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Facebook itself seems to be screwed. I just reactivated my FB profile, with the goal of deleting 80% of "friends", because the feed has become so toxic.

1. Half of my friends have stopped being active since 2020. Some say goodbye, most disappear quietly. But I think antivax and all the anti-gov rhetoric was the last straw for most people.

2. The most active accounts are selling something. Some sell insurance, others sell politics.

3. It's unattractive to people in their early 20s or below.

4. Like many other social media, it has become a game to see who can publicly humiliate other people. It's not as bad as Reddit, but the absence of downvotes mean that people can play really dirty.

5. FB moderation is either AI or untrained minimum wage people basically clicking random buttons. The AI is very predictable and documented, so actual trolls know how to get around it or trick people into self banning (e.g. "white trash")

6. Everyone feels that FB is failing, so they stopped investing in it. Less photos, videos, content, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think FB is effectively a sinking ship, a Yahoo. Perhaps the Meta rebranding was them distancing from FB. Instagram is still hot, though.

After my divorce 25 years ago I was really raw emotionally and stopped watching TV, listening to the radio, and reading the newspaper. What was interesting is after a decade of that going back to any of those was way way too much negative stim.

Six months ago replaced my home computer and decided to just not use it with FB. And I got a new smartphone which I now only use for texting. I find that opening FB at work Monday morning gives me the exact same feeling that TV, radio, and newspapers do.

>I just reactivated my FB profile... because the feed has become so toxic.

Umm... you reactivated your profile because something you don't see or use is toxic? What?

"I just reactivated my FB profile [which I had deactivated] because the feed has become so toxic", at a guess; like, giving it another chance. Note how the next sentence was something about going to unfriend most of their FB "friends", which would probably be useful if you're deciding to go back to it because it's the only place online where your mother hangs out, or something.

I think it has potential to be useful if cleaned up, but it needs some drastic measures at this point.

> Facebook itself seems to be screwed.

I felt the same way and saw all the toxicity back in 2015. I deleted my FB account back then.

Every year since then, people have been predicting Facebooks demise.

Maybe this time, under current market conditions facing the company, and arguably worst public discourse - maybe now this time is different. I don’t know.

I don’t underestimate FB finding a new monetization avenue. I think FB will evolve, whether that is better or worse for society I don’t know.

I think the "metaverse" might actually be on the mark. It was just that peak metaverse was Farmville.

Nobody wants 4D Farmville though. They're not looking for immersion. They're looking for a minimum effort way to socialize.

FB likely peaked around 2012 (coincidentally around IPO). After that, it was cashing in on the goodwill it had built.

People say it was in decline since the Meta announcement, but I think it was long gone by then. Stock price is a lagging indicator. Meta was a catalyst.

People seem to forget about Instagram and Whatsapp when talking about Meta/FB. Both are acquisitions that kept FB relevant for a new generation. They still have a huge amount of market capital. Even if they don't develop the Metaverse in house, they can still just buy whoever makes it or the next Big Thing. They probably would have bought TikTok if it wasn't Chinese-owned.

Does anyone know where this metaverse crap came from? Was it just straight out of Zuck’s mind? It’s so funny and bizarre to watch him torpedo the company like this. Not that I’m complaining.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/21/mark-zuckerberg-shows-early-...

He probably saw Ready Player One and decided to bet on that future

There was a shareholder call a few years ago where Zuck remarked that major technological shifts occur when screens change: Movies > TV > Monitors > Phone Screens. He sees VR as the next screen, and the metaverse as the content for that screen. He wants to capture and shape the VR market.

But I think the real next media is already here, TikTok and social video. While the screens are the same, the last decade has seen a shift from text/images to videos. Maybe VR will take over, but not in the same way phones will. You can take your phone out and scroll through whatever very easily, but we are a LONG way from casually putting on a VR headset to consume a few minutes of content.

That screen chain went down a portability curve and VR would be going backwards, I wonder if anyone has had the guts to tell him this in the FB citadel.

> He sees VR as the next screen, and the metaverse as the content for that screen. He wants to capture and shape the VR market.

