Ask HN: What Keeps You on FB?

- It's a non-professional LinkedIn. Just want to keep in touch with some people that I get to know IRL.

- Some people are not close enough to regularly call, and not far enough to drop from life. Liking posts or commenting emojis keeps the connection.

- Groups. There are some really nice groups that are on topics I am interested in, like <local language> literature, science writing in <local language>, group of local scholars.

- All local businesspeople are on Facebook. I regularly make queries on their products or shop in general through FB chat.

- I do <performing art> as a hobby. I perform. Upload it to FB showing it to a custom list of friends, ang get 30+ likes. Love doing it.

- Some people I care about are there. They post there, and I like to see them. Often close-ish people from the past.

- Eternal September literally ruined Quora. While specialized, well-moderated groups in FB are going strong. There are several intellectually satisfying groups on FB.

- Fine grained control over what I make visible to whom, and what I see. I have 800+ friends (all known IRL), but I have manually unfollowed 500+ of them.

- Network effect makes some content great. It's just statistical. If there are much more posts, there are slightly more good posts. Memes on <national culture> are great.

- Where I live, social status gives you many opportunities and advantages. FB is crucial in my local comminity for gaining that status.

Watching pictures of my friends vacations on FB is better for my mental health than reading the angry political opinions of some mentally ill anonymous on Reddit.

Fb messenger + portal. My kids can say “hey portal, call grandpa” to call my parents who live abroad. While on the call the kids can run around in the living room and the camera just follows them. I have never found a better setup than that. Fb does keep our family connected esp during the last 2 years.

Facebook Messenger is the most used communicator in my country (Poland). Without it I would be basically disconnected from my friends and people from university/work. I'm not really happy about how dependent we are on having a Facebook account.

My feed is bare and I like it that way. I just unfollow any friend I have so they don't appear in my feed. I also unfollow groups I'm part of, but still visit the groups on my own terms. Facebook stores your most recent search and there's a small list of people/groups that I click on when I feel like it.

So groups is what keeps me on there.

Marketplace. It's awesome for local second hand stuff. I wish it had more/better filtering and search options but I guess that intentional. Still it's better than anything else.

I have a pseudonymous account with no friends at all. I use it to find family friendly activities around town, espescially free ones that are not advertised elsewhere.

Nothing. I gave up on FB years ago. I was a fan of Mafia Wars at the time, so I gave my account to some friends who ran the MW clan I was a member of, and so far as I know they have continued to run the account for the benefit of the clan ever since.

I've never looked back.

My wife keeps her FB account to socialize with her family and some friends, and I occasionally get updates from her. That's as close as I get.

For me it was the Oculus Quest :) I still had a token FB account just for that. But 2 months ago they finally decoupled it so I deleted it the same week.

Facebook's usefulness for its original purpose: keeping up to date on friends, was already broken years ago when they moved from the one simple linear feed to the algorithmic timeline. I don't want suggested content.

I have no idea. I suspended my account years ago, but re-activated when I interviewed with FB. I figured it would be difficult to acceptably explain why I wanted to work there if I didn’t use FB. I need to write a script to download all of my pictures and then delete my account.

Keeping track of what is happening in the lives 20ish real life friends whom I wouldn't really have contact with otherwise. It's also the only way I know how to contact several of them if I had to.

My daughters sports team uses it as their main communication channel.

Just on Friday I had a friend message me because his phone was run over and he lost his contacts. Also I assume there's tons of tech industry back-channel private groups - I'm in one small one and it's useful.

There are two groups I am a part of - a web development one (free), and a workout program's private group that you gain access to as part of membership, that I access frequently. And occasionally (rarely), Marketplace.

Pretty much all local news are on FB, starting from conventional TV channels and news media, as well as local fb pages who push city-wide local news.

Basically all the discussion be it political, social, economics - happens on FB now

Fb messenger (really just for my mom!) - it is the main way we communicate because I am abroad and we have different phone setups (iPhone vs android).

also apartment housing -- I've found every apartment on FB!

otherwise I try to never use FB

Two friends who aren’t on other social media.

A few bands who don’t announce shows elsewhere.

My friends have certainly dropped their FB activity, but they are still there. It's a quick way to see medium / big events in their lives, like birthdays, vacations, or engagements.

Marketplace. It’s the best way to find local second hand stuff.

Paycheck and lack of larger paychecks elsewhere. Or do you mean with a profile? FB Marketplace and events around town: basically, a structured Craigslist replacement.

Nothing really...I got a new phone and forgot to install Facebook for almost 2 months. even now after installing it I rarely post. Just wish people happy birthday

It's my rolodex, that's about it. I don't look at it or post anything, really

Phone numbers change far too often/easily, this has been a decent constant

Real-life friends who post things there that they don't share anywhere else, and real-life groups that use it to communicate and organize meet-ups.

FB Messenger is my country's main social media site. I can't communicate with almost all of my loved ones if I don't have one.

Summarily, after 2h of posters: hearing what is up from other people they care about is why.

Kind of like Twitter, only Twitter is also good at discovery.

My hometown is there. So are my friends from college. Facebook forces nothing on me, it’s a simple place to stay connected.

Messenger. Never use the actual core fb website functionality anymore. Nor do many of my peers by the looks of it

my non-techie family

Keeping in touch with all of my family in Europe.

The emails no matter how many times I click the unsubscribe link.

Seems to automatically opt-in every time they come up with a new category of notification spam.

Other than that, think I posted a Merry Christmas picture in a dodgy sparkly Santa hat I found lying in the road around eight years ago.

Real names. It’s FB most important feature and unique differentiator