> People keep claiming that Facebook has no users anymore and that Meta's numbers must be fake
I only ever hear this stuff from people that don't use Facebook. It's a self-selecting crowd and they have their fingers in their ears and theirs eyes closed shut while yelling into the void trying to convince themselves everyone else is just like them. Except all that's out there is the same echo chamber of people that also are doing the exact same thing.
that's what happens with stuff that is so popular it becomes infrastructure. It's like the guy who goes "ew I haven't touched Java in ten years" while half the stuff he uses runs on it. WhatsApp in some countries is less of a ChatApp you use than a thing you live in.
Like the psychology bit that Freud seems absurd because all that's left to us are his mistakes because the rest has been so thoroughly absorbed you don't even realize it
I found with FB if you’re in some community that uses it then that’s it, you either use it or miss out.
For a long time my running group used it, and while it still does, the WhatsApp community is more used now. My (Catholic) church still uses Facebook for many announcements along with its own website.
You're probably being downvoted as most here are conflating WhatsApp and FB as both are owned by Meta so you're distinction is moot in the context of this discussion.
Nah, I'm getting the impression from having a Facebook login and it looking like the platform best representing Dead Internet Theory. That's compared with other Meta platforms I've invested a lot less time in trying to cultivate a social network on which friends actually still communicate on, so it's not like I'm part of some self-selecting group of hardline opponents.
I can remember when my Facebook feed was full of travel and baby pictures (not to mention much earlier days when it was how you got invited to parties) Now when I log in, the feed is full of slop, with maybe one actual update from someone I last saw in high school 20 years ago. That's not just because they're filling the feed with slop for the sake of it. If I navigate to a friend's profile their most recent updates are probably their last three birthdays, each with generic greetings offered by 3-5 people presumably not close enough to have their phone number. My last few friend requests are all bots. I'm sure people still habitually click the app and scroll for a few moments, and also sure it might be different for communities in India or Brazil but yeah... it really isn't what it used to be for regular people who heavily used it for at least a decade and couldn't care less about privacy concerns or Zuck's politics. It's gone from social network to third rate clickbait feed which happens to be a default app on more phones than the better ones...
As for Threads, there was something about the way they tried to entice signups with the world's dullest clickbait that just didn't induce me to see if anyone actually used it for stuff.
I still log into Facebook monthly to see updates from my parents/relatives, who still use it somewhat regularly. I can't remember the last time I saw a post from anyone I know personally under the age of 60, aside from the one guy who posts political rants every day.
I hear a lot of people talk about Facebook Marketplace, but that's not a thing where I live, that probably pushes up the numbers a lot. When I do log in I sometimes check on some of the retro tech/homelabbing communities and they seem pretty popular with many posts a day, so there are definitely people there.
I only ever hear this stuff from people that don't use Facebook. It's a self-selecting crowd and they have their fingers in their ears and theirs eyes closed shut while yelling into the void trying to convince themselves everyone else is just like them. Except all that's out there is the same echo chamber of people that also are doing the exact same thing.