If you're ever a parent, and you have one or more kids in school, and they engage in extracurricular activities - you'll be surprised how many amateur sports clubs and similar places communicate predominantly or even exclusively through Facebook.
I'm of an age where everyone I know uses Facebook and have lost appetite for new social media.. it's effective enough to communicate and post events etc.. if it's not broke..
For context my social media journey started with geocities ( many here weren't even a glint in their fathers eye then 😂)
I've done geocities > bebo > MySpace > Facebook + instagram + twitter + reddit .. now I just do Facebook, instagram( mostly for cars and bikes)and lemmy.
Lemmy mostly.
Mastodon, but it's pretty barren there so I've mostly given up on microblogging
Pixelfed, but rarely use it for the same reason.
I'll use Facebook marketplace to sell shit. I have an account on pretty much everything but I don't use it anymore unless someone sends me a link to something.
I don't actively use it, but I don't see the point in deleting my account? My HOA is only on a Facebook group, so it's the only place I can go to check for updates on some stuff (typically trash day getting moved, neighborhood pool stuff, etc). That's the only use. My understanding is that Facebook tracks me even without an account so doesn't really seem like I'm gaining anything other than good feelings by deleting my account.
It's not like I've gone out of my way to delete my old Myspace or xanga accounts either, I just stop using them.
No, excuses, I use FB. I’ve turned my feed into mostly hobby and other interest groups so that it’s more like reddit or the Fediverse. I viciously “x” any ads I see as soon as they show up. Seems it takes a bit for FB to look at my account and try to tailor me some ads so I get a week give or take of ad-free fb. It’s actually a useful social media if you force it to conform to what you want and make it hard for FB to abuse you.
Tried Threads, don’t like the format, and the comments and questions are every bit as stupid as FB reels or YT shorts. Insta sucks.
The only thing keeping me on Facebook these days is marketplace. If that wasn’t the main thing people in my city use to post used items I would have deleted it ages ago.
Haven’t had Facebook in at least 5 years, probably more. I had a Reddit account for 13 years, but got banned for saying I wished MTG would trip and swallow her own head. They said I was inciting violence. Fuck Reddit. I had an Instagram account for a while and I posted joke pictures of random everyday objects with lots of filters. After insta became a super battery drain spy box app, I deleted app and account and never looked back. Never got into twitter, certainly wont now. Lenny seems to be one of the few platforms that isn’t totally ruined by shitty people and companies.
Normal people have friends and family and would like to use social media to stay in touch with them. There are network effects that make it practically impossible to switch. This is not something that can be done with the power of love and well informed agent in the marketplace.
One solution would be to nationalize facebook and other social media and turn them into public utility coops that are run democratically by giving the workers that work there a vote for who and how they should be managed. And give the users a vote.
Everything else is just fantasy. Facebook is forever. You'd need many billions in marketing and advertising to get enough people to switch. And then it will be the same shit.
Unless of course Elon Musk buys facebook, then it will be trash in less than a year.
Yeah, it's always surprised me a little bit just how strong they still are. While the often-online do tend to shy away from it, it's actually still a preferred platform for the less-online, due to how easy it makes coordinating real life events. Also not the sort of segment that usually cares much about data privacy.
Last I checked Facebook had the most active users it ever had. I don't like Facebook either, but it's also sad so many people here live in such a bubble that they think they're part of some big movement of people ditching Facebook.
I don't integrate it with anything else, but facebook remains my best option for getting current contact info for anybody from my past. Even after the enshittification, it remains an effective Rolodex. Rolodex...I am old.
I refused to use messenger for about 6years and I tried to bring people to signal (at least ~most of my family still uses it), but after changing environment and essentially doing a semi-fresh start, I realized I had to give up some (much) privacy to have any social life.
I'd really like not to have such a dilemma, but I dont think I would go very far with ~zero social life (would probably have strong depression, no friends and possibly many other issues).🥲 Fb is ~forcing it to us.
At least while I might have lost some privacy, I help others gain privacy (I help them use/find open source, privacy respecting alternatives to various programs).
Also, Signal really didnt help me convince people use it by requesting a phone number... Its hard to convince people that dont care much about privacy and want ease of access to give their phone number to an unknown app (I know it's not that big of a deal, but they dont know what I know and dont care much even if I explain it to them).
