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Facebook Social Networks

Facebook Lost Daily Users for the First Time Ever Last Quarter (theverge.com) 133

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Since its inception, Facebook's user growth has essentially been up and to the right. But on Wednesday, it reported its first-ever quarterly decline of daily users globally, along with lower-than-expected ad growth that sent its stock plunging roughly 20 percent. From a report: The massive stock drop, which instantly wiped out roughly $200 billion in market value, shows that Facebook's corporate rebrand to Meta isn't enough to distract investors from the problems in its core business of social media. Not only was user growth across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp essentially flat last quarter, but the main Facebook app lost 1 million daily users in North America, where it makes the most money through advertising. That drop led to an overall decrease in daily users of Facebook globally, which a company spokesperson confirmed is the first sequential decline in the company's history. That drop to 1.929 billion daily users from 1.93 billion the prior quarter is likely a reflection of Facebook's increasing lack of relevance with young people.
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Facebook Lost Daily Users for the First Time Ever Last Quarter More

Facebook Lost Daily Users for the First Time Ever Last Quarter

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  • Not shocking (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gmack ( 197796 ) <gmack@@@innerfire...net> on Thursday February 03, 2022 @10:03AM (#62233453) Homepage Journal

    Facebook has been actively shoving more ads while not doing anything about spammers. The user experience has actively been getting worse overtime.

    I'm using Facebook less than I used to just because I can't stand using it

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gmack ( 197796 )

      I should also point out that Facebook has acrtively ignored user requests to turn some of their "features" off, but that seems like META in general. The Rift has years of user requests begging to be able to hide uninstalled apps with no reply from Meta at all.

      • I would like my Sort by date posted to stick, If that is the case that could solve a lot of problems. Because it always sorts based on the "Algorithm" So I tend to get active posters often posting what ever political beliefs or political news that they had just uncovered, which either makes me to dislike them, get angry at the news, or get fearful of the news.

        I just want to see what my "Friends" are up to, are they on vacation, did they get a new car or a new home, did they get married or have a kid. I d

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by gmack ( 197796 )

          I agree. I have been muting/unfriending people who constantly discuss politics. That goes for the Right Wing nuts and the crazy (one of them outright communist) people I know on the left. It is the only way I can maintain my sanity.

          • I agree. I have been muting/unfriending people who constantly discuss politics. That goes for the Right Wing nuts and the crazy (one of them outright communist) people I know on the left. It is the only way I can maintain my sanity.

            Yup, I have one friend who is full on Wingnut, and a relative who seems to want to seize the means of production. Unfollowing them, I just don't see their nutty shit any more.

            I kinda rue the day I had to get on Facebook. I suppose it's nice to find old friends, but otherwise as much fun as chewing on rocks.

            • I bet Pop Rocks are still fun at least for kids.

              • I bet Pop Rocks are still fun at least for kids.

                All but little Mikey..https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pop-rocks-soda/

                Someone even sent his mother condolences. People - go figure.

        • I would like my Sort by date posted to stick

          Using https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h... [facebook.com] as the URL works for me.

    • Another rebrand, howz MySpaceFace? On the line.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I vote for a merger, Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. For YouTwitFace.

    • At least half of the ads you see are obviously bogus, so the other half seem suspect by default and you won't touch them. Then the comment section.... there is obviously a coordinated campaign to keep Usians arguing about everything complete with "Laugh bots" that just go through and laugh at everything in the comments. That pisses off people and the arguing continues.

      • Re:Not shocking (Score:4, Interesting)

        by gmack ( 197796 ) <gmack@@@innerfire...net> on Thursday February 03, 2022 @12:44PM (#62233975) Homepage Journal

        True, and even in the case where they are reported by the brand owner, Facebook does nothing. Jackery for instance, has told me that Facebook will do nothing about the scammers who use their name and images to advertise power packs for a fraction of the battery cost. It's as if they would rather keep making money from ads the scammers are placing than protect their own users.

        As for the comments, I really wish there was a country of origin notice on them I think people would be surprised where the posts are coming from. I've seen a few obnoxious trolls that claim to be Canadian but are only posting after 2 AM EST.

    • Last year FB changed the group algorithm such that public groups could be viewed by everyone and everyone could join. As a result scammers have joined them en masse to dump their spam, forcing group owners to change the group to private. That means no posts or images can be shared.

