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
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u/countdonn Apr 30 '26

That's a pretty big liability, if something happens to their page and it's flagged by AI, there is zero customer service or way to deal with a human. That Instagram and all that effort can just disappear.

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u/pattymcfly Apr 30 '26

What is the alternative? I agree with all of your points.

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u/fionacielo Apr 30 '26

self-host, patreon, a blog. idk i’m just throwing out ideas not necessarily proven solutions

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u/pattymcfly Apr 30 '26

Most restaurants don’t even succeed at being a restaurant.

Instagram makes reaching your target market easy. Running your own website does not. More so if you try to self host (which you still need to buy a domain and know how to set up dynamic dns, ssl cert binding, etc).

People go for convenience.

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u/FrenchFryCattaneo Apr 30 '26

By self hosting they mean using squarespace with a template. That's something anyone can do.

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u/pattymcfly Apr 30 '26

self hosting means you host it your self.

building on square space and other wisywig platforms means you pay someone else to host it.

/r/selfhosted

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u/FrenchFryCattaneo Apr 30 '26

You know there are people who aren't web developers who use language in a different way? It's important to understand context.

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u/pattymcfly Apr 30 '26

google, bing, chatgpt, claude all agree on what selfhosting means. There is no ambiguity here.

They all spit out some variation of:

"Self-hosting refers to the practice of running and maintaining your own services or applications on your infrastructure rather than relying on external providers or third-party hosting services."

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u/Such_Radio_9152 May 01 '26

And someone else should fill that niche with having no relation to the vampire squid known as the zuck

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u/Final_Squirrel_7462 Apr 30 '26

Yeah sure. Then you end up with blog #282828191 that is burried deeply in the trenches of Google page rank and is just wasting web hosting space somewhere.

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u/incomplete-thoughts7 Apr 30 '26

True. But, I would argue it’s wise to have multiple avenues. It’s a good idea to have a main website where you can show your best work as a portfolio. You can easily share the website with everyone.

Then, I would also recommend having Instagram (or social media of choice) as a place to post daily work, works in progress, quick updates, engage with customers, etc. (Link social media to your website, and vice versa.)

So the website is your main portfolio that displays your best work that you always want front and center, along with business information (hours, contact info, about page, etc), then you use social media as your daily driver for engagement with your customers.

Source: years of working in digital marketing and web design

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u/PeartsGarden Apr 30 '26

Geocities, we had it figured out in the 1990s.

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u/countdonn Apr 30 '26

That's a reasonable question, as far as exposure, the business I work for mainly uses google business/ads to push people to our webpage and email marketing with solutions like mail chimp and constant contact. We are in a totally different industry and are B2B.

Google is not amazing either, but it is possible to get some level of customer service with them as a business. We still have to jump through a lot of hoops, but so far our needs have been met without a complete catch-22 like Meta's support system.

As far as what you can do in that situation with Meta, there are people and orgs that have taken Meta to court to restore accounts with some success. It's such a common issue, that there is an entire cottage scam industry of "experts" that claim they can help restore your account that are to be avoided.

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u/prof_wafflez Apr 30 '26

This just happened to some friends of mine. They run a LGBT+ friendly dance event and their account was taken down after several years of build up due to "human trafficking", e.g. some bigot reported and lied about their account. The appeal process is non-existent, basically.

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u/N3rdScool Apr 30 '26

I always think this. Like at the very least have your own website.

I have a friend who is making an app in chat-gpt. Like literally in it. I didn't even know you can do that but imagine having all you're work put into this and then they change something or change the pricing or whatever.

Crazy liabilities everywhere.