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Comment by kerkeslager | Hacker News Reader

I think we need to be careful not to extrapolate trends in the news and HN to a country that is increasingly suspicious of "news media", or a world that we are even more detached from.

Facebook has 2.2 billion monthly active users[1]. That's billion, with a B. HN has 3.5 million (with an M) unique visitors per month[2]. Everyone on Hacker News AND the 10 people closest to them could all drop off Facebook and it would only be about 1.5% of Facebook's traffic. Are you sure that the trends you're mentioning are happening outside your social circle? I'm not.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9219581

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I'm sceptical of the monthly active users number as it also includes Facebook Messenger users that might not ever use the website or app itself.

From my social circle outside the tech world, Facebook is increasingly being frowned upon - and in the teens age bracket , Facebook is what old people (parents and so on) use. Obviously anecdata, but the general feeling is that people use it less and less. There might be a perfect storm coming for Facebook - or it's just a temporary fart, soon to be forgotten.

This is what I overheard yesterday:

"I deleted my FB account; I'm only going to post on Instagram now."

FB is like the Goldman of the Social Media (and increasingly, via Messenger and WhatsApp, Communications) world. They have their tentacles everywhere.

Also at the teen-level, Onavo, FB's VPN service, is yuuugely popular in high schools across America.

And imagine if VR actually takes off and becomes a compelling new communications medium.

FB has a lot of inertia at this point, I don't think they're going anywhere.

(Lastly, even with all this hub-bub in the news, I'm sure the govt loves FB and doesn't want it going anywhere; it's a huge competitive advantage for the US intelligence community).

I agree; Facebook the social network might decay - Facebook the company holding many different things is probably not going anywhere.

I'm skeptical of your determination of Facebook's outlook based on your social circle, which is limited in size, geographical location, wealth, social status, and a bunch of factors.

Saying 2 billion people use Facebook means around 2/3 of everyone on the internet uses Facebook. When you look around your social circle and see useage closer to 2% it's reasonable to suspect their numbers are fake.

Sure, I know plenty of people that used Facebook several years ago, but it's become a ghost town. My friends, family, and coworkers might be unusual, but not that unusual.

No one I know clicks on Google ads. Does that mean Google's ad business is probably illegitimate?

Google can get by with very low click rates. It can be profitable at 1 click per 10,000 views. I may only click an add every few months and mostly by accident, but that's enough. Further, a small percentage of people can easily be clicking more often where Facebook viewership is binary users can only count as one viewer.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/02/12/facebook-losi...

Facebook is losing the young audience in a big way.

How many of those daily active users are bots, spammers, cloned accounts, webscrapers, or people logging on for two seconds because they sent or received one message, or want to do one thing? Do they count people using them to login to other sites as active daily users? How many are generating content or participating in a way that drives the platform?

How much of the daily traffic from a small percentage of people drives a large portion of the rest of the platform? How much of that 1.5% can Facebook afford to lose before it creates a trend they can’t escape?

> How many of those daily active users are bots, spammers, cloned accounts, webscrapers, or people logging on for two seconds because they sent or received one message, or want to do one thing?

How many have to be for 2.2 billion to not still be a pretty damn big number?

> How many are generating content or participating in a way that drives the platform?

Facebook has no shortage of content.

> How much of the daily traffic from a small percentage of people drives a large portion of the rest of the platform? How much of that 1.5% can Facebook afford to lose before it creates a trend they can’t escape?

All of them, as long as the losses are made up in other areas.

Even if the real number is half of that, that still 1 billions account. It's 3 times the population of the US.

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