The inevitable decline of Facebook

I came in to take a break from mowing [the grass] and stumbled across a Medium article about why Facebook is dead ‘but doesn’t know it’. As I loathe Facebook with a passion, I was instantly intrigued.

The gist of the article is that generational change is killing Facebook. The youngest users don’t want to share a platform with the older members of their family – ewwww – while the politically inclined will head off to new apps that won’t fact check them, or try to make them feel bad about themselves.

As for the rest of us, we’ll be demanding things from social media that Facebook can’t or won’t offer, such as:

‘For social media users, expect (or demand) to see the introduction of a User’s Bill of Rights, including beefed-up privacy standards, far-less addictive algorithms, innovative protection from foreign trolling, and perhaps even ad revenue sharing… go Medium! It’s our presence and content creation that gives these platforms all their power and profit, and it’s time they start treating us more like customers and contributors and less like the product being sold.’

https://medium.com/better-marketing/facebook-is-dead-it-just-doesnt-know-it-yet-614e723e9f72

The nett effect of all this change will be that Facebook will become the domain of seniors. And I can’t wait! Having seen the demise of Geo Cities, and then Myspace, I knew the same would happen to Facebook, but I didn’t think it would take so very long, or that the platform would do so much damage along the way.

The one thing that bothers me is that I know something else will come along in time. I can only hope that by then, we will have learned to protect ourselves from the rapacious clutches of developers who see us as ‘the product’.

Facebook is dead, long live Facebook?

Meeks

p.s. you don’t have to sign in to Medium to read the article.