[HN Gopher] Instagram is shifting to videos - users aren't happy
___________________________________________________________________
Instagram is shifting to videos - users aren't happy
Author : laurex
Score : 262 points
Date : 2022-07-27 18:03 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| Theory on facebook failure/Google failure to innovate:
|
| They have the highest leetcode standards out of FAANG. As does
| Snap. They hire people that basically memorized computer science
| algorithms. And so their employees are bookish, not innovative
| people. Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon do not have the same issues
| with creating new products.
|
| Keith Rabois (top VC), mentioned that FB has always prioritized
| optimization over new products because of the Ad business. That
| also could explain their inability to do anything but copy other
| business ideas.
|
| The opposing point of view would be that Ads on FB/Google are so
| profitable that working on anything else pales in comparision (in
| terms of profit generation). And so they dont innovate, but
| iterate and optimize.
|
| My vote is that excessive leetcode testing selects for employees
| with no creativity. And while these companies are massive, lower
| level engineers hired ten years ago do rise to the top and run
| whole divisions
|
| EDIT:
|
| Counterpoint on how good early Google employees were:
|
| the above maxim does not apply because that was before leetcode
| became huge, people passing those interviews were actually
| brilliant, they didnt spend six months studying in a basement
| Jasper_ wrote:
| The ones coming up with products are usually executives looking
| to advance their career. e.g. everyone I know who worked on
| Google Stadia who cared readily pointed out all the problems
| from idea to implementation. Management & product design waved
| off the concerns, said they were in for the long haul, and that
| the product would be a huge success regardless. And then they
| got cold feet after realizing how much of a flop it was, and
| how money they needed to spend to make a real entry into games.
|
| I am no fan of leetcode. I think Google's engineering interview
| process is mostly RNG. But have you seen mock interviews for
| the product designers? They're even more inscrutable:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTcXXGJiunA
| klabb3 wrote:
| I agree, in the sense that it's less about leetcode skills
| and more about company politics. I can tell you for a fact
| that the programming geniuses don't make product decisions,
| much less so strategy decisions. These products would look
| VERY different if that was the case.
|
| Instead, the important strategic decisions are left for
| various opportunistic short termers, like product managers,
| directors etc. They are incentivized on shorter time scales
| and are motivated by prestige, visibility and career
| advancement. What looks good in a slide deck will be
| rewarded, basically. These people are much more in touch with
| internal company politics first and the industry at large
| second. They are shockingly oblivious to their own user base
| - (YouTube rewind is the best irrefutable proof for this).
|
| Big redesigns and product changes are rewarded for way too
| early, imo. Common tenure for a PM is 1-1.5 years, enough for
| a promotion, and short enough to weasel out before they have
| to deal with the backlash.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I've had a couple young people complain to me about leetcode
| interviews at Google. I replied that they could spend a
| couple weeks going over the leetcode books, and if that was
| what it took to get a $250,000 job, then that will be the
| best investment of time they'd ever make.
|
| Besides, one cannot help but learn programming things from
| examining leetcode solutions.
|
| Google probably also wants to hire motivated people, and
| people who will study up on leetcode will be a better hire
| than a lazy one who doesn't want to put in the work.
| 1980phipsi wrote:
| Nevertheless, it's an empirical question as to whether this
| method of recruiting produces the employees that maximize
| long-term profits for the company.
|
| I don't doubt that a major reason for asking these types of
| questions, as opposed to an IQ test or something, is that
| it is basically illegal in the US to do so.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It's an empirical question about every method of
| recruiting. Making a bad hire can cost a company dearly.
| If there was some obviously better way of doing it,
| wouldn't companies do that?
|
| Avoiding expensive lawsuits is likely another reason for
| leetcode gates.
| loudmax wrote:
| I was actually impressed at how well Stadia worked. My
| impression is that they did an excellent job at the technical
| implementation. A lot of games don't require millisecond
| response times or amazing graphics and Stadia would have had
| one of the best anti-cheat systems for multiplayer games,
| basically for free.
|
| What sank Stadia before it even launched was their asinine
| pricing strategy. It should have been clear to anyone with a
| basic understanding of computers that playing a game over the
| network will be inferior to playing local, but they could
| have made up the difference with pay as you go pricing and an
| emphasis on multiplayer games where the graphics don't matter
| as much. Of course they did the exact opposite, and then
| decided to double down on bad ideas by ignoring indie
| developers.