      FB intentionally makes it tedious to reject ads. You can report the ad but it required redundant mouse clicks. The Manage Ads under account settings requires deep navigating through menus then way too many mouse clicks to r

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by thomn8r ( 635504 )

      Facebook has been actively shoving more ads while not doing anything about spammers

      I like FB for car groups (instead of several fragmented installations of phBB) but I use https://www.fbpurity.com/ [fbpurity.com] so I never see any ads

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      It's not just Facebook too. :(

  • The beginning of the end? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OneHundredAndTen ( 1523865 ) on Thursday February 03, 2022 @10:06AM (#62233467)
    One can only hope.

    • Re: The beginning of the end? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by pele ( 151312 ) on Thursday February 03, 2022 @10:13AM (#62233483) Homepage

      You can imagine how sturdy, stable, productivr and valuable your company really is if someone "wipes-off" 200bn off its value in one day.

    • Re:The beginning of the end? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by waspleg ( 316038 ) on Thursday February 03, 2022 @11:28AM (#62233727) Journal

      geocities, etc ... myspace etc.. even if it dies, not likely since basically every small business I can think of (particularly restaurants) abandoned hosting their own sites and only have facebook and/or twitter/instagram now.

      So, even if it dies, it will just be replaced by something worse.

    • Every empire eventually falls. Facebook (or, Meta, I suppose) will be no exception.

      Just remember it will almost certainly be replaced by something else and, in all likelihood, be even worse than Facebook.

      • Social Media is now a Utility (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Thursday February 03, 2022 @01:07PM (#62234031)

        Every empire eventually falls. Facebook (or, Meta, I suppose) will be no exception. Just remember it will almost certainly be replaced by something else and, in all likelihood, be even worse than Facebook.

        Facebook started with a great product, but couldn't figure out how to scale. During it's first 5 years, it was dominated by the young and tech-saavy. Eventually it got too successful and EVERYONE got on. And the simple fact is we don't want to hear from everyone in our life. Facebook wasn't prepared for that.

        It's a great way to post kids pics for distant relatives or stalk ex-girlfriends and laugh or cry when you see who they married instead of you.

        It's a great tool for organizing simple community events.

        It's a great tool for the entertainment industry, especially smaller players like bands, local concert halls, or even nice restaurants, to engage with their customers.

        Unfortunately, they got greedy and wanted to make it a political rant tool and forced us all to watch. If my shittiest, dumbest relatives want to rant on facebook to each other, I don't care. I just don't want to have to see that when I log in and they don't provide simple tools to filter it.

        A simple solution would be what reddit does with porn. Tag your dick pic with "NSFW" and only those interested in dick pics will see it. Facebook should force users to tag political posts with a similar "political" label and then I can easily filter it and never see it.

        Unfortuantely, we actually need social media. My kids' school use it to post schedules, fundraising info, and field trip info. Community organizations use it to let you know about local events, like our local block party. Bands too small to make the national news use it to let you know they have a new album out. I use it to donate stuff I don't need to people on my block. It allows small startup companies to advertise very frugally to get their boutique businesses off the ground.

        So I don't think it's true the next facebook will necessarily be worse. Facebook has too much momentum. It's a defacto ID and organization system and it's very much needed by anyone who does anything in their local community. I can't imagine another player getting enough users on the platform to make it work. My hope is they give better filtering tools. I don't care if you want to make racist rants on facebook, honestly...just don't make me read them. I want my relatives and fuckups I grew up with to keep their shittiness in their own echo chamber and away from the rest of us.

        • Unfortunately, they got greedy and wanted to make it a political rant tool and forced us all to watch. If my shittiest, dumbest relatives want to rant on facebook to each other, I don't care. I just don't want to have to see that when I log in and they don't provide simple tools to filter it.

          I'm not sure that was intentional. I think the political rants and arguments happened organically. That aside...

          The best strategy in politics is the same as the best strategy for "Global Thermonuclear War". The only winning move is not to play. [imgur.com] More and more people are coming to that conclusion. Everything is now political. Therefore, people post nothing.

          You used to log on to Facebook and see pictures and posts from your friends. That's no longer the case. They just stopped interacting. It's th

        • Facebooks algorithm, from the outside, appears to be designed to maximize outrage. I'm sure they designed it to get "engagement" but it seems that is best achieved by making their users angry. I've scaled back facebook, once I found myslef typing out angry posts and having to remind myself I don't enjoy being angry. For those wondering why I've scaled back not quit it unfortunately facebook has it's claws into too many things to avoid entirely and every time a viable alternative crops up they are allowed t

        • ... delighting their best customers long ago.

