Because I help a senior with his online existence I made one I use exclusively to test things and explain to him later in his own account. Otherwise, nope.
Sunday morning is also a lull time for most. That said, there is more traction than I expected. That that said, bibinmohan made that followup comment about 18 minutes after posting the AskHN.
I think better answer would be it is no longer cool to have Facebook account specifically for people on HN. So even if we have account we would not come and accept.
HN opinions are not representative of the general population.
There's definitely an echo chamber here, and as long as we recognize that and not think opinions here are normative, we can appropriately discount very emotional and contrarian opinions.
I use FB and so do many of my friends. Why? We're all older and people like posting pictures of their kids. It's also a lot less intrusive.
I'm sure we've all been at dinner parties where someone wants to show you your photo album and you have to pretend to be interested but it's a chore. FB lets them show their photo album in a way that is passive, and if something catches your eye, and you can comment but otherwise you don't have to engage. Win-win.
I unfollow or block friends that post politics or other stupid stuff. It keeps my feed fairly clean, and I get to see what my friends are doing. When I meet up with them, I have context for starting a conversation that is less surface level.
Still do but mainly for participating in groups that are for specific interests. Easiest way to connect with, learn from and teach others interested in similar things.
Around 2017 facebook decided I have to send them a scan of my ID (I registered in early days when most people used nicknames). This was last time I used it :)
Likewise here in Victoria, BC. I don’t look at anything other than what I’m trying to sell. Unfortunately, other means of selling locally are virtually dead.
Facebook marketplace is about on-par popularity-wise with kijiji these days. Not too long ago I had to sell a used car and put it on both and received about the same number of genuine interest responses from both sites. Kijiji is a better site in my opinion; better layout, ux, search options and filtering etc. But facebook has more people already on it so network effects.
I’ve never had one. Never had an IG account. I’ve sadly not been able to escape WhatsApp.
An interesting side effect of this: I don’t have contact with any childhood friends. I have no idea what anyone became.
Creepy thing: I was once made aware of an IG account with my usual online handle and my first and last name. No pictures, and seemingly completely inactive, but it’s there. I tried to reach out to IG, however they didn’t care.
I had a Facebook account until recently and so knew what people I was childhood friends became, sort of. The ones who were successful seemed to not really use it so you didn't really see what they were up to one way or the other, but peoples whose life didn't really work out seemed to spend a lot of time advertising that fact there.
Wasn't logged into mine for couple of years, finally deleted it completely 2 months ago. Was still using messenger, lost couple of contacts there. No biggie
I have one but only use WhatsApp and Messenger. When I opened Facebook.com recently it asked me if I want to subscribe to go ad free for 10 bucks a month.
I have one now. I started helping out at a local sports club and facebook is one of the channels of communication. There's an email list too, but that isn't discoverable.
I feel like this is what FB is good at and should be - there's posts about the group and about the sport. And that's it. I don't post anything on my personal feed and I don't read anything from anyone's personal posts.
Cancelled in 2021 having not used it at all for 10 years. I put in a message to say I was leaving and folks said they would miss me. I think that says a lot.
I closed mine out in about 2014 and never looked back.
I don't have many... any friends from my early life, specifically from school. In fact I haven't kept any friends from before 5 years ago. Maybe I'm a dick? Maybe people naturally drift apart? I dunno. It makes me wonder. I've never been great at maintaining relationships over time or distance.
I've always thought I was weird like this. My partner has a ton of friends and works at maintaining friendships. I read all the time how humans are social animals and need a group of friends, etc etc. I've never felt this, and have come to accept that's just the way I am. I still often wonder if this is something I'll regret when I'm old, whether I'll be lonely... No idea.
I've come to realize that I do need a social structure, but somehow I've managed to not keep friends. Maybe even not have friends until recently? I don't know. The word friend is nebulous, and I tend to qualify friend as someone I would help bury a body. I only have a few of those now.
Can't remember the year, but I created a facebook account when it became possible to do so without invitation. A bit later, more people started to join and I got these friend requests, or whatever they were called. There was one in particular that stood out as uncomfortable, which made me think: is there anything I want to share with these people? It's going to sound phony. At which point I deleted my account. Never looked back. No need to, since there's still phone, email and text for more "personalized" conversation.
My SO created her account at the same time, and still uses it, and it has always looked terribly superficial to me. Keeping up appearances.
Haven't used mine in ages but during Corona it was super useful. My local town has Facebook groups with over 10% of the population of the town. It's super useful to get local knowledge and details on new events etc.
So, yes. Still popular here.
I wouldn't know where else these communities would form at the moment.
I use it and I like it. My feed is 40% animal posts, 40% what’s up with my family, friends and their families; and 20% physics and math jokes. Hard to see the downsides.
I do have heavy ad blocking so fb can’t follow me around the web. The ads I do see seem poorly targeted to me, so it seems like things are working.
I am continually mystified that Ozempic reduces consumption of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs; reduces or eliminates certain OCD like nail biting, reduces of course eating, yet doesn’t reduce doomscrolling.
I’m also surprised nobody else seems to be asking this.
77 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 133 ms ] threadSecond to trad email/pass
I have an account that I have not logged into for 10 years - I do not think that really counts.
It doesn't help that you asked the question in the middle of the weekend night.
There's definitely an echo chamber here, and as long as we recognize that and not think opinions here are normative, we can appropriately discount very emotional and contrarian opinions.
I use FB and so do many of my friends. Why? We're all older and people like posting pictures of their kids. It's also a lot less intrusive.
I'm sure we've all been at dinner parties where someone wants to show you your photo album and you have to pretend to be interested but it's a chore. FB lets them show their photo album in a way that is passive, and if something catches your eye, and you can comment but otherwise you don't have to engage. Win-win.
I unfollow or block friends that post politics or other stupid stuff. It keeps my feed fairly clean, and I get to see what my friends are doing. When I meet up with them, I have context for starting a conversation that is less surface level.
whois their domain and ip range.
An interesting side effect of this: I don’t have contact with any childhood friends. I have no idea what anyone became.
Creepy thing: I was once made aware of an IG account with my usual online handle and my first and last name. No pictures, and seemingly completely inactive, but it’s there. I tried to reach out to IG, however they didn’t care.
I feel like this is what FB is good at and should be - there's posts about the group and about the sport. And that's it. I don't post anything on my personal feed and I don't read anything from anyone's personal posts.
I don't have many... any friends from my early life, specifically from school. In fact I haven't kept any friends from before 5 years ago. Maybe I'm a dick? Maybe people naturally drift apart? I dunno. It makes me wonder. I've never been great at maintaining relationships over time or distance.
I've always thought I was weird like this. My partner has a ton of friends and works at maintaining friendships. I read all the time how humans are social animals and need a group of friends, etc etc. I've never felt this, and have come to accept that's just the way I am. I still often wonder if this is something I'll regret when I'm old, whether I'll be lonely... No idea.
My SO created her account at the same time, and still uses it, and it has always looked terribly superficial to me. Keeping up appearances.
So, yes. Still popular here. I wouldn't know where else these communities would form at the moment.
I was horrified at the level of information you could scrape using the API and vowed to never have a personal account.
I do have heavy ad blocking so fb can’t follow me around the web. The ads I do see seem poorly targeted to me, so it seems like things are working.
For me the downside was addiction.
I spent 30-120 minutes scrolling the feed every day.
I’m also surprised nobody else seems to be asking this.