It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I do use it because that's where people are. You can't really not do Facebook at all. You can't talk to people on Messenger, you can't sell stuff on Marketplace, you can't get invited to events...
About 12 years for me without any Meta accounts. I talk with my mom using Signal, and have a very active group chat with friends on Signal too. A dozen of Matrix channels for nerd stuff, Akkoma and Lemmy for social feeds, the orange site and Lobsters for work, LWN and Phoronix for hobbies.
In many places WhatsApp is the defacto standard unfortunately.....
If its not that its something like Viber, or badoo or telegram or some other nightmare service...
If you have kids there is also not really getting away from it. Friends of mine have never had Facebook accounts until they had kids because the local football team or boyscout or whatever only uses Facebook to communicate...
I agree you can live your life comfortably without meta services, but sometimes, like in the example above, you dont have any alternatives....
You can't keep harassing other parents to forward you messages or ask the team to print any messages specifically for you. Not having a Facebook account just gets "its easy to create" responses rather than "completely understandable, here's our private matrix server to stay in the loop".
I still have mine (need it occasionally for work, I’m tied to the work account) but I deleted the app from my phone several years ago and not having it there has really helped me not check it. I never check it. Every once in a while I’ll log in to do something for work, see that three parents from my kids’ school sent me a friend request, accept those, and then split. I’m not sure why I bother; guess I don’t want them to feel shunned but it’s not like they’ll reach me there.
I think that depends a lot on country or region. Brazil pretty much abandoned FB, but went all in on Instagram instead. For used stuff, people are likely to post on Olx and maybe send a message on whatever whatsapp groups they're in. I haven't seen a single person around here suggesting "post it on FB marketplace" for selling used stuff
can you actually prove that (doubt it) or is this just a perceived thing?
Messenger and marketplace? Seriously?? You can’t manage to find a single alternative? Come on now. There are so many good alternatives for local, you just don’t care to look and try.
you can't get invited to events...
Are you fucking kidding me?? Oh no I can’t get invited to an event unless someone invites me specifically on Facebook and I click the button saying I’m going!!!!
You know what happens when I stop visiting Facebook? I don't learn anything about extended family because they don't give a shit about me.
You know what happens when you sell not on Marketplace here? You get like 10 clicks a month and you don't sell.
You know what happens when you message people not on Messenger? You're the annoying person on the hipster app/sending text messages to a phone number and people don't talk to you unless talked to first.
Also, good for you if you're a significant enough friend to be invited personally, but no one invites me anywhere unless I show up in a list of people to invite.
I realize my comment was a bit too generalizing but holy shit dude calm down
I use kijiji, even with the dwindled userbase compared to marketplace, signal instead of messenger, and I wasn't going to events anyway, so I'm set without facebook