          Their customers are advertising agencies and troll farms. This is not about you. Yes, you (and a few million others) have good reasons for not using Facebook but that's not the coal-face. Less eyeballs and more political polarization means Facebook's product (that's you), is less valuable to advertisers.

    • I have to agree. But it exists because it fills a need for a non-real time shared connection to others. For many yes those connections are to not-real-friends who think a lot of online connections will make them happy, and for which this is probably super unhealthy. But for many others, it provides a simple connection to family, extended family, and friends across diverse regions. There isn't really anything else out there, unless we can make Usenet a thing again. Because really, Facebook is like Usenet for

  • dear facebook (Score:1, Insightful)

    by inerlogic ( 695302 )
    stop using bots to auto-ban people for making sarcastic fucking jokes and we won't leave for places like tiktok
  • Change it a few more times and nobody would care any more.

  • I'm so glad... (Score:5, Funny)

    by rantrantrant ( 4753443 ) on Thursday February 03, 2022 @10:25AM (#62233509)
    ...I stuck with MySpace!

  • In North America - where it makes the most money - a decrease in of 1 million users is meaningful.

    Let's hope this trend continues to grow, and we can finally reclaim all the wasted bits !

  • This was inevitable (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday February 03, 2022 @10:50AM (#62233583)
    Every time FB loses users they identify the competitor who's snapping up the kids and buy them out. That's how they've stayed on top. And because of weak anti trust enforcement they get away with it.

    At the moment though they can't do that. Not just because everybody's watching, but because Biden changed the anti-trust rules.

    See, for the last few decades the only metric used to block mergers & buyouts was "will it raise consumer prices". So all a company had to do in order to get approval to buy a competitor was pinky swear to keep prices low.

    Biden has changed that, with new appointees that have done away with that rule and opened the doors to something we haven't seen in decades: anti-trust enforcement. Heck, we might see a very little bit of actual trust busting.

    I'd love to see him go after the healthcare lobby (who are buying up all the hospitals and who are why my kid's wages are so low, since 1 company owns 80% of the industry where they're at). Grocery stores would be nice too. I've got 2 left standing where I am after all the mergers. And apartment buildings and single family homes. Mega conglomerates have been buying them all up for ages, with a coworker of mine selling their house to Blackrock recently sight unseen. Seriously, they didn't even look at it, just paid 10% over market and called it a day.

    All this has finally come home to roost, resulting in massive inflation thanks to little or no competition and lower wages since, well, like I said, if 80% of the workplaces are owned by 1 company good luck bargaining for higher wages. At that point it's like living in a company town.
    • So the game of monopoly. Capitalism at its pinnacle.
      • Capitalism can be great for rapidly responding to consumer need, especially for non essentials. One of the major problems the Soviet Union had was satisfying needs for things that weren't food and shelter.

        Go on YouTube and you can find a video from a guy named "Adam Something" (literally, that's his YouTube name) where he talks about how the Soviet Block apartments were fantastic from the standpoint of a citizen who lost their home in the war and/or was coming from what was literally 1700s style peasant

        • How did this bullshit get modded up?

          "little niceties of life"

          You mean, like . . . toilet paper? Maybe a car? And they were struggling with food production long after Stalin was dead so don't sling THAT bullshit.

      • To much info. I liked some of my relatives and friends more the less I knew. More direct interaction seemed more civil and polite. Still like FB it is an Non-imposing way to share. Like seeing my contacts life in action just less interested in their political and religious views. Mixi was a good concept that offered more anonymity to interact in similar interest groups. Surprised an alternative has not risen yet.

    • ... And apartment buildings and single family homes. Mega conglomerates have been buying them all up for ages, with a coworker of mine selling their house to Blackrock recently sight unseen. Seriously, they didn't even look at it, just paid 10% over market and called it a day.

      "Sight unseen" you say.... Hmmm.. I'd like to talk to them about a mansion I have just gathering dust.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        They can just check the tax records to see at what you house+property is assessed.

      • I wouldn't do that. Eventually they're going to realize you defrauded them and unless you're going to leave the country they're going to throw you in jail for a very long time. These are members of our aristocracy. They have laws to protect their investments. Unlike us peons who have to pray the stock market doesn't crash right before we retire. If we retire...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sinij ( 911942 )
      While antitrust regulations you describe are encouraging and one possible explanation, I have not heard about any case where these were applied.

