one person not representative of the population, arguably, as you're commenting on HN which may make you more aware of the recent news on Facebook and potentially more security-conscious.
Further anecdata - several non-nerds in my life have decided to use facebook less, and several have also started using Signal instead of WhatsApp.
I’d say it’s a small but significant number of people, I don’t expect it to hurt Facebook much unless it becomes a trend - if cultural trendsetters if different groups do the same, it could do some serious damage. (See also: Elon).
The most likely candidate is the change in the News Feed algorithm that was announced months ago, that favoured “friends and family” (and later, local news). It took years to get that change approved, and that can only be because the team looking at it took a lot of time to prove that the positive impact of having that type of content was greater. Facebook announced exactly that type of consequence of the News Feed change in their financial statement, and that estimate was indubitably based on large-scale A/B testing.
Source for my intuition: I worked on something very close three years ago (at Facebook). Privacy scandals barely ever register at any company I worked; seemingly minor tweaks to the News Feed could have that compound impact.
It's really funny having gotten rid of Facebook years ago, seeing people talk about how they're "trying to cut back" instead of just dropping the dumb thing. It's like listening to drug addicts.
You are assuming that Facebook is intrinsically negative, which is not always the case. It certainly has its pros and cons. For example, my parents use FB to find and connect with old friends from grade school. Some use it to know about local events. Some use it to promote their business or their fledgling indie band.
Aside from this, in my home country, the Philippines, SMS & telephone services are expensive. Being a 3rd world archipelago country, infrastructure in the provinces is so bad that cabled & optic internet is not available for a lot of people. Facebook is a gem in my country in that they provide free internet for anyone utilising FB's services with a smartphone (you can buy cheap 2nd hand android phones there for less than $20). The folks here use FB's services to keep themselves updated with the world as well as to call/chat. It's a great way to connect and recently people don't even memorise their phone numbers anymore and instead, people ask each other for their facebook.
Honestly this sounds super evil. By providing free access they essentially eliminate all the (better) alternatives while having a steadily high artificial usage rate.
I believe it's one of the reasons why India is rejecting free FB. Unlike India, the Philippine infrastructure is fragmented and offers little to no better alternatives which is why most are welcoming them in the country.
Ah yes, that's the problem the country is having right now. Too many people are getting too dependent on facebook that it's becoming a playground for fake news and propaganda campaigns[0].
I admit, it's events and messaging features I rely on. I'm trying to move to a more trustworthy service, and keeping an eye out on options. I've found sociall.io but its still in closed beta, but looks like a potential option.
Why does every new site/technology have to be related to cryptocurrency? I was keen on this up until I saw it uses ethereum and my vaporware senses all triggered at once.
I'll put 5 SCL, or 10 schrute-bucks, on the whole purpose of this site being to build up market interest so they can sell it to Facebook.
Edit: had to go for a smoke half way through that site, mustered up the strength to finish reading. Their roadmap for the number of employees they have is beyond laughable. I'm not entirely convinced this isn't satire
Sadly, owning a business it’s pretty much required to deal with Facebook. Unless I want to spend five times as much on traditional advertising for less than half of the results.
Not trying to discount your experience here but are those the actual numbers?
My intuition is that the effectiveness of algorithmic advertising is largely over-stated. I'd really like to see a controlled test of FB ad ROI vs traditional ad ROI.
Yeah, although I feel I get more response from my Facebook ads than radio and print, I’m usually disappointed how few new customers it creates.
However, paying to “boost a post” on Facebook is much better. So much so that I’ve dropped nearly all other advertising. Running an ad can only target so well, as it’s mostly based on plain old demographics. But boosted posts also take into account those who have liked your business page, responded to your prior posts, and who their friends are. At least, that’s the impression my results have been given me.
While hard numbers and analysis would be nice to see of course, I have little interest in seeing hard numbers in this case. My proof is that I was able to slash my ad budget by over half, and yet still more than double my business. Over a year later with mostly just Facebook, business is still growing.
I’m sure the nature of my business is rather well suited to Facebook though. I’m a sole proprietor offering group entertainment services on a local scale. Im sure the ch companies and other less localized businesses may not get as good results.
I would agree 5 years ago, right now Facebook just seems like overly expensive visits that barely converts.
I am sure some still get amazing results, especially through retargetting on a good budget. However small targeted campaigns don't have the same effect anymore as they had before in my and some friends experiences.
Personally, I disabled my account. I think it's been healthy. I'm not necessarily a #deletefacebook supporter, but I do think social media gets distracting and sometimes depressing. I don't want it influencing my mood as much. That being said, a good federated, decentralized social network can't come soon enough, in my opinion.
I've disabled my account too. I haven't decided whether to delete yet. I originally got on FB because it was the best way to communicate with our kids. They have since moved on but in the mean time I have found several communities that I enjoy. Key among these is that there is absolutely no politics discussed. We remain focused on the common interests that we share. I also had a lot of "friends," some of whom would post absolute garbage. I gradually unfriended or muted the worst of these and FB became an enjoyable place to see what others were doing.
