[HN Gopher] The Facebook Text Prompt Zombie Land
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The Facebook Text Prompt Zombie Land
Author : skilled
Score : 78 points
Date : 2022-01-14 17:56 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.garbageday.email)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.garbageday.email)
| azinman2 wrote:
| Wonder if there's any value in a 3rd party curation of Facebook
| to just give me meaningful updates from friends... aka the
| original usage. No links, no politics, just family pics,
| announcements, etc. I'd love to get a weekly digest to my email!
| gfody wrote:
| I'd be interested in that, ideally not a third party but a
| custom client that filters everything not from friends and
| sticks to chronological order.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Have you tried the popular extensions like FB Purity[0]? As
| far as I know there's plenty of options that do what you want
| unless they've been broken by Facebook recently?
|
| I haven't tried them in a long time since I do want to see
| posts by pages and groups I'm in (why else would I follow
| them), and don't see any of the stuff people typically
| complain about anyway.
|
| 0. https://www.fbpurity.com/
| gfody wrote:
| I really only use the native ios app and figured anything
| that did what I want would be taken down for violating some
| tos
| lupire wrote:
| fraidyc.at
|
| http://fraidyc.at
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > just family pics, announcements, etc
|
| Easy to do with email. Why do you need Facebook at all if those
| are your objectives?
| nradov wrote:
| It's hardly easy with email. Keeping an up to date list of
| working addresses becomes a huge hassle once you get beyond a
| few people. I remember trying that in the days before
| Facebook and every time I sent a message it would bounce for
| some recipients.
| hoten wrote:
| You won't get everyone in your family to move from social
| media to a family mailing list.
|
| But a third party app that forwarded fb updates to a mailing
| list ... That's something I'd pay for.
| superfrank wrote:
| Push vs pull or passive vs active.
|
| If I post a picture of my dog on Facebook and my child's
| teacher sees, that feels normal since they just kind of
| happen upon it. If I send them an email with a picture of my
| dog, that feels like I'm over stepping a bit.
| fullshark wrote:
| It won't be friends, just 5-10 people you connected with 10
| years ago who still use the platform religiously producing the
| content.
| narrator wrote:
| The ads for games in my feeds are like this guy's viral text.
| They show someone failing at a very simple puzzle game and say,
| "millions have tried, few have succeeded!" this is just bait for
| boomers to play the very easy game and prove to themselves that
| their brains aren't slowly rotting away.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Calling what Rick Lax does "magic" is pretty damn generous. He
| makes fake videos that are hyper produced. Think 5-minute crafts
| and friends.
|
| Also pretty fitting to have this article sponsored by an NFT
| "product" that claims to be a "troll on the perfume industry".
| What even?
| bredren wrote:
| > There should be no illusions anymore about what Facebook is, as
| a platform. It's just random bits of sensory information meant to
| make old people fight with each other
|
| Oof. Engagement around conflict works at all age ranges though.
| Controversial statements by eSports casters drives posts on
| Reddit, NIMBY comments on NextDoor, etc.
|
| I suspect the tone of this comment is to suggest the platform's
| algorithms did a better job mixing in rich content and focusing
| attention on more interesting, less conflict-laden viral media?
| verall wrote:
| > Engagement around conflict works at all age ranges though.
|
| It certainly does, but content like that is described in the
| article, is clearly aimed a less internet-savvy crowd. Maybe
| the same crowd that didn't grow up with internet trolls and
| have copious free time and are at the highest risk for
| contracting plague, so they are especially juicy targets for
| online engagement vampires.
| allenu wrote:
| > Engagement around conflict works at all age ranges though.
|
| I've noticed that the best way to get people to engage in a
| problem is to state an opinion that is so obviously wrong.
| People go out of their way to tell you that it's wrong and what
| their opinion is. If you post something that's sort of wrong,
| partially right, or probably right, people won't lift a finger.
|
| Try this with your next code review! :D Do something the wrong
| way and everyone wants to correct you. I've noticed after I've
| corrected such a problem, people are silent about the rest of
| the code review, or get lazy about finishing it.
| nomorecommas wrote:
| Until proven otherwise, assume every socmed account is a bot.
| ChrisClark wrote:
| You're a bot, I'm a bot, we're all bots. Are any humans left
| alive on Earth, or are they all still stuck in the 2020s
| simulation?
