# Facebook 289 Hacker News commenters recommended Facebook and 1338 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 13 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 14 years (42 owners). **Verdict:** People keep it for staying in touch with family and for local groups and communities, but widely complain the algorithmic feed is now full of spam, slop and engagement bait. ## Why people recommend it - Staying in touch with family (6 comments): "It has helped me to connect with people, it helped me to partially break out of my (disability-inflicted) social isolation." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45977828)) "I use it all the time. Yesterday I was talking to a friend, and we were reminiscing about visiting another friend's house" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48348713)) "compared to something like email, the previous standard for most people, Facebook was an unbelievable step forward" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46463758)) - Groups for local niche communities (5 comments): "I'm mostly still on FB at all for the acquaintance-level connections to things like neighbourhood, church, and hobby communities." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46426386)) "It's become a defacto forum for a lot of local niche stuff like clubs, schools, non profits, and other special interest groups." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46457314)) "There's still a community for any subject on both Facebook and Instagram except it's all buried under spam and bad intentions." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49206549)) - Early Facebook connected people well (6 comments): "The early iterations of Facebook, just like the early iterations of most internet community and social platforms legitimately brought and kept people together" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48855065)) "Would I let them be on Facebook of 2006, when you were just connected to your friends and family, and not influencers and "the algorithm?" Sure!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47917039)) "I remember early, invite-only Facebook before it got heavily monetized and it was such an amazing tool to bring people together" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46851646)) ## What people warn about - Algorithm pushes unwanted engagement content (8 comments): "FB/Instagram will shove down infinite scroll and stories/reels/updates of people/entities you can care less about." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49450789)) "it switched from being something that I could choose to use to the algorithm force injecting stuff into my feed" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49964818)) "I dislike pretty much everything else on there though, especially all the stupid videos and stuff it shows." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46821373)) - Feed full of spam and slop (6 comments): "There's still a community for any subject on both Facebook and Instagram except it's all buried under spam and bad intentions." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49206549)) "the groups started to get beggars and requests for money and donations, and nobody trusts the groups or the profiles" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50169549)) "My facebook page, which is where I have friended everyone I met between like 2004 and 2017 is absolute garbage." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47092876)) - Surveillance and privacy concerns (5 comments): "Learning about their tracking web browsing through WebRTC ports from the apps, you have a point on users not knowingly providing that." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49781799)) "Yeah same can be said for Facebook and WhatsApp that Durov vehemently claims should not be trusted with user's data." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50030451)) "The advertising-based, surveilllance-through-intermediation "business model" of these third party intermediary companies depends on monitoring and learning as much about internet users as possible" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48721643)) - Deliberately addictive design (3 comments): "Facebook, etc. has BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH of software engineers, designers, psychologists making absolutely damn sure that little Alice & Bob keep their nice little eyes glued" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49228886)) "It's scary how good these algorithms have become, I often only want to look up something related to the club and end up being roped into 1h of doomscrolling." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46222126)) "systematically and deliberately doing everything their psychologist/behavior economists could do to make sure kids were addicted to the product" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49451109)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Bluesky](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bluesky.md): 317 recommend - [Mastodon](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mastodon.md): 273 recommend - [X (formerly Twitter)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/x.md): 264 recommend - [Instagram](https://hackerapproved.com/p/instagram.md): 212 recommend - [TikTok](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tiktok.md): 130 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://www.facebook.com/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Facebook", https://hackerapproved.com/p/facebook/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).