In "Facebook’s Decline of 2017 is Coming to Light" Michael Spencer has collected a whole bunch of statistics about Facebook use that indicate it broadly declined over 2017. While you may have had that gut feeling already these numbers are hard to argue with.
A few highlights from his list:
- time adults spent on Facebook declined 4% year-over-year (YoY) in November 2017
- Facebook’s share of visits fell 8% in 2017
- Search drove 34.8% of site visits in 2017, compared with 25.6% from social
- Facebook user behavior changed, decreasing the time spent by 5% - 50 million minutes per day less
- Facebook traffic to publishers declined 6 percent since the beginning of January
All this is great news for services like Steemit and the legions of other decentralized networks that are rushing to fill the gap created by systematic exploitation - with or without consent - of users and their data. Some people have posited that our social media and Internet history are actually are actually our true genes. They identify us better than our DNA and can outlive our physical presence. If that is really the case then I like many others are glad we don't all have to wallow in Facebook surrounded by bots, trolls, sociopaths, haters, and other miscreants after our data and clicks for much longer. That's not to say all those things will magically go away in the future, just that we will have options to leave them behind to fester on their own in the Deep Swamp. Bots can then troll other bots and try to sell them junk health supplements and conspiracy bullshit. Good riddance.
Source: https://medium.com/@Michael_Spencer/facebooks-decline-of-2017-is-coming-to-light-981463458c22
Image from: https://digiday.com/media/facebook-watch-is-heavily-influenced-by-the-news-feed/