| danlugo92 wrote:
| beep bop beep bop
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Reminds me of "There Will Come Soft Rains"
| brink wrote:
| I don't think it's fair calling it "boomer bait". I see people
| from every generation commenting on them.
| chizhik-pyzhik wrote:
| Reminds me of the article about "internet chum" on The Awl:
| https://www.theawl.com/2015/06/a-complete-taxonomy-of-intern...
| cblconfederate wrote:
| It's hilarious to me that the author pretends we should have
| higher standards of facebook. Hey do you know how much facebook
| paid for the content they publish? You know what you get for $0 ?
| Nothing or less than nothing. And it s not just facebook, all of
| them are selling attention, not content. As long as users are not
| compensated for their content, the audience will be fed with
| trash
| rightbyte wrote:
| > As long as users are not compensated for their content, the
| audience will be fed with trash
|
| Not really. On the opposite. If there is no money to be made
| there is no ad harvesting bullshit to be made.
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| I mean, plenty of people write blogs for no compensation
| whatsoever (usually paying some token fees for hosting and
| domains, making it a net _expense_ ). Just because content is
| free doesn't mean it has to be bad.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| It's their blogs, they don't do unpaid work for facebook
| xmprt wrote:
| Exactly. I've seen plenty of YouTube videos that are
| excellent despite being made by tiny channels of just a few
| 100 or 1000 subscribers. Same goes for a lot of the posts on
| Hackernews. And TikTok has a massive userbase that's still
| growing because even if it's not healthy for you, at least
| the content on the platform is good. Facebook is both
| unhealthy and bad content. Every time I scroll through, it
| feels like I'm torturing myself a little.
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| They mention investigating another viral post farm back in
| November, which was discussed on HN here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29309201
|
| Link to the November post: https://www.garbageday.email/p/when-
| the-traffic-firehose-is-...
|
| All roads to monetization require engagement, so you just end up
| with groups that churn out "bait" like this.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Excuse my ignorance but how do they make money with this? Ads
| associated with their posts?
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| Video ads is one, branded sponsorships is another (not sure if
| this page engages in that). Looks like Facebook also offers
| subscriptions and a "tip jar"-type feature:
| https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/lessons/how-make-mon...
| mysterydip wrote:
| That's what I've been trying to figure out. So you have a
| million comments and a hundred thousand shares, is that just
| internet points? There has to be some financial compensation
| I'm not seeing.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Once you build enough reach, you can sell branded posts, drive
| traffic to websites monetized by ads, or upload videos that can
| be monetized.
| kevincox wrote:
| Yes. Once you have an audience just start selling sponsored
| posts.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Somewhat related to the "dead internet theory", but in this case
| one side of the relationship is just not quite dead yet.
| pimlottc wrote:
| I love that the author complains about another popular Facebook
| page that's using engagement bait to push a dropshopping
| affiliate program, while their own blog post has a sponsored ad
| for NFT perfume.
| lupire wrote:
| The ad and the liked opensea blurb openly call itself a
| troll... it's not trying to pretend to be anything serious.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Isn't that NFT perfume sarcasm?
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| Yeah, what's even the point of the NFT at that point? It's like
| saying "if you buy a Cracker Jack card, we'll give you a box of
| Cracker Jacks!"
|
| Who's going to buy an NFT that gives comes with a physical
| product on the secondary market? Unless that business will only
| sell to NFT holders in perpetuity, which sounds like a poor way
| to grow a business but hey, lots of things are successful by
| being exclusive.
| lupire wrote:
| It's just bonus incentive for the first owner. It's clearly
| not _worse_ than the NFT without the add-on.
|
| > Unless that business will only sell to NFT holders in
| perpetuity
|
| That's what BAYC does. Then you open a next tier NFT line to
| expand down-market.
| xmprt wrote:
| At this point, the only reason I can think of is VC funding.
| But I also don't know why VCs don't see through this
| bullshit... They're supposed to be smart right? Even if
| they're shotgun investing and hoping that one company goes
| 100x, I can say with absolute certainty that this company is
| either going to fold or get rid of the NFT aspect of the
| business in the next 5 years. What's the point of investing
| in a company like that?
| lupire wrote:
| You don't need VC to sell a NFT digital picture. There is
| no cost.
| VHRanger wrote:
| VCs dont care that a product is bullshit as long as they
| can sell it for more to someone else
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(page generated 2022-01-14 23:00 UTC)