|
| I still think the technology has a lot of potential (well in
| Stadia's case _had_ a lot of potential), but with that kind
| of management, even the Covid lockdowns and the GPU shortage
| weren 't enough to save a product that was designed to fail.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| You're writing like Stadia's already dead, which it isn't
| and far from it. I've tried all the cloud gaming platforms
| and none touch the ease of use and pick-up-play quality of
| Stadia.
|
| People today are even playing Stadia without knowing it
| thanks to Google's new white-labeling strategy.
| mrtksn wrote:
| > They have the highest leetcode standards out of FAANG. As
| does Snap. They hire people that basically memorized computer
| science algorithms.
|
| I find this naive, as if coders have a say on the product. The
| jobs in big companies tend to be very boring and actually
| simple since their core product is already there and all these
| people simply maintain and steer it based on the data.
|
| IMHO the difference is simply in their situation. Google&Meta
| are absolute monopolies, nothing new had to come out of them as
| they were making more and more money as they optimize the same
| old product. They suffered the Galapagos syndrome, similar tp
| the Japanese smartphone market.
|
| Apple is not in that spot, they need to aggressively innovate
| as the competition is strong.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| Regardless of the limited impact, its hard to argue that
| there isnt a distinct difference in innovation/releasing good
| products between Google/FB and Amazon/MSFT/Apple. The latter
| simply innovate more and create more things that people want.
| So the question is why
| mrtksn wrote:
| I tried to answer why :) Unlike FB/Google, AMZN/MSFT/AAPL
| does have strong competition, therefore they can't simply
| milk the current offerings. They have to innovate.
| raz32dust wrote:
| Engineering at FB/Google has not shown any dearth of
| innovation, even recently. The premise is just wrong.
|
| [1] https://research.facebook.com/publications/ [2]
| https://research.google/pubs/
| yashap wrote:
| You really think Google have a failure to innovate? Obviously
| search was their first, core innovation, but over the years
| they've delivered so many other successful products (many
| acquired, true, but even those they've evolved really well).
| Off the top of my head:
|
| - Maps
|
| - AdWords
|
| - Gmail
|
| - YouTube
|
| - Analytics
|
| - Translate
|
| - Calendar
|
| - Sheets
|
| - Docs
|
| - Drive
|
| - Meet
|
| - Slides
|
| - Drawings
|
| - Forms
|
| - Trends
|
| - Alerts
|
| I'm sure I'm missing a bunch too. IMO they've pushed the
| envelope in a massive number of spaces, and continue to do so.
| That's an incredible number of insanely successful software
| products for a 23 year old company.
|
| Edit: I was thinking web/mobile apps there, missing obvious big
| ones like Android, Chrome, self-driving cars, a bajillion
| Google Cloud products, Chromebooks, Go, Dart/Flutter, AMP,
| Bazel, Protobuf, gRPC, Quik/HTTP2/3-related innovations, etc.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| Did you intentionally make a list of google acquisitions as a
| joke?
| yashap wrote:
| Many of these started as acquisitions, but they massively
| transformed them. For example, they acquired some products
| in the mapping space, but none of them remotely resembled
| what Google Maps have become.
|
| Taking some starting point, hugely evolving it/transforming
| it, and growing it into a dominant market leading product,
| I personally consider that innovation.
| [deleted]
| i386 wrote:
| Ads is the only thing on that list that brings in revenue.
| tech234a wrote:
| Maps and Translate have paid APIs available.
| sfe22 wrote:
| Drive (and docs/gmail) is also profitable. So is maps and
| youtube.
| aquova wrote:
| For context though:
|
| - Maps - 2005
|
| - AdWords - 2000
|
| - Gmail - 2004
|
| - YouTube - 2005, but not founded by Google
|
| - Analytics - 2005
|
| - Translate - 2006 (but with neural machine engine in 2016)
|
| - Calendar - 2006
|
| - Sheets - 2006, but not founded by Google
|
| - Docs - 2006, but not founded by Google
|
| - Drive - 2012
|
| - Slides - 2007, but based on acquisition
|
| - Drawings - 2010
|
| - Forms - Prior to 2014, couldn't find exact date
|
| - Trends - 2006
|
| - Alerts - 2003
| tech234a wrote:
| Analytics was based on the acquisition of Urchin; the "utm"
| that is still seen in URL parameters today stands for
| "Urchin Tracking Module" [0].
