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Comment by jliptzin | Hacker News Reader

Started using FB in 2004 when there were barely a few hundred thousand users. It was great as a college freshman going to a new place not knowing anyone and needing to make friends fast and keep up. In my 30s now and have almost completely stopped using facebook. I check in once every few months, usually when I need to sign in because someone messages me there instead of email. It's actually stunning to me that Facebook is lumped in with other tech giants like Google and Amazon. If the services that google and amazon provide disappeared tomorrow it would have a sudden and devastating impact on many parts of my life and business. If facebook completely disappeared, I honestly wouldn't even realize it for at least a couple months (until the next time I check in) and even then I wouldn't care one bit. In all honestly I think it would be an improvement to society.

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Facebook is used differently outside the US.

When I worked at a telco in Afghanistan in 2014, Facebook was basically its own utility - SMBs and individuals used Facebook (and their precious cellular data) almost exclusively to message each other and conduct business. So much so that the most popular consumer/retail plans for Afghans were "Facebook usage plans" giving you X amount of data per month to be spent exclusively on Facebook. Amazon/google have little to no power over there, facebook has a ton. Ditto whatsapp.

I think you'll find this is true for almost any country where social ties are stronger than the US, and biz is newer, or built around mobile/face-to-face transactions - fbook is much more important than it is here as a photo feed and news consumption hangout.

That said I agree for the US case and deleted my facebook ~2 years ago :)

I've seen the effect you describe also in the Philippines and other developing countries I've visited. Some Filipinos don't seem to realise that FB is just a walled garden on the internet, not the internet itself.

Also, I think your second point contributes to this: mobile is huge in the Philippines, they send more texts than any other country. And on top of that, social ties are a lot stronger than those in America, especially familial ties, with many siblings, cousins, etc.

This is because of Facebook's Internet.org.

Facebook has zero-rating on mobile in the Philippines.

It's not even just in developing countries that this happens. You could substitute New Zealand and you wouldn't be far off the truth.

When I used to work in the restaurant industry, my boss would order wine from one of the wineries using Facebook messenger. There are also social data plans that give you cheaper rates for Facebook, Snapchat, and some other services.

I'd also say that a lot of people I know exclusively get their news from Facebook and it's also very important as a photo sharing application.

> I check in once every few months, usually when I need to sign in because someone messages me there instead of email.

From what I've been hearing from internal teams, Facebook is hoping to take some of email's pie. I expect to see them pushing more people to use Facebook Messenger in place of email. And they're working on new types of ads that interface more with the Messenger. E.g. start a conversation with a company instead of taking you to their web site after clicking the ad.

Facebook is perhaps the last company I would trust with my email.

Sounds like 2010 when they gave everyone an @facebook.com email address to try to... take some of email's pie.

I remember that day, it was the day I abandoned facebook. Reading this thread confirms that I haven't been missing out on much aside from heaps of dark patterns.

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