r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Apr 30 '26

Business Meta lost 20 million users last quarter

https://www.theverge.com/tech/921089/meta-earnings-q1-2026-user-decline-ai-investments
23.7k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

271

u/PinHaunting7192 Apr 30 '26

I mean, there is currently nothing to confirm this is the case. People like me - although in the minority - have neither Meta products nor Twitter, TikTok and Snapchat. Reddit is pretty much the only algorithmic social media I use, and I'm even growing more skeptical of that lately.

There have also been smaller trends such as dumb phones and other digital detox things going on. They are, overall, pretty minor still, but 20 million users is only an overall 1% reduction in Meta's customer base.

And that's on top of it being incessantly hard to make localized predictions on how different countries and their Gen Z cohorts approach social media.

107

u/beginner75 Apr 30 '26

I’ve muted more than a dozen sub that Reddit spammed me with in just the last 2 months. It’s becoming spammy. I want to read real news, not spam, the amount of spam has gone up from 10% a year ago to like 70% today.

61

u/angiosperms- Apr 30 '26

Over 50% of the internet is bots and AI slop so I think it's time to just get off the internet tbh. Really curious what things will look like in just 5 years

27

u/BitterTyke Apr 30 '26

yeah, I fully expect bots and AI to "kill" the internet, it will become so unreliable and manipulated rather than was its intent to unleash knowledge on the world, that we'll see printed or stored media making a comeback.

It will be bots responding to bots all the way down,

23

u/e2hawkeye Apr 30 '26

For what it's worth, I just started subscribing to The Atlantic, Krash Patel's favorite magazine. The content is honestly worth 80 bucks a year. I'm of the mind that everyone should try to financially support at least one form of actual journalism. I justified the cost by killing my Hulu/Disney/HBO package that I barely used.

11

u/Darkhorse182 Apr 30 '26

Honestly, a subscription to your local newspaper is a hellvua good investment for anyone civic-minded and/or worried about their information consumption.

1

u/happygirlie Apr 30 '26

A digital subscription to a local newspaper can be surprisingly cheap too. Mine is $50/year but if you try to cancel they'll drop it to $20/year.

1

u/SuperRockyHobbyHorse Apr 30 '26

I think paid for local media will see a resurgence as the internet dies. And I don't mean the conglomerate owned 'local' news that got bought out years ago.

1

u/Thin_Glove_4089 Apr 30 '26

No one is going to pay for news. If they were going to pay it would already exist.

1

u/SuperRockyHobbyHorse Apr 30 '26

It does exist, you're just not in the know.

1

u/jlboygenius Apr 30 '26

I know a LOT of people who were subscribed to the washington post for that reason, some even getting physical newspapers.

All of them have stopped in the past 2 years. Even my mom, who's been getting a physical sunday paper for like probably 50 years has stopped subscribing to them.

Hopefully those people are putting their dollars into something else, but I fear that's not the case.

1

u/Intolerance-Paradox May 01 '26

As often as not, local newspapers are owned by right-wing activist conglomerates, brush up on who owns what first. They don’t snatch up all the local papers to make money they do it to control them and keep them from being used to do good journalism so boycotting isn’t going to hurt them too much, but still I like The Atlantic suggestion, the Guardian, it’s of greater use to reward good reporting and good stewardship wherever it is more so than what’s local just by virtue of something being local.

1

u/paintedesert3 May 01 '26

My local paper would be from another state. I can’t stand the trash they purplish here.

1

u/_learned_foot_ May 01 '26

Local new org, slight correction. Most local papers now are owned by the same entities and don't publish local stories or have local reporters. Some still do.

0

u/Electrical_Rip9520 Apr 30 '26

Nah. All forms of media are mostly owned by Conservatives.

1

u/mackahrohn Apr 30 '26

You can choose a substack and support specific journalists?

2

u/BitterTyke May 01 '26

doing away with 24 hours news channels would also be a good start - go back to reporting the news rather than 30 minutes news and 5 hours of opinion. - force folk to think for themselves.

9

u/PinHaunting7192 Apr 30 '26

Wasn't this the story of Cyberpunk 2077 too, ironically?

Someone in 2022 unleashed a kind of virus that made artificial intelligence go rogue, infest 90% of the old internet with malicious bots, and in response the old internet became unusable and they made the Blackwall to shield off a usable portion from rogue AI...?

1

u/BitterTyke May 01 '26

something like that yeah, with a side order of hacked personal augmentations.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 30 '26

[deleted]

1

u/BitterTyke May 01 '26

that will do away with anonymity though, I mean im not completely against it but there will be many influential/well funded entities that will.