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Analytics
| pyb wrote:
| Maps was also an acquisition.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| Aren't all of those products over a decade old by now?
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| How old is the youngest of those? Any major new product
| younger than 10 years? - Sure they do incremental work an all
| of those, but where is the new?
| kolbe wrote:
| I think he's talking about today, not 10+ years ago.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Aren't they also mostly just web2.0 versions of Microsoft
| Office products? Like Docs and Sheets are just Word and
| Excel right? I feel like I'm missing something. Certainly
| putting them in browser plus some cloud storage is
| innovative, but doesn't it seem kind of obvious?
| runevault wrote:
| Youtube was purchased, so that one isn't anything innovated
| in house.
| _jal wrote:
| Edited to add acquisitions, where appropriate:
|
| - Maps (Keyhole, Where2, Endoxion)
|
| - AdWords (Doubleclick)
|
| - Gmail (reMail)
|
| - YouTube (Youtube)
|
| - Analytics (Urchin)
|
| - Translate (Phonetic Arts)
|
| - Calendar (Timeful)
|
| - Docs (Upstartle)
| sakopov wrote:
| I thought Gmail was someone's "20% time" personal project?
| lokar wrote:
| AdWords was not based on double click
| dagw wrote:
| Google Maps, the web application, was not an acquisition.
| Google bought two companies that made desktop mapping tools
| (One of them lived on as Google Earth Pro and was a
| commercial product they kept selling for years) and used
| that as a basis for developing the web based Google Maps.
|
| Also based on everything I can find, Gmail started as an in
| house project. reMail was acquired 5+ years after Gmail
| launched.
| _jal wrote:
| Agreed, this gets super fuzzy at some point, most
| quibbles with the list will probably have some merit.
| katbyte wrote:
| That list would be a lot more informative and accurate id you
| include the launch date of each
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| acquisition is not innovation. However, they did make some
| very shrewd business moves there.
|
| Google makes all their money off search advertising. They
| always have, and still do. They are a one trick pony with one
| REALLY good trick.
| scottyah wrote:
| I agree with you on how much innovation occurred at google,
| but I think the timeline of when these innovations occurred
| vs when leetcode interviews really took hold is what the
| commenters are addressing. In the old days they had crazy
| hiring processes where riding a unicycle helped your case.
| This ushered in a group of very brilliant creatives that
| innovated. Now, most hires are required to memorize data
| structures and algorithms- things that a lot of the smart
| creative people loathe to do, and as a result the pace of
| innovation has slowed to almost a halt.
|
| My personal opinion is that there were too many chefs in the
| kitchen and google is now trying to optimize the "creative
| leader" to "can pump out rote code" ratio.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > basically memorized computer science algorithms
|
| The path I see in profession after profession is:
|
| 1. copy something
|
| 2. make variations on the copied stuff
|
| 3. make your own
|
| > And so their employees are bookish, not innovative people.
|
| Why would bookish people not be innovative?
| throwaway20004 wrote:
| Isn't snap known as being one of the most innovative social
| media platforms? e.g. creating stories before anyone else,
| bitmojis being popular, innovative filters, etc. I don't buy
| this tenuous connection between leetcode and innovation lol
| joe_the_user wrote:
| This may be true about what Google employees have become ...
|
| But the changes at Facebook and Google have a clear cost-
| benefit equation. When a company is in an expanding market,
| improving it's offering to capture more of the market is very
| worthwhile. When a company is in a static market where they
| aren't likely to lose too much market share, the company has
| incentive to squeeze as much profits out of their market share.
| Usually that's by raising prices but in this instance it's by
| stuffing in as much ads and behavior-control shenanigans as
| possible.
|
| You can say this is because of monopoly but similar dynamics
| happen with "oligopolies" - cellphone providers or pre-foreign
| competition US automakers.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| How much leetcoding do their PMs do? I understand your overall
| point, but I don't think having a high algorithmic/data
| structures whiteboarding bar for their engineers correlates to
| Facebook's weakening product abilities. Ditto for Google.