VR is just part of it, it's the easiest version of XR and will be viable for years before good AR. It's only a stepping stone as technologies mature, and calling it "VR" seems to betray a fundamental misunderstanding. The goal isn't something separate and sequestered from real life, but intertwined with it.

> While the screens are the same, the last decade has seen a shift from text/images to videos

Explicitly commented on (ex 4Q21 ER), text -> images -> video -> ??? as increasing immersion when technology (like bandwidth) allows. Escaping a 2D screen is their attempt to leapfrog 'disruption' (Instagram, TikTok) and own the future before it happens, because they won't be able to buy it with current antitrust positioning.

Snow Crash by Neil Stevenson

Meta is Facebook's Google Plus without all the potential of Google Plus. Google Plus at least had the independence to potentially be something before the corporate machine reasserted itself. Meta's VR stuff is ugly. People organizing and sharing photo walks helped carry Google Plus in the down months. Who's going to go on a photo walk in Facebook's idea of virtual reality? There's nothing there except what the machine has dictated must be built. And they've bet the farm on it in the same way Google turned the entirety of the company into a funnel for +.

Instagram was still new enough to beat, and they had the seed for what a more patient company could have grown through all its early mistakes. They might very well have shown Facebook how important chat and photos were in trying to make a Facebook clone and drove them to buy WhatsApp and Instagram. Google built what Facebook had to buy, but they didn't understand what that meant and let them become just another unchanging set of things bolted on to Google.

I don't know if the failure of Google Plus and all the changes they made to the company to serve it were the cause of Google's current state, but it probably didn't help. Facebook was already in the PR pit Google is in before the Meta rebrand. Meta isn't even good VR. There's so much better.

Let's find out.

> But it feels like fb is abandoning all of it and going full force to metaverse. It feels like fb wants to be either the biggest or nothing.

It is Meta, which includes (Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram and Oculus) that is pushing for this 'metaverse' thing and this reminds me of Microsoft trying to own everything in the software landscape as soon as they won the desktop PC industry.

The failures of Ping (Apple), So.cl (Microsoft) and Google+ (Google) was when Zuckerberg knew he won with social networks with FB and has already expanded beyond FB very early and quickly.

> Also isn't like 95% of the engineers at facebook all mainly web developers or related.

Where did you get that figure from? I hope you are not being serious about that claim.

> And metaverse is basically game development.. something facebook has no experience in.

So Oculus isn't in games development industry? They have been selling shovels to game developers and companies for years.

> ...Maybe they should acquire or partner up with epic to have some hope.

What is this then? [0]

> is fb done for?

No.

I would not bet against the first and the fastest company to reach $1 trillion dollars in the 21st century to be quickly dead in the next 10 years. Meta is more than just Facebook.

[0] https://metaverse-standards.org/news/press-releases/leading-...

The VR metaverse is not going to take off, although their devices are nice. Strapping a blindfold on face is not very tolerable, and it's not a device that makes you look cool to your friends.

But zuck is right that people (Especially genZ) will use gaming and virtual worlds for their social life. Real life is too busy , disconnected and probably economically much harder than before. The virtual one is better, richer and permanent. My guess is he believes that the world is ready for Second life to go mainstream, and he's building the "whole world" version of it. I have to say he s off-track currently, too much focus on VR. Their avatars really suck. But they'll get there eventually

Facebook done an Alphabet and have an umbrella brand, for which Facebook is basically a side project now and not to be taken seriously. Facebook is still a cash cow for Meta just like Google is a cash cow for Alphabet and fuels their AD business. Tectonic shifts and pivots like this just mean they have the opportunity to branch out into other markets and not rely on singular revenue streams which could become unreliable in the future. It’s a risky bet that could work. Only time will tell and I’m not predicting anything.

Facebook is a slow outdated platform with an aging population and no future because younger people want speed and an actual reason to use it. Even looking at the "timeline" of a Facebook profile is an outdated method of showing data.

I think as long as the ad dollars continue to pour in, the platform will remain strong. As much as it has been affected in the U.S. I wonder how strong it still is in other countries outside of the US market.

lots of good points, let me sell my FB stock

It seems they’re putting all of their money on VR. It depends on how that evolves over the next couple of years.

> is fb done for?

Everyone is on Instagram.

Ask HN: Is Facebook Done?