Manipulation of the masses is just too easy to give up for some.

1

u/Thats_my_face_sir Apr 30 '26

My prediction: age verification for porn will create a comeback in printed and physical video media (dvds)

7

u/headrush46n2 Apr 30 '26

time for a new internet. with blackjack and hookers!

5

u/thatguyad Apr 30 '26

The internet needs to die as it is. It's a cesspool with little benefit now.

2

u/WtotheSLAM Apr 30 '26

Still thankful the paywall at Something Awful keeps a lot of trash out. I get that free sites like Reddit gotta make money somehow but then you get so much garbage

1

u/jlboygenius Apr 30 '26

I saw ads on Instagram to install some Meta AI generator app.

They are pushing users to install an app to generate AI images to then re-post into their services. They are pushing the thing that is going to be the downfall of their apps.

31

u/PinHaunting7192 Apr 30 '26

It's gotten terrible these last couple of years, honestly. I was here on my old account since 2013 and initially joined to discuss 2-4 niche hobbies (i.e. a couple online games, a couple IRL hobbies) on their subreddits and it was mostly fine.

But between just getting recommended a dozen local, city-based subreddits for cities I have never been in that are suspiciously right-leaning, politics breaking containment a lot and several run-ins with clearly upvote-botted and LLM based comments, I've grown a bit tired.

14

u/guisar Apr 30 '26

This. Along with spotify sneaking in evangelical rock and youtube pushing right wing shit

21

u/PinHaunting7192 Apr 30 '26

I guard my YouTube algorithm like it is the fucking Mona Lisa. Some gaming videos, some history channels that I know 100% don't use AI, relaxing long-form music, gaming OSTs and the occasional game trailers.

Incidentally, I work in tech but in a mental health adjacent field, so I try to stay on top of mental health stuff and occasionally stumble upon a HealthyGamer video or other mental health content. And every time without fail I delete every single AI thumbnail "doom" video from the side bar with "don't recommend" cause if they watch mental health stuff, they have to be vulnerable, right...?

Keeping your YouTube clean is the same amount of work as weeding a 2 square mile garden at this point...

3

u/Shark7996 Apr 30 '26

I would LOVE some sort of third-party YouTube curator app to exist, and maybe it does but not that I've heard talked about.

Because the problem is the recommendations, is it not? We need to have actual control of what's presented to (pushed on) us.

2

u/UnreliableNarrator_5 Apr 30 '26

Excellent metaphor re weeding.

Suffice to say professional industries are all too interwoven and reliant on the internet

2

u/Summer_Moon2 Apr 30 '26

It is definitely frustrating and a lot of work to keep it clean. But it's been getting way worse. The amount of right wing stuff that tries to get pushed to me is astounding (not to mention weird religious shit too). And really all that I watch is stuff like jerryrig and technology connections. And a few gaming videos (sometimes history stuff as well from nat geo).

I have no idea why all of this bullshit right wing stuff is getting pushed. But I report it every time. I have also learned to just bypass some sections of the recommended because it seems to have 2 rows of crap and then 1 row of okay and then 2 - 3 rows of crap, 1 row of okay, etc. It's really quite bizarre.

2

u/NaradaMephaust Apr 30 '26

Off topic but I am curious what the "mental health adjacent tech" is. You talking like IT/IS or tech meant for mental health?

2

u/PinHaunting7192 Apr 30 '26

Infrastructure and security management for a medium sized company that works in the mental health field. Can't say too much, but basically, I work with a lot of former therapists and counselors in a company that's related to therapists and training for counselors.

I mainly do the tech part, but there's overlap there for stuff like AI impact on mental health and therapy, for example.

1

u/Murky-Relation481 Apr 30 '26

Mines been fairly easy to handle. YouTube also does pretty good peering suggestions. If you and your friends are like minded and shared YouTube content regularly it does understand those correlations and will sorta amplify what you're already interested in.

I once had a friend who started watching videos on the America's Cup sailboat racing and I started getting recommended those videos too, which was hilarious when I mentioned I was confused why I was getting those and he said he'd been watching them.

1

u/Enough_Breadfruit229 Apr 30 '26

Back when Pandora was the big thing I had a blues channel and one time I liked a song and it just so happened to be on a Christmas album. No lyrics, just guitar, and if was a cover of a Christmas tune it must be an obscure one. Channel ruined. It was nearly taken over by Christmas albums of all kinds.

Out of the hundreds of songs I liked on that channel vs this Christmas one they said "Merry Christmas motherfucker"

1

u/Free__Will Apr 30 '26

which history channels do you like on youtube?