      I think more plausible explanation is that users fleeing FB because of recent FB actions. In your analysis you need to consider where the users that are unhappy with FB are going. My view is that existing users leaving FB for less censored platforms, reducing FB's opportunities and ability to buy them back.
      • and to get enforcement you need to put the Administration in a strong position. That means voting. It means putting enough of his guys in the House and Senate that Biden has the political capital to take risks.

        It also means voting in your primary election, and googling the candidates and their positions. Never listen to what a candidate says, they can lie to you easily when they're talking. What you want is a list of 10 or 20 policy issues and their position on them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by havana9 ( 101033 )
      Also the competition now is TikTok, that is Chinese, and Chinese have different rules than USA, and Xi isn't interested to help an USA company.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
      Excellent analysis and summary. I have FB but only keep it as it is essential for ballroom dancing both competition and social dancing as means for messaging and awareness of special events and coaching by visiting dance masters. Other than the overall platform has become one of the most vile sites where people post the most hateful stuff. Most of the ballroom dancers are pretty clean, and there are other hobbyists. But I've defriended many for some really awful stuff they've posted. So I don't know if all

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by labnet ( 457441 )

      You will own nothing, and be happy!

    • Who is taking Facebook's customers now? Hmm? Who can't they buy?

      Here's a hint: it isn't Tiktok.

  • Needs a name change too... (Score:3)

    by dark.nebulae ( 3950923 ) on Thursday February 03, 2022 @10:58AM (#62233611)

    It has a bad image, I think it needs a name change. I think the following are appropriate:

    Hatebook

    Adbook

    Stalkerbook

    I doubt they'll take any of my suggestions though...

  • FB is less relevant for the young and not so young alike. I regularly go for weeks to a month before logging in and seeing what my far away friends are doing. Each time the experience is worse with more ads, "features" that prompt you to re-post past postings and an overall general negativity. The company will have to change names again to MySpace2 or AOL.

    • FB is less relevant for the young and not so young alike. I regularly go for weeks to a month before logging in and seeing what my far away friends are doing.

      I never joined....been great!!

      ;)

    • I would agree with this - the algorithms that show you posts that are likely to create short-term engagement (such as highly political posts or posts that have garnered lots of back-and-forth comments) create a longer-term feeling of burnout.

      That is to say, it might be fun at first to argue with a 2nd grade acquaintance that you haven't seen for 40 years over whether pizzerias have secret rooms where you can eat babies, but after a couple of rides on that merry-go-round, sitting in a chair with a cold bee

  • Young (Score:4, Interesting)

    by armada ( 553343 ) on Thursday February 03, 2022 @11:09AM (#62233663)
    Not only the young. I'm squarely an Olds and I deleted FB five years ago including every post and every comment. I do, however, have a fake account with no friends and no posts. I use it to access FB Groups for systems on my boat. I use it like an old school BBS.

  • how about "watch time"? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ruddk ( 5153113 ) on Thursday February 03, 2022 @11:11AM (#62233665)

    I get the impression that people who still are on Facebook, are using it less and less and mostly use it because their bike/golf/tennis/soccer/etc sports club they are attending, are using it to communicate matches and training days.

  • Facebook has become a barren desert (Score:3)

    by sir_smashalot_3rd ( 8248420 ) on Thursday February 03, 2022 @11:39AM (#62233783)
    I logged in recently for the first time in over a year and it has become a barren desert. All I saw was pages and pages of ads and clickbait articles. Rarely did I see an actual post and the ones I did see was from a lunatic anti-vax/mask/measure ex-collegue that posted multiple times daily. The posts for the most part had not a single like, let alone a reaction. It was dead as a dodo really. Now I hadn't logged on for a long time because there was nothing of value to be found but this has progressed horribly. I just exported my data and I am about to delete my account now.

    • Rarely did I see an actual post and the ones I did see was from a lunatic anti-vax/mask/measure ex-collegue that posted multiple times daily. The posts for the most part had not a single like, let alone a reaction. It was dead as a dodo really.

      People have learned to stop feeding the trolls. That will be Facebook's undoing.

  • One reason FB has lost me: they degraded the web / browser interface until it became like their simplistic mobile app. I used to login a couple of times a week; now it's like, once every three months. Too bad, Mark. Signed, dissatisfied customer.
  • AKA - first time it's been so significant they'd risk regulatory action as a public company if they lie about it. Anyone believe they haven't had mass drop offs in user engagement before now?

