Comment by always_good | Hacker News Reader

Comment by always_good | Hacker News Reader

I have to wonder how many HN comment anecdotes are related to HNers just getting older.

Yeah, I'm meeting fewer people than I did in uni. I use Facebook less than I did in uni. As I get older, it takes more and more effort to meet people. Easy for me to see downward trends in Facebook when I don't plot them against downward trends in novelty in my own social life.

But then I moved abroad at 25, I'm almost 30 now, I'm meeting new people (immigrants and locals) every month, and Facebook has become useful again for growing acquaintances into friendships like it always was.

HNers like to grandstand about how they rediscovered how to call people instead of messaging them, but that's still something you do with your closer circle, not acquaintances in 2018. And that's a personal issue if you had to quit Facebook just to relearn how to call mom or your best friends. I certainly don't relate to that.

It's like people who condemn Facebook because they got addicted to scrolling the news feed. Seems like condemning Netflix because you can't stop binge-watching. At which point do you take responsibility for yourself?

Aside, SimilarWeb, like Alexa, seems pretty useless for metrics. I remember gaining 100k+ Alexa ranking by installing the Alexa toolbar on my own machine and visiting my own websites as usual. Never looked at Alexa ratings since.

I guess I'm getting anti-Facebook fatigue. Especially when the predictable HN comments are things like "I quit Facebook and now I go outside again. Everyone needs to try this!"

I might be able to give some perspective on this. I'm 16 years old, and I know about 4 people who are active om FB. People who are a few years older generally do have FB, though, and use it quite intensively. Most of the contact people have with FB are WhatsApp and Instagram, which are both ubiquitous. (For context, I'm Dutch.)

> I remember gaining 100k+ Alexa ranking by installing the Alexa toolbar on my own machine and visiting my own websites as usual. Never looked at Alexa ratings since.

I'm ashamed to admit my first thought was "damn I need to install Alexa and start browsing our site" lol =(

> At which point do you take responsibility for yourself?

According to my life amongst real breathing people, most people come to that phase either very late in life, or never.

Plus as another comment said, these platforms are designed to addict -- they exploit brain bugs and vulnerabilities, so to speak.

Me personally? I only lasted 5-6 months in the first part of 2013. I very quickly understood what is going on and even though I was much more insecure and needed loads of validation, I still got out.

I am sympathetic to the message -- I fully get it that you should be mature and take responsibility for your emotions.

But don't idealize Homo Sapiens. Common sense isn't common at all.

Yes we should take responsibility for ourselves but the companies must be penalized when taking advantage of brain weaknesses as well.

I would add that Americans are (possibly uniquely) politicised and can't seem to stop constant posting about news. My friends from other countries never do that and instead use Facebook to talk about their actual lives.

I also have anti-Facebook fatigue and HN threads about Facebook are tiresome and predictable. It is like a never-ending line of newly converted going on about veganism or Crossfit or whatever...but in HackerNews' case it is about anti-Facebook and how you'll be smarter, sexier, sleep better, lose weight, and your children and dog will love you more once you give up Facebook.

I haven't been on Facebook for 6 and 7 years and still often feel like I'm missing out and find it difficult to stay in the loop on events as well as staying connected with new acquaintences. How about that?

Facebook is actively incentivizing posting of news. I remember over the years they made multiple changes specifically to bring more news to the users. Which is strange, given that they had the bulk of their growth when people were posting banal stuff and game requests.

> At which point do you take responsibility for yourself?

Everything these apps do is to get people use it more, on purpose. All humans are addicted to these websites. Our brains are built like this. May be because of evolution. So it's not individual fault.

> At which point do you take responsibility for yourself?

Taking responsibility for yourself is about how you use your will. Criticizing facebook is about how you use your reason. I don't see how these need to be in conflict. It's not necessary to blame yourself in order to take responsibility for yourself.

I have to wonder if you are serious. I'm getting anti-Facebook fatigue fatigue. The site will continue to see less usage, there is no doubt.

The question is how many of its existing users will stay on an affiliated Zuckerberg platform?

This is probably me.

I use instagram a little bit.

I am writing an app in react-native.

Does that count? I basically check facebook for event invites only.

More people are not ages 16-25 than are ages 16-25 in the world though.

> Aside, SimilarWeb, like Alexa, seems pretty useless for metrics.

Are there any other better metrics than these two?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com