Facebooks Imaginary Friends

I do use Facebook  .....

Facebook Not Always A Party For Users .....

.... but only to stay in touch with a small number of ex-colleagues and friends, mainly from my place of last employment.

This is more than enough functionality for me, and frankly how people manage with 500 or 600 'friends' I really don't know. Even with my limited number of Facebook friends, I find myself getting constant notifications about things that they are interested in, but which I am not. I regularly whittle these notifications down by blocking specific posts, which my friends are tagged in from commercial companies.

So eventually that should cover their interests that don't align with mine, and reduce the number of unwanted post notifications, whilst leaving the friends time-lines sending me more relevant notifications. However what really annoys me about Facebook, are some features with which they try to drive extra usage, and therefore extra click traffic revenues (which by the way I give them none of because I don't click on adverts).

Blackmail Or Threats .... Both Annoying

The first, is the intermittent blocking of my post history on my Mobile version of the Facebook App, with the message "Add nn friends to see more posts" .... What The Feck!!  I should invite every one in the world to 'be my Facebook friend'? Why? Just to see my current friends post?

Which brings me to my second and biggest hate. Its euphemistically called 'People You May Know' .... in which Facebook parades people from across the globe as potential 'friends'. On what basis its decided that I might I know these people is a total f*cking mystery.

I do know people who travel to Asia for holidays, or even one who once lived in India, but I have never been to either location (and wouldn't tell Facebook even if I had), and in fact apart from my last employment name and location (and I have not even made older employments visible at the moment because of the fear of a deluge of even more suggested Facebook friends), I have given no further personal details as public.

FB Non Friends - Unbelievably This Is Just One Tranche Of Suggested Friends 10-12-2019

But this doesn't stop me getting suggested friends from across the globe, who by not even the standards of the most twisted Artificial Intelligence, could possibly be people I might know. These possible acquaintances can come from the UK, India, Thailand, Bulgaria, Russia, and well just about anywhere on the globe, but largely India (and for some reason people from Western Europe, North and South America and Africa seem to be largely excluded as potential friend pools).

In the example above, I knew not one of them, and I removed them with 50 seconds frantic clicking on the 'x'. But in a few days, Facebook will assemble another legion of nobodies, and parade them before me until perforce I remove them. In fact, I never know any of them .... and the suggestions just get more and more outré as time goes on.

Facebook ....  with demographics like these, you probably think your position is unassailable:

• Facebook users are 43% female and 57% male.
• Of  all the people on the internet, 83% of Women & 75% of Men use Facebook.
  Average Facebook user has 155 “friends”.
• 62% of on-line Seniors aged 65+ are on Facebook, and 72% are between age 50-64.
• 88% of on-line users of age 18-29 are on Facebook, 84% of those 30-49.
• 82% of college graduates are on Facebook.
• 72% of on-line users of income more than $75K are on Facebook.
• 85% of Facebook’s Daily Active Users Come from Outside the US/Canada.
• The largest population on Facebook is from India with over 270 million users followed by 190 million from the US.
• Brazil and Indonesia both have around 120 million users.
• Monthly Active Users from Asia are 1 billion.
• Europe has 385 million Facebook users.
•  96% of Facebook users accessed via mobile devices.
• 1.47 billion Daily Desktop Active Users and 1.59 billion Mobile Daily Active Users. 
• The average Facebook revenue per global user is $7.05

But despite your 2.41 billion annual users, you are still in danger of losing your usefulness as a tool, and finding your usage diluted, as on-line users start having multiple platforms for different functions. So the more you try to drive revenues by harassing users into actions which most don't want to do e.g. by restricting what users can turn off, the more you will accelerate this process amongst the older user demographics.

You have already lost you relevance to many politicians such as President Trump who uses Twitter, and many younger social media users, who are flocking to TikTok, or similar new Apps, even though they may retain their Facebook accounts .... your rise was dramatic, but the demise could be just as swift if you lose the reason for that rise.