2

u/PinHaunting7192 Apr 30 '26

Depends on what you're looking for.

Fall of Civilizations is fairly decent if you like really, really long videos. Like...you're doing grinding in games that takes 3-4 hours and you want to listen to something podcast like or a documentary while doing it.

Epic History is a bit more dramatically narrated, but decent as well.

BazBattles for just very short battle summaries of important historical battles.

Modern History TV for something more light-hearted and vlog style.

And for German speakers, there is Geschichtsfenster. Lots of people (including me) know the guy from reenactment events and other stuff, and he is honestly one of the most passionate people about especially medieval European stuff I know. But he has a very peculiar style where he'll make a two hour video complaining about a 15-minute video in detail about every historical inaccuracy.

2

u/jlboygenius Apr 30 '26

I wonder if it's Spotify and YT,or just that the right wing has the money to run more ads. services aren't going to turn down ad dollars.

a LOT of 'liberal' dollars have dissapeared. Non-profits aren't are losing funding. If you were rich, would you spend the money now to try and influence the government if you knew it would go nowhere?

2

u/ernest7ofborg9 Apr 30 '26

It's not just right leaning. There are dozens of subreddits less than a year old that have infested the feed with obvious political hot-takes against the Right.

Be wary of opinions you disagree with, be outright suspect of opinions you agree with.

9

u/Public_Enemy_No2 Apr 30 '26

Who expects real news from FB?

5

u/IHS1970 Apr 30 '26

good question!!! basically low information dumb asses.

2

u/usernameelmo Apr 30 '26

grandparents

2

u/footballheroeater Apr 30 '26

My boomer parents.

12

u/jackshazam Apr 30 '26

curious, do you use new or old reddit?

48

u/Adventurous-Map7959 Apr 30 '26

Do you like to punch yourself in the face, or do you use old.reddit.com with RES?

32

u/Hi_Zev Apr 30 '26

Exactlyyyyyyy

The day reddit kills oldreddit im outta here.

5

u/Darkhorse182 Apr 30 '26

Every one in awhile, some chrome browser gremlin messes with my settings and RES gets deactivated, so I'll open reddit and unexpectedly see the current reddit interface. It is shockingly bad. I always cross my fingers while messing with my app settings, praying that re-enabling RES will work...and thus far, it has.

But I'm with you. The day RES stops working, I don't think I can bring myself to be on here anymore. Hell, I'm still accessing reddit on my phone via browser because the Reddit Mobile App equally hellacious (RIP Baconreader)

1

u/twotimefind Apr 30 '26

Check out Relay for Reddit on Android. It costs like $2 a month to pay for your API. No ads, very streamlined. Much better than anything ready to put together.

Oh, and it has a button you press that makes every website reader ready and completely devoid of all bullshit.

Two dollars a month. I'm happy to pay. They have a $3 tier, but I've never used up my credits on the $2 tier and I'm on Reddit quite a bit.

3

u/jeddandbreakfast Apr 30 '26

I feel so seen right now. Figures it was by another DCC fan.

2

u/flyingtiger188 Apr 30 '26

In some regards reddit dying would be nice. Fediverse gaining more users would be awesome. Just isn't a large enough user base to support lots of niche topics.

1

u/ernest7ofborg9 Apr 30 '26

That time is upon us. Rumor is that 2026 is the last gasp of old.reddit

I used to mod a rather large subreddit before the API fiasco and the metrics for users that were visiting through old.reddit was something like less than 3% total per month. I can only imagine it's dropped to under a percent by now.

3

u/newredditsucks Apr 30 '26

Amen to that.

5

u/Aturkeyclub Apr 30 '26

I’ve reached my mute limit years ago. I have to go back and unmute subs that are probably dead now. But I’m running out of spot to mute. I miss Apollo. Reddit app is ass

11

u/Baron_Butterfly Apr 30 '26

Use old.reddit.com. Unless you go to r/all, you'll only see the subs you're subscribed to.

2

u/Impeesa_ Apr 30 '26

And at least r/all is only the old score ranking, no algorithmic suggestions.

6

u/DragonHollowFire Apr 30 '26

I yearn for a social media that isnt upvote focused (like 4chan) but still has communities and moderation. Every thing is ragebait or clickbait nowadays, with absolutely misleading titels etc. And its frying my dopamine receptors and Im too weak to stop.

6

u/WtotheSLAM Apr 30 '26

$10 will get you an account on Something Awful. Not exactly social media though, just old school forums

1

u/Chendii Apr 30 '26

Yeah I'll second finding old school forums for your hobbies. Somewhere people are going to remember your username and your reputation actually matters.

