It will probably surprise a lot of people to learn that this isn't true.

A higher percentage of 30-49 year olds report using Facebook than in 50+ age groups

The bias toward younger generations is even higher when you include Instagram

One source https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/social-media...

I think many in the Hacker News bubble stopped using it and assume everyone else did, too. It's not too surprising when you read articles like this that paint a completely different picture of the platform than what your friends and family are actually seeing when they use it, as evidenced by the multitude of reports in this comment section from people whose family and friends are still getting value out of the site.

They are not sending their best.

I never seriously used Facebook; only once when a reallife buddy wanted means to communicate and I did not have a smartphone. But it was already really awful back then.

Now that AI spams down and eliminates real human beings, I guess many of these anti-social websites will die. Or at the least be in serious decline from where they can not easily escape anymore. Because which real human being wants all that AI slop?

I only log in to see what friends/family are doing, and I have fewer than 100 friends on both added together, but I have to scroll and scroll to see anything by those I am interested in.

Whether it's AI or not, it's all irrelevant slop to me.

Mostly Simpsons memes, Seinfeld memes, Pro Wrestling memes, Sopranos memes, and then intersections of those memes (Seinfeld Pro Wrestling, Simpsons Pro Wrestling, etc.). Some nerd shit. Stuff from the handful of friends of mine and local groups I interact with who still post on Facebook. Maybe <1% total garbage like what the article describes but I immediately block any groups or users who post anything even slightly annoying. I almost never watch any video content at all. It's unironically better passive content than anywhere else left on the web, probably because all the people trying to be hip have gone somewhere else lol

However whatever their UI is sluggish as hell and I'm surprised this wasn't discussed. You'll click block user/group and it will respond multiple seconds later (on my symmetric 1Gbps FIOS connection) and UI elements will jump around. FB messenger is slow as shit and occasionally will fail to decrypt/load messages entirely, even though it works fine on my phone (don't have regular FB on my phone so can't make that comparison). There's an anti-performance cargo-cult among web devs. Perhaps their metrics only show what it saves them on server costs. But if I did not already use the site it would be impossible to convince me to start.

It's usually not AI (at least not obviously) but it's still slop.

If it was up to me, I think AI content should be OPT IN. I must choose to view AI content and not be force fed from the conveyor of slop. This is where governments should legislate but we'll never see this happen.