| sorry_outta_gas wrote:
| TBH this not scientific at all but judging from my linkedin
| feed the worst 'product people' I've worked with have ended
| up at facebook/meta, amazon and google -- apple and a bunch
| of smaller companies ended up with the best
|
| it's a mixed bag when it comes to engineers though, most of
| my highest performing coworkers are pretty evenly distributed
| between the batch with the exception of amazon which seems
| like a catch-all
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| I think it does. As much as companies want to believe that
| product runs the product, an engineer that can create new
| things that influences the product is massively more
| valuable. Amazon commonly has engineers drive new
| innovations, product people nowhere to be seen
| threeseed wrote:
| I've worked for Apple and Product Management absolutely
| runs the product.
|
| Engineers of course have entry points into this process but
| ultimately they aren't responsible for the overall process
| of what, how and when things get build.
|
| You act like you know better than all of these companies so
| maybe you can try building a multi-billion business with
| just engineers. Good luck with that.
| nrb wrote:
| There are without a doubt a sea of creative people at Meta,
| the question is whether the organizational structure
| disincentivizes creative collaboration with engineering.
| polote wrote:
| Two of the most profitable and innovative companies in the
| world.
|
| HN first comment :
|
| > Theory on facebook failure/Google failure to innovate
| threeseed wrote:
| It reads like someone who failed to make it past the
| interview stage and is bitter about it.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| I have worked at two top tech companies, and previously
| worked on an ML research team for an investment firm. I am
| speaking from first hand experience
| shreyshnaccount wrote:
| I see where you're coming from but I disagree. your posts
| assumes that people who are good at leetcode (or more
| accurately, get good at leetcode by spending time on it) are
| not creative. but I'd like to point out that creativity isn't
| an intrinsic ability, but largely a skill. you get more
| creative the more you practice. innovation is not just about
| thinking differently for the sake of it, but more about the
| cross-pollination of ideas from different domains. that's what
| mathematicians do a lot of the time- see what unsolved puzzle
| can be re-shaped to be like a solved puzzle, and that's what a
| good computer scientist should be able to do with tech. i
| belive, at the same time, that leetcode is pretty fucking
| useless as a measure of ability and a way of learning new algos
| because. my opinion on the matter is that big tech like Google
| and fb suck because each manager has to justify their bullshit
| job by doing some bullshit change. there's no coherent vision
| anymore and the company has fragmented into a thousand teams,
| each run like a bad startup with infinite funding just until
| the boss gets a promotion or smth. and then the team does some
| other bullshit changes. apple has always had a very coherent
| product vision, and so this doesn't happen. i belive my
| conjecture is simpler and more plausible than saying that
| people who work hard aren't creative.
| nrb wrote:
| I don't think the two are connected. It's more likely that it's
| because feature decisions at these companies are made by
| thousands of product people who have their own performance
| objectives, most of which are misaligned with the wishes of
| users.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| I think this is an underrated comment. It's hard to
| innovate/apply divergent thinking if you're so far from the
| user.
|
| Adtech as an industry would also be a factor, since it's not
| only not aligned with value/user goals, but working actively
| against them. I'm saying that as someone who worked in the
| domain.
| dqpb wrote:
| > their employees are bookish, not innovative people
|
| This is false. However, there is probably a misalignment
| between what the employees want to innovate on, and what
| Instagram users want.
|
| My guess is that deep down it's hard for a talented adult to
| truly give a fuck about Instagram.
|
| So they do what they have to to keep themselves feeling like
| their work is meaningful. And that diverges from what consumers
| of tween influencer / fake-moment-creators think they want.
| Willish42 wrote:
| > The opposing point of view would be that Ads on FB/Google are
| so profitable that working on anything else pales in
| comparision (in terms of profit generation). And so they dont
| innovate, but iterate and optimize.
|
| This argument is basically the same posed in the Innovator's
| Dilemma, and IMO it's more on the money at least for Google.
| The high hiring bar for Google was arguably much higher in its
| earlier years, when they were still innovating like crazy.
| Becoming a larger company, having a larger executive team
| instead of Larry and Sergey, and optimizing for profits rather
| than moonshots and "creative" projects like Loon, Wing, and
| even projects with a lot of internal support like Inbox all
| have an effect trending towards "less entrepreneurial".