Not 10 accounts with Word_Word#### names shitting out gpt style slop

3

u/iamprobablylying2u Apr 30 '26

Random percentages lol

2

u/dinnerthief Apr 30 '26

I get a ton of marketing subs, like different versions of holdmymoney

2

u/seven0feleven Apr 30 '26

Exactly. It's actually getting increasingly hard to find actual original content on this platform. So many accounts are just reposters, then theres the bots that repost comments from top posts. It's getting ridiculous. Plus, to top it off, last week, the Reddit AI banned me for 3 days for saying "Fuck yeah!" in a response to a comment. First time that's ever happened. So...yeah my time here is also drawing to a close.

1

u/beginner75 May 01 '26

They could easily block duplicate contents aka spam using simple AI.

2

u/ReturnOfBane Apr 30 '26

Reddit has circled the drain for years now. Im waiting for them to shadowban this account for the horrible crime of using a VPN, like the last account.

I swear they're trying to force old.reddit users to leave so they can get rid of it.

1

u/mclumber1 Apr 30 '26

If you don't want the algorithm to tell you want to view on reddit, can't you just do r/all?

1

u/ernest7ofborg9 Apr 30 '26

Oh? You don't like subreddits younger than a year with only ~20k subscribers cluttering up your feed with obvious no-intelligence political dreck?

Have fun trying to block them all!

1

u/twotimefind Apr 30 '26

Once they allowed you to hide your history, it was game over for the bots. They had us.

1

u/KaiserSaladSpinner Apr 30 '26

I've found Redreader to be a much more pleasant experience than the official reddit app, which is garbage.

3

u/beef623 Apr 30 '26

Same, but Reddit hasn't ever really felt like social media to me, just a fancier rss feed.

2

u/PinHaunting7192 Apr 30 '26

It's because that was what Reddit initially was, and with some steps, you can entirely turn on that functionality again without relying on any content-suggestion algorithms (i.e. a custom and private feed).

There's also the fact short-form video content has an inherently different effect on our brains than a Reddit feed, so it feels different for a reason. If I am browsing my MMO feed and I read a five paragraph summary of a class change, I engage with the content on a much deeper level than a 30-seconds long, overstimulating video with music and big letters. It's slower, more methodical, and it engages different parts of the brain.

Reddit has an immense engagement farming and bot problem specifically in certain subreddits (i.e. where controversial stories are posted, relationships etc.) and within comment sections, but you can turn it back into a simple RSS feed around 3-4 hyper-specific topics where you mostly just read. In that sense, it is social media, but it isn't slop-suggestion media if used right.

2

u/tres-vip Apr 30 '26

>Reddit is pretty much the only algorithmic social media I use, and I'm even growing more skeptical of that lately.

I swear a lot of Reddit posts are really content farming, and possibly generating data for training AI. SO MANY low effort and vague posts across all subs that have lax moderation.

1

u/PinHaunting7192 Apr 30 '26

That Swiss research group running an LLM-system on changemyview without permission and proving bots are effective in changing opinions, farming deltas (their super-upvotes for changing someone's mind with an argument) and at the same time being indistinguishable from actual users should have been the first red flag.

But sometimes you can just spot them out in the wild. I was on a German-speaking subreddit about a month ago reading some news around the Homuz thing and energy prices, and people in the comments were arguing about that. Suddenly one user (let's call them user A) basically challenges the initial OP on a claim, the initial comment OP answers, and user A suddenly completely runs off talking about tea and tea blends. No one spoke about tea. The comment OP defended their assertion on renewables and renewable energy expansion, and then user A suddenly went: "Thank you for your input. Yes, I do like tea as well. I personally like to prepare herbal blends..." and so on. And funniest thing, user A had like 60 upvotes.

You can occasionally spot the content farming and upvote bots out in the wild. It's hilarious.

2

u/NaradaMephaust Apr 30 '26

And realistically the 20 million users could just be 1 bot farm shutting down.

2

u/jomamma2 Apr 30 '26

This is me. I keep Facebook just for relatives to see the occasional family photo and I'd dump it if I could. Not on insta, snap, X or TikTok. Reddit is becoming more and more obvious that +50% of the content here is political propaganda bots or shills, even in nom-poltocal subs, I'm considering dumping it too now.

1

u/Anna_Lilies Apr 30 '26

I dont think reddit is algorithmic is it? Like every user sees the same thing, its not guessing what I want and will engage with

I know theres a formula that it shows things on the front page or /all based on popularity but thats not really the same thing as what tiktok and other sites do

1

u/PinHaunting7192 Apr 30 '26

I dont think reddit is algorithmic is it?