  • A lesson in arrogance? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Huitzil ( 7782388 ) on Thursday February 03, 2022 @01:26PM (#62234065)
    A few years ago I interviewed with Facebook for a data science management role. The recruiters were making it sound like it was the best company in the world, nothing short of heaven on earth. I had a very good gig at the time at another large company - where I built complex analytics and data science solutions that were slightly ahead of most competitors at the time, I also managed a medium size team.

    I breezed through the first few rounds of interviews, but when it came down to going through technical screens and whiteboarding problems - things got weird.

    I was asked to write a few lines of SQL, nothing extraordinary, and talk about experimentation best practices. The person who was interviewing me was a recent masters graduate - so took an extremely binary approach - looking for textbook answers around Z stats and p-values, whereas, because of my experience, I wanted to share that not every customer experience can be AB tested unless you have a way to measure people's feelings. I got rejected a few days later, and the rejection email contained some feedback that seemed very far off from my career trajectory.

    Over the past 3-4 years, I've continued to get emails from Facebook to try and bring me back to interview. I've declined ever since, and I think about my experience frequently.
    It seems that success at the time created an environment where Facebook assumed that they had all the answers, and that the world could be codified in datasets and that people's behaviour could be manipulated via algorithms to an unlimited extent. There was an underlying assumption that what customers feel and experience is irrelevant, and that machines could get us to continue to click buttons so as long as the button was optimized on the screen.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by whitroth ( 9367 )

      Thanks for the story. It confirms a lot of what I think.
      Speaking as a programmer and sysadmin of decades of experience, I have no idea why people *want* to use such a disaster of a website.

      1. There is no UI bible, and development teams don't talk to each other. For example, in a new post, enter means post, and ctrl-enter new line. When replying, it's the other way around. Why?
      2. You can't set anything useful, like "if I go home, I always want "more recent first".
      3. I still want to know what "community stand

  • Most people left SMS and email for facebook 'back in the day' because it offered a way to keep up connections with other people that you might not otherwise and because it was better than email or SMS. After a while they added so many layers to try and keep people engaged and to compete with other companies that it is impossible for one user to even figure out how to use all of it.

    But in their lust for money facebook has shot themselves in the foot, instead of focusing on making it better for their users, t

  • The media should focus on more good news stories like this one.

  • This is bad why? (Score:3)

    by r_naked ( 150044 ) on Thursday February 03, 2022 @03:11PM (#62234369) Homepage

    And nothing of value was lost .. oh wait, 200bn was lost.

    I feel no remorse for the people that owned FB stock.

    Anyone that thinks Facebook, Twitter, Google (YouTube), or any other large tech company that has a monopoly on speech, is a good thing can go fuck themselves.

    They should never have been allowed to get that large. Hell, Reddit can fall in that pile as well.

  • The wokeness has reached the tipping level.

    Last October they threatened to take down a page I founded with 35,000 followers. While not doggedly pursuing the advancement of that page every single day I can say I put in a good bit of work gaining that audience.

    The minute they threatened me over a meme post that literally was a nothing burger I said F-Em. I'll never again work my ass off benefiting them. I don't do business with people I have had a "Good relationship" with for over 10 years who out of the b

  • Facebook marketplace has become so loaded with scammers it's laughable Add the irrelevant search results, and the entire selling platform is unusable.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by torkus ( 1133985 )

      OMG so true.

      And even paid advertisements / promoted posts - i've seen everthing from pirate game consoles to shrooms. FB also makes it practically impossible to functionally flag blatantly illegal things. Mainly because they don't care as long as they get paid.

      Yay corporate greed.

  • ...is being amused by my "today in your history" alerts. Looking back on the lulz.

    I never post anything anymore and rarely comment. If not for the ability to keep in touch with childhood friends or kill 5 minutes on the toilet I'd have long since deleted.

  • It must be a couple of years since I logged into my account - just enough logins to make it think I may still be alive. And it's only purpose in life is to prevent someone posing as me. It doesn't even have my address in the correct hemisphere.
  • The opening sentence captured my attention with the blithering nonsense of âoeto the rightâ far more than the intended matter of FaceBookâ(TM)s unexpected stumble. Is it EVER going to the left - if the left-right axis is time from past to present? This is the kind of idiotic writing to be expected in middle school from naive writers.

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