Now I can't fathom how I accepted to carry that crap around with me, and sometimes forget that just because I don't use it, social media hasn't vanished from the world. I feel as if I was living in a post-social media era, because in my subconscious, social media is dead.
But when people start using the service less that's significant especially at these higher traffic sites.
I subscribed to the NY Times and Washington Post. I re-bookmarked sites like Anandtech and Ars for periodic visits. I changed how I use services like Google at the same time. It's a whole other issue, but just the long contemplation about this had me switch from my GS8 to what was my development iPhone 8 as my daily driver.
I know I'm just one person, but quite a few people have made similar proclamations, and among peers I know several just finally abandoned the site (the whole fake news things already starting the flow). These sorts of periodic issues just blend away when a site is on a dramatic growth curve and it just gets drowned out, but Facebook had essentially peaked, so they're really in a position to only lose users.
I'm keeping messenger for now, only because my GF is in another state, and it's the most consistent way to video chat (which is a shame).
Good thing that FB georestricted the app from Play Store, leaving dodgy operators to fill its space and deliver spyware bombs instead. /s
Getting her to add it and see that a few people on her contact list were already on there, including her boss, and that you can audio/video chat was a big push. Still working on that, though.
Might be worth a shot:
Also one person not representative of the population, arguably, as you're commenting on HN which may make you more aware of the recent news on Facebook and potentially more security-conscious.
Further anecdata - several non-nerds in my life have decided to use facebook less, and several have also started using Signal instead of WhatsApp.
I’d say it’s a small but significant number of people, I don’t expect it to hurt Facebook much unless it becomes a trend - if cultural trendsetters if different groups do the same, it could do some serious damage. (See also: Elon).
But it's only when there are negative consequences for people individually beyond collectives like Cambridge Analytica that people will dramatically change their usage patterns. Self preservation is one of the strongest human instincts.
Already parents are much more careful of their children's usage. Things can change suddenly and before you know it the tech stereotype of 'indifferent users' will be over and the conversation will shift to 'entitled users'.
Source for my intuition: I worked on something very close three years ago (at Facebook). Privacy scandals barely ever register at any company I worked; seemingly minor tweaks to the News Feed could have that compound impact.
Society has changed.