Facebook in my country is where you go to find the best deals on secondhand shit. i got a backpackers tent worth ove £100 from someone on FB marketplace for £15
Don't people use it mainly as a calendar? You can see events near you and get alerts to those you've signed up for. There are alternatives of course but I feel a lot firms and people publicize their event through Facebook.
Well craigslist in my area is kinda dead so Facebook market place is the only place to do local buying and selling. It also acts as a lowest common denominator, I find someone on facebook send a few messages until we agree on some other social media to continue communicating on. Then My family uses What's app and has done since before they were acquired by meta. Getting them to switch is something I push for, but I'm not holding my breath.
I've spent nearly 2 decades connecting with friends, family, coworkers, and associates through Facebook. I hate Facebook, and actually use F.B. Purity to remove 90% of the content, ads, promotional junk, games, marketplace, etc. from it. But as the main way I've stayed in touch with people I've known over the course of my life, I just can't dump it.
Besides that, I have Lemmy (of course); LinkedIn, which I'm not really using anymore since I retired young; Imgur, which I mostly just use for browsing memes; and Discord, which I only use to communicate with a few close friends whom I game with weekly.
I created accounts for Instagram and Whatsapp, but I've never used them. They were too self-promoting for my taste. When they first became a thing, they were all about taking selfies and sharing your face with your friends. I wanted discussion and interesting content, not to see selfies. They created the generation of "social media influencers" who think they're entitled to things in life because X number of people follow them on social media.
I also avoid TikTok like the plague. I was in the US military (working as an IT guy) when TikTok became popular, and we discovered it embedded itself in your phone so deeply, you couldn't fully remove it even when uninstalling. Plus, it gave itself full admin rights to your phone, then started trickling your data to Chinese servers. Which is why the president made such a big deal about TikTok being a national security threat. It's not because we didn't get along with a Chinese company; it's because a foreign government was collecting personal data and building profiles on American citizens. I will never touch that program as long as I live.
I'm 40 years old, by the way. A lot of people say Facebook is only used by old people, and yes, I just turned 40 and am finally becoming an "old person." But I'm still relatively young compared to people's expectations of Facebook users. And I have a lot of Facebook friends who are much younger than I am.
The largesr draw about a social media is who's on it. I can't tell you how many invites to things I miss for not being on social media. Anyone outside of my immediate friend group simply makes plans on Facebook and goes through their friends list to invite people and wont remember some one they maybe see every other month especially among the dozens of names they already looked through to invite. Some peopel are fine sacrificing social life for some small protest that has no effect on Facebook's MAUs and profit, and other's would rather not isolate for a fight they can't win.
There are mentorship and professional groups there that aren’t available elsewhere.
Plus, the local groups for my town/state provide crucial information about weather, taxes, traffic, river safety, etc. In general, it’s a good source of knowledge.
I hate that I’m giving up privacy, but there are also no other social media networks that can compete. I can’t message/Signal my closest 5,000 neighbors to find out which local/free berry patch is ready for picking. But, there’s a fb group for that.
Meta has the biggest platforms in the world that most people use. Not a big surprise, really. I have an Instagram, as much as I want to only use FOSS social media, I have friends there that will not move elsewhere.
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...
Haven’t used Facebook in probably a decade, but as a photographer Instagram is still the most active platform I’ve tried. Vero is weird. PixelFed is pretty empty, mostly people’s snapshots. Others either cost money or aren’t really good on mobile.
I mean, I mentioned that my experience with Pixelfed has not been the best, since it lacks content and discoverability. I wouldn't sign up again to Instagram (I deleted my accounts years ago), but it's obvious that it has orders of magnitude more content, and maybe the recommendation algorithm can be useful sometimes.
Personally, even if I don't want to, I have to use WhatsApp since everyone in my country uses it, even government offices.
Well, using FB since something like 2008, but for years now it's only for groups, like retro toys group, spotted group, neighbour group, camping group, moped group, etc.
I don't have friends anymore who post stuff like their dishes or things like this, nor do I post. The feed is basically ads and far-right conspiracy nowadays,
I'm using Marketplace a lot too, this is the shit here, everyone is using it.
In comparison to things like Twitter and Reddit, Facebook has actually been the most difficult to completely abandon because of Messenger. All my friends use it, and an attempt at switching everyone to Signal didn't manage to stick. I would delete my Facebook account right now if it were possible to separate the two services.
I haven't had a Facebook since like 2017. The only thing from Meta I use is an anonymous Instagram page I use to follow a few different famous people/bands, but I never post anything there. It keeps trying to get me join Threads lol