Facebook's Aging Audience Has Sent The Platform Into Panic Mode

“The things that made Facebook what it is have been compounded into ‘Facebook is this place for toxic boomers and therefore younger people don't want anything to do with it.’”

On today's episode of BuzzFeed Daily, we broke down the top pop culture headlines AND discussed Facebook's rough October. You can listen below or scroll down to read more about the interview!

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So let's dive right into it! Recently we talked to BuzzFeed News reporter Katie Notopoulos about Facebook’s recent PR woes and what it means for their future. Here's some of what we learned:

BuzzFeed Daily: OK, so Facebook has been in the news a lot recently. First, there was the whistleblower who alleged Facebook knew how detrimental Instagram is to the mental health of teenage girls. Then there was the massive service outage. And now there's the report that Facebook is planning on rebranding by changing its name. So is Facebook having a uniquely bad month or are they just under more scrutiny as the world's largest social media platform?

Ina Fried @inafried

Dear Facebook: We've received your request to change your name. However, due to our real names policy, you will first need to fax us a copy of your court order and new driver's license....

03:23 AM - 20 Oct 2021

Twitter: @inafried

Katie Notopoulos: I would say they're definitely having a uniquely bad month. The service outage does seem to be a random fluke occurrence, but much more damaging is the whistleblower stuff. There was first a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal that was based on some of the documents that this whistleblower, Frances Haugen, had taken out of the company. And then this week, there's been a whole new slew of articles that show a lot of the really core problems going on at Facebook.

BuzzFeed Daily: It almost feels like we're witnessing the beginning of the end for Facebook. I know that's a pretty big statement, but as someone who's done a lot of coverage on Facebook for BuzzFeed News, does that ring true to you at all?

Sara Fischer @sarafischer

🚨Whoa. Major news from Zuckerberg: He says Facebook moving forward will "retooling" to make "serving young adults the north star, rather than optimizing for older people." — Says the "shift will take years, not months."

09:11 PM - 25 Oct 2021

Twitter: @sarafischer

KN: You know, Facebook does have this amazing ability to have bad news wash off its back. And even though these reports in the media are very damning, I don't know what will happen. It's hard to say. I do think perhaps the biggest indicator of the beginning of the end is one of the reports that showed just how panicked Facebook is about losing its youngest users — teenagers — and that young people don't want to sign up for Facebook anymore. And even on Instagram, they're still signing up, but they post less. So that actually feels like potentially a really huge crisis for Facebook.

BuzzFeed Daily: It is interesting because we haven't been in this position before. We don't really know what the shelf life is for a company like Facebook. MySpace was different. It was telling of what was to come. But we still don't know what the future of Facebook is, or of other platforms. But depending on where Facebook goes, do you see other platforms meeting the same fate?

The Washington Post / The Washington Post via Getty Images

KN: I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years from now, TikTok and Snapchat, which currently are the things that teenagers are using instead of Facebook, start to face those same problems. It just gets an aging population. One of the things is that there's never really been significant government regulation on a platform like Facebook, because there has never been one this big before and there has never been a government with quite the appetite to do it, and the right momentum behind it. 

And I think that is something that we may see in the next few months. You know, we may even see something like, what if Mark Zuckerberg steps down? There's sort of a lot of scrutiny into the CEO of a publicly traded company, which is not really the case with something like MySpace. A lot of times when bad things happen to a big company like this, or especially a publicly traded one, the CEO has to go. So we could see something interesting happen there.

BuzzFeed Daily: You mentioned this earlier, but probably the most concerning issue, at least for Facebook shareholders, is a leaked report on how its share of younger users is declining. It turns out that kids just don't like Facebook very much. Do you know why that might be?

Seerut K. Chawla @seerutkchawla

If social media apps were different generations: Facebook is a boomer. Twitter is Gen X. Instagram is millenial. Tiktok is a zoomer.

08:12 PM - 24 Oct 2021

Twitter: @seerutkchawla

KN: I think that one factor is simply that there is stiff competition from Snapchat and TikTok, which offer essentially different services, right? You use them in a different way. They're more fun. I think there's a good argument for the things that have made Facebook popular, the sort of core product of a place where you like and share and see the activity of everyone else around you and post messages that are either personal or political. Those things have kind of incentivized the politically charged boomers, which is not what young people want. And so the things that made Facebook what it is have been compounded into "Facebook is this place for toxic boomers and therefore younger people don't want anything to do with it." So that's possible, too. But it's really that young people see it as, "Oh, that's Facebook. That's for people in their forties."

BuzzFeed Daily: Speaking of these politically charged boomers, I think a lot of us would point to the 2016 election as the big turning point in public sentiment towards Facebook. They've received tons of criticism for how they handled themselves in and around that time. And I'm wondering if you feel like Facebook has suffered from simply being the first of its kind or whether there were clear-cut mistakes that could have been avoided?

Nurphoto / NurPhoto via Getty Images

KN: I think there are definitely clear-cut mistakes. I think that what was revealed after the 2016 election was that Facebook knew about problems and failed to act. And that's really what a lot of the stuff from the whistleblower, that's come out just in the last week, is also all about. And what's more shocking about that, and what the documents focus on a lot, too, is how in other countries other than the United States and Western Europe, where there might be many different languages and the culture is different, they really, really are not well prepared to deal with these kinds of content moderation problems, especially surrounding elections and things like that. 

There are more users in India than there are in the United States, right? But there are just a teeny tiny fraction of the moderation resources that go into it, and so there's tons more disinformation that isn't being taken down. There's tons more inflammatory rhetoric and stuff like that that has really led to real-world harm, and the way that sort of election interference is happening in countries outside of English-speaking countries. That's a much bigger problem, that Facebook, as with the 2016 election, saw the warning signs about internally. People were flagging and saying, "Hey, there's some bad business going on," and they just ignored it and kind of let it happen. And I think that's really where they have hugely failed to act in a way that is detrimental to the world now.

The Morning Show newcomer Julianna Margulies has some words for people who don’t think she should be playing a queer character.

Jamie Mccarthy / Getty Images for The Michael J. Fox Foundation

When asked what she thinks of the criticism on CBS’s own morning show, Julianna said: "My response also would be: We’re all making assumptions as to who I am and what my past is, and what all of our pasts are. [I understand] 100 percent that I can’t play a different race, but I am an actress, and I am supposed to embody another character. Whatever their sexuality is doesn’t matter to me, the same way watching a gay person play a straight person. Are you telling me, because I’m a mother, I can never play a woman who’s never had a child? Or, if you’ve never been married, that you can’t play a married woman? I mean, you have to be careful where you’re drawing the line there. We’re actors. We’re supposed to embody a character regardless of their sexuality. When it comes to race and gender, that’s a whole different story, and I 100 percent agree with that. So, that’s my stance on it.”

Anne Heche opened up about feeling as though her acting career suffered because of her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres in the late '90s.

Abc Photo Archives / Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images

She told Page Six that despite dating Ellen for less than three years, she felt “blacklisted” by Hollywood, saying, "I didn’t do a studio picture for ten years. I was fired from a $10 million picture deal and did not see the light of day in a studio picture.”

Despite this, she added that those repercussions feel like a quote “badge of honor” for contributing quote “a part of the change.” 

As always, thanks for listening! And if you ever want to suggest stories or just want to say hi, you can reach us at [e-mail].