The only reason I keep FB around at this point is that's honestly the only way I have to contact a certain sub-section of people. The messenger app is the only real reason, that and FB is the new Classmates.com lol

ETA: I believe FB is dead in terms of what it once was. My GenZ teenagers seem to think so, and honestly so does almost everyone else I regularly actually interact with. What really killed it in my eyes is when they began targeting what showed up in your feed, instead of the old default "all, newest first". And over time it became harder and harder to find how to do "all, newest first". Once that happened, it was inevitable it would become the violently divided echo chamber it is today.

The first people to jump ship are going to be the ones who already desire something "better" than the current environment. Those who haven't yet jumped ship are the ones who are not (yet?) dissatisfied enough with the current environment to make a change.

If enough of the "early leavers" manage to coalesce around the same new space, then that new space is instantly noticeably "better." On the other hand, because those early leavers are a very small proportion of the place they are leaving, the old place doesn't change much. Even if the rate of that change does increase, that rate change may not even be very noticeable (although I have already heard of an uptick in pro-company rhetoric at reddit).

As I recall, this is precisely what happened when Digg began its collapse, and many people abandoned Digg for Reddit. Reddit was instantly a much better forum than Digg had become. Now the same thing is happening again, well, not exactly.

Digg declined because it was a silo, and because corporate interests needed to monetize it. Corporate interests made decisions that they felt went in the direction of monetization, with disregard to the overall user experience. Reddit is also a silo, also operated by corporate interests, who are also making decisions they feel are in the direction of monetization, with disregard to the overall user experience. The difference today seems to be that the place people are jumping ship to is not a silo, and is not operated by corporate interests.

It'll be interesting to see where the fediverse goes, and how this landscape develops. With beehaw defederating from lemmy.world and sh.it, it's clear that it would be possible for corporate interests to operate their own instances, and only federate with "approved" instances - a fracturing of the fediverse, and a "re-siloing."

In the past, it took a long time and was quite difficult for users to abandon declining siloes. The fediverse makes it so much easier for people to jump ship when that becomes necessary. Corporate interests take note.

The death of a website isn't a single event, it's a process that plays over potentially years. It plays out like your favorite restaurant dying: first the food gets expensive, then the food quality becomes garbage, and then you notice how few patrons come at peak hours. The day that restaurant died isn't the day the "We've shut down" notice appears on the door. It's started long before then.

@Suedeltica I pretty much only follow family and a few friends, and some organisations I want news from. Not a huge number. But Facebook can't even deliver me all those posts in time order, and I'm missing out lots of personal news I wanted to hear, like friends being engaged! If a 'social network' can't even do that basic function, it's useless. I keep getting prompted to follow more people, when I can't even get the updates from the people I already follow.

@Lells

I miss altavista, but not as much as I miss webcrawler. Webcrawler was THE best once upon a time imo.