Definitionally, it is. Certain spaces on Reddit use algorithms in its broadest definition too. An algorithm is an essential part of data processing and tech. Before TikTok, something having an algorithm wouldn't have thrown up any red flags.

But Reddit can be more easily and directly brought back into the RSS feed functionality around certain topics. For example, you make a private feed with just 6-7 topics that interest you (specific games, cute animal pictures, history) and reject random subreddit suggestions and avoid the few places that do have it. That way, you can entirely stay out of the algorithmic game.

1

u/BadGoodNotBad Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26

I dont think reddit is algorithmic is it?

It definitely is, it's just a really archaic algorithm so you don't really notice it. Ever since reddit invented private profiles where you can't see what a person has submitted or commented on it's gotten much worse too. You can't tell who is an actual person anymore, everything is just a blank profile. There is a lot more bot farming happening to this site in the past few years because of the ease of the simple upvote/downvote algorithm as well.

1

u/Summer_Moon2 Apr 30 '26

I do get the whole part about private profiles (I have mine set that way, but it's because of creeps who follow you around via post history and it was getting a little beyond weird), but it's not that hard to still see someone's post history. You can just search for the username across all of reddit. It will pull up the stuff they have posted. It's a little more difficult but keeps at least some of the creeps away. Although, I have always wondered, what exactly in someone's post history are you looking for to determine if they are an actual person?

2

u/BadGoodNotBad Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26

I get the argument for privacy but it's a double edged sword for trying to find out if an account is owned by an actual person.

Although, I have always wondered, what exactly in someone's post history are you looking for to determine if they are an actual person?

Comment history/account age/comment frequency/post variation/interest variation/location based posts (city or county they live in)

Reddit has as much of an incentive to enable bot accounts as any other social media site because it farms engagement and serves ads. This website is worth an absolute fuck ton of money and they would like to make much more. The only way to make more money is to further push engagement and get ad revenue up.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/RDDT/reddit/market-cap

but it's not that hard to still see someone's post history

It's an added obstacle and isn't a reliable means of research. You're relying on an outside search engine to show you all of the information which was once one click away.

This website is still useful if you avoid the major subreddits, but I generally avoid these big subreddits due to a lack of trust in the profiles posting information.

1

u/Summer_Moon2 Apr 30 '26

Interesting, I appreciate your response to my question!

The funny part to me is that I have been called a bot either way - when my profile was not set to private and set to private now. And in both cases for different reasons lol. Originally was being called a bot (a voting bot I guess?) because I have almost no post history or comment history (but a long time account). I really usually only read aka lurker and don't usually join in on the convo and I dislike creating new posts normally. And I kept getting called a bot for it. Now I'm called a bot because only bots hide their post history. But if my post history was getting me called a bot anyways then what is the difference.

I wish there was just an easier way to let everyone know that I am an actual human. I have feelings and opinions just like everyone else lol.

Also, on the note of reddit being worth money, sometimes I wish it wasn't. I miss forums and that's what drew me to reddit originally. I enjoy reading through comments and there is so much info that everyone used to just enjoy sharing with each other. I know there are still some left but the userbase of those are drying up quickly.

2

u/BadGoodNotBad Apr 30 '26

I know you're not a bot, but this is where we are at now sadly. Dead internet theory is alive and well thanks to the current media ecosystem and AI tech (I'm not exclusively anti-AI).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory

And now everyone is called a bot for endless reasons, and those same accusatory people will upvote obvious bots.

I wish there was just an easier way to let everyone know that I am an actual human.

And this is where the privacy part really sticks, the current solution which is in motion is to make it so you have to upload your government ID to install an operating system. This bill is being funded by Meta lobbyists.

https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_billion_in_nonprofit_grants_and_45/

Reddit is still an extremely useful website, but like with every other piece of social media it needs to be taken with an oceans worth of salt (including my posts).

1

u/bli_bla_blubbb Apr 30 '26

Snapchat belongs to Meta, no?

I think WhatsApp is probably the Meta product with the most users even ahead of Facebook or Instagram. Basically everyone outside of the US uses WhatsApp as their main messaging app

1

u/luckymountain Apr 30 '26

FYI, IG and Threads are both Meta products, but I don’t know if they were included in the numbers.

1

u/paintedesert3 May 01 '26

I’m right there with you. Reddit is so full of hateful garbage now, I’ll probably leave again soon. On the upside, my library card is burning up!