|
| People also seem to generally have a pretty big bias towards
| Cloud not being considered "entrepreneurial", while still
| having a huge engineering opportunity cost. You're comparing
| Facebook and Google but Google has spun out a #3 Cloud provider
| in the last ~7 years that people largely ignore despite that
| making up almost half of Google's employee count at the moment.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Same with Google, where Marissa Mayer would allegedly run A/B
| tests to find the best shade of blue
|
| Pro-tip: that's not how you build a system. The best shade of
| blue is the least of your concerns
|
| "Oh but Google/FB have actual designers, product people etc",
| yes but don't underestimate management's (those who got
| promoted, usually from the engineering ranks) ability to
| mismanage it
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| Sort of. There is not a direct correlation between leetcode,
| engineering skill, and productivity.
|
| I also know some boneheads who made it into google somehow. I
| think hiring is more of a crapshoot these days than it was in
| the early 2000s when the tech industry was not cool, was fairly
| homogenous and full of nerds.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Zuckerberg is not an innovator we all know where Facebook came
| from. He's a do-er and copier and he will lose the AR Glasses
| race as it requires someone innovative behind that ship.
|
| He keeps throwing all this money at VR which has been around
| since the 90s. The general public doesnt want it.. want
| something strapped to their face/isolating themselves from real
| life... it is not the next iPhone!
| simplMath10 wrote:
| Apple was famous for taking forever to design "their copy" of
| popular thing.
|
| Then Facebook and the rest became staples of iDevices, Apple
| focused on stupid slim design rather than pushing the product
| envelope, and risk their yearly mobile cash cow.
|
| Their EarPods were not exactly the first BT earbuds, HomePod
| was well after Alexa. Subscription video and games?
|
| For the most part they are doing the same with hardware;
| changing up housing but emphasizing their own chips.
|
| MS aped Apple laptop quality with Surface, bombed mightily with
| Windows Phone, is doing fine with Azure; again all products
| that came as a response to others.
|
| We're beyond the bootstrap phase of technology. Something truly
| innovative to the user is still in some lab.
|
| My money is on bio-tech mutant; custom drugs and high res
| simulation to embed an experience so real you think it
| happened. I dunno something that's focused on more than b2b
| apps/ads deals and phone update cycles.
|
| I mean there is no point to any of this. There's no higher
| calling for people. One generation being addicted to computers
| as we know them is not necessarily a forever trend for the
| species. It's just math. _shrug_
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > They hire people that basically memorized computer science
| algorithms. And so their employees are bookish, not innovative
| people
|
| That is as far from truth as it can get. The problem in
| companies that fail to innovate almost always has the same
| problem: management. How companies are run has a significant
| impact on how much they can innovate. Even if you are willing
| to take massive bets as the management team, if the bets aren't
| good enough, it's going to be hard to innovate.
|
| Apple has a top down innovation chain where goals and direction
| are decided by higher ups, while Amazon has bottom up
| innovation where people are encouraged to build. But the common
| theme in both is the ability to identify and nurture big ideas
| by the management.
| j0hnyl wrote:
| Product people are not subjected to this crap while
| interviewing.
| kristopolous wrote:
| I said a similar thing yesterday:
|
| > Current valley hiring practices filter out the mischiefs
| needed to take things from sustaining to innovative. It's why
| tech is coasting and deteriorating.
|
| > Passionate weirdos like JWZ, Stallman, TBL, Carmack, Cutler,
| Torvalds, Woz, Pike, Wall, Jobs and Bellard are required
|
| Originally posted over here:
| (https://twitter.com/emoRobot/status/1552076562027098112)
|
| And 15 hours ago, a similar sentiment here
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32246777 )
|
| > I blame modern tech hiring processes that filter out people
| who aren't conforming enthusiastic obedient cheerleaders.
|
| > You get a sustain and self-extinguish product instead of one
| that can respond to what the necessity of the times demand
|
| > You must have passionate grumps otherwise you're just shaking
| pom-poms as you run over a cliff.
|
| It's probably coincidental but thanks anyway
|
| ---
|
| This is also related to a new axiom I've developed, first
| stated in a similar discussion on instagram here (https://old.r
| eddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/w8hy0e/instagram...)