I always had a feeling that the various quizzes and games were harvesting information. I thought that if I ignored them, they would not get mine. The CA incident proved that wrong. That's what pushed me over the edge. The shifting sands of FB personal information security just got to be too much for me.
I miss the camaraderie and the communities (and communication) but I'm not certain it is worth the price. At the very least, I want to send a message to FB. And they did notice in an algorithmic manner. They really cranked up the email notifications of all of the things I was missing. If enough people do that their numbers will drop and that will have a material effect on their stock price. That will get their attention and perhaps result in a reevaluation of their behavior.
I agree. My life has been much improved since deleting Facebook from my phone.
I don’t need a social network. E-mail and IM actually work fine; it’s trivial to include a link to web content in an e-mail which covers almost everything else.
LinkedIn is great for work; because it’s explicitly a curated experience focused on employment. But past that I neither need nor want a social network. I think this realization will be the most damning for Facebook.
> That being said, a good federated, decentralized social network can't come soon enough, in my opinion.
IMO we are already there and people just don't realize the chance we actually get into.
My circle communicates through: Telegram, Hangout, Whatsapp, Steam, Messenger, SMS/Calls, some Discord, a few also Slack. And pretty sure also other things I forget.
What I see here is a decentralised, privacy first (due to closed channels) way to socialize without building a central social graph, or a single point of failure/propaganda.
Owning your data would mean that you as a user could opt into the social graphs that you want to be a part of, and pull that data out whenever you like. It would also mean that competitors could build more privacy-focused alternatives, perhaps a stripped down social media experience that doesn't allow sharing of articles for example. Maybe your friends still like to share memes, and they opt into the full DecentraFacebook edition but you don't want to see that crap, so you opt in to DecentraFacebook: Meme Free edition. You're still able to see friends 'direct posts'. No auto-play videos, no ads, etc.
Wouldn’t this mean a better, and thus more addicting and time wasting, social network?
Also, how could you really pull out data? If you put data out there and I make a copy of it and decide to keep it for all time how are you going to pull it back?
I think there would be competing ones out there. I don't think "better" necessarily means it wastes more time.
But sure, once you've given someone access to information, you can't make them forget it. Except through legislation (cough...GDPR...). You could revoke their access rights and they could no longer receive updates regarding your social graph.
In my experience, panel-based traffic measurement services (SimilarWeb, Alexa, Hitwise, Quantcast, ComScore, Nielsen) are useless when it comes to reality and their primary role serves to make misleading news articles or convince advertisers to waste a lot of money on overpriced media buys.
I use SimilarWeb Pro and compare it to internal analytics and the variances are often incorrect. Also this is website visits only when most FB activity would be on native apps.
If you zoom out you can see that Facebook's web traffic has been on the downtrend for awhile https://i.imgur.com/e9Mgjby.png. Also April has one less day than March which wasn't mentioned.
Their stats can be incredibly inaccurate. Yes they have perhaps the biggest internet panel, but there are still lots more people who dont install browser plugins (especially those in non-first world countries).
How is this measured? I think the usage of their mobile apps is significantly greater than visits to "facebook.com", you could argue then that more customers are moving to apps only.
Short term hit's still represent huge 'fines' for bad behavior. Chipotle may nominally make very little per customer but their fixed costs stay the same either way so their actual losses are far more significant.
Facebook has around 1.5 billion DAILY active users. So if we assume a user only visits Facebook once a day (which seems to me like a laughably conservative number), this is about 1 day's worth of visits.
Realistically, I'd expect the average user to open Facebook maybe thrice a day, or more. Which means this is roughly ~1% of their monthly traffic.
The verdict: nobody gives a shit about their privacy enough to change their habits.
Only from the sample... and April has fewer days than March. So it's not that big a difference. Day of the week composition in a month combined with a day shorter month could account for that alone.
Facebook earned $6.18 per user in Q4 of 2017 [1]. That's about $25 per yyear. 1.3bn users thus represent about $32.5 billion of revenues.
U.S. and Canadian ARPI was $27.76 for the same period [1]. Let's say 880% of those #DeletingFacebook were from those, or similarly-lucrative, rregions. Blended lost ARPU thus estimates to $23.44 per quarter. Across 1.3bn users, that's $128 billion.
You're making the same mistake a lot of people are pointing out in this thread, you're conflating Daily Active Users with Visits. If this were a decline Daily Active Users it'd be a 100% loss, it's clearly not.
You'd have to figure out the value per visit to reach a conclusion along the lines you're attempting to make.
> You'd have to figure out the value per visit to reach a conclusion along the lines you're attempting to make
Fair enough. One can roughly adjust those figure by dividing by the number of times the average Facebook user visits Facebook each month. This is nothing existential. But it's still, likely, over a billion dollars of lost revenue.
> Assuming the average Facebook user visits the social network once a day, that would suggest an average of about 43 million less users during that month. In recent months, Facebook makes about $5 per user, per month -- i.e. some $215 million in potential lost revenue.
You might want to read the privacy policy for the website you linked before you use it as a rallying cry against Facebook. The irony is pretty amusing.