|
| > "The quality of a commercial software product is inversely
| proportional to the difficulty of the problem it solves, how
| long it's been around for and how successful it's been"
|
| Essentially as a solution reaches stability and success,
| there's margins of profit that keep a staff of engineers and
| managers employed to work on the system. As a result they
| mutate the system - drifting it away from being a good solution
| to real problems to an unfocused solution to theoretical
| problems. It's a core organizational feature how we don't treat
| software as infrastructure where putting something in
| maintenance mode is the majority of the lifecycle of a
| successful product (for instance, whatever building you're in
| right now).
|
| So as the generations of engineers cycle in and out you get
| this discordance between the two: earnest new people getting
| paid very well to change a product that usually has no pressing
| need for change. They do it anyway and thus successful simple
| commercial software products decline in relevance and quality
| over time as an inadvertent result of mismanaged good
| intentions. Furthermore when a change is warranted, nobody in
| this model has the agency, authority, political capital, or
| willpower to do the proper reframing (think Apple Newton ->
| iPod -> iPhone) without excessive compromises.
|
| The solution? Go to part 1 above.
| mountain_peak wrote:
| I think following the long tail will lead you to what I
| witnessed with my kids in grade school; mischief is now akin
| to a disease - it's treated, counselled, made an example of,
| and sometimes medicated. I had to work hard with my kids to
| overcome this 'vilification' of anything against the norm.
| threeseed wrote:
| All of the people who you listed are unquestionably talented.
|
| But they are unsuited to working in very large companies
| which requires collaboration, patience and tolerance of other
| views. And pretty sure they know it too.
|
| You can make the tired hiring practices are the problem
| argument but actually it's the nature of large companies
| themselves that self-select for these types of people.
| kristopolous wrote:
| That's a mischaracterization.
|
| The passionate grumps don't lack collaboration, patience
| and tolerance. Instead they have more commitment to the
| product and company then to power relationships and
| hierarchies
|
| They may also be impossible to work with but that's
| independent (alright, it's likely correlated).
|
| Anyway, the hard-nosed ones are closer in spirit to
| scientists who get mischaracterized as uncooperative
| inflexible foot-draggers because their advocacies and
| endorsements aren't a functional of social relationships
| and ideally can't be changed by them.
| dhosek wrote:
| I interviewed at Amazon in 2008ish and it was very leetcode-ish
| in its interview process. I remember whiteboarding a garbage
| collector.
|
| In any event, few companies have product direction set by
| engineering. There might be influence, but product tends to be
| a different set of employees than engineering.
| decafninja wrote:
| I don't think you're necessarily disagreeing with the poster
| you're replying to.
|
| I've interviewed at some of the FAANGs and like you said, I
| didn't find the Amazon interview format any less leetcode-ish
| than Google or Facebook. However I found that the level of
| rigor and was noticeably less than what Google or Facebook
| seemed to expect. Maybe this has changed recently, since the
| last time I interviewed at these companies was in 2019.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| Amazon is definitely leetcodeish, but they also extensively
| test behavioral. You need some leetcode, but its more mild
| yojo wrote:
| Every company I've worked for has had some form of annual or
| bi-annual "hack week," where employees can form ad-hoc teams
| and work on something they think would be cool to exist.
| Sometimes it's a feature, sometimes it's a new product line,
| sometimes it's just something ridiculous (e.g. an eight foot
| wide NES controller).
|
| Some of these projects did turn into shipped features, though
| I'm not sure I ever saw a new product line come out of it.
|
| One of the places I worked had an internal incubator. An
| engineer or PM could pitch an idea, and get paid their salary
| to go work on it if accepted. That was still early stage when
| I left, so unclear if anything came of it.
|
| The point though is that many companies do open avenues for
| engineers to innovate directly.
| riquito wrote:
| Unlikely: developers do not decide what features to implement,
| at least in companies of that size, so whether they interviewed
| with leetcode or not shouldn't matter
| cm2187 wrote:
| You can also take the life out of any willingness to innovate
| with enough compliance policies, controls, code standards, and
| bureaucracy. That's why large companies fossilize.
| kache_ wrote:
| High G factor correlates with high creativity. I see a direct
| correlation to coming up with creative solutions and being able
| to solve a battery of tests.
|
| A lot of the leetcode hate mostly exists because it's hard. And
| a lot of coding interview problems actually require a lot of
| creativity to solve.
|
| And imagine thinking that facebook isn't innovating. Facebook
| is leading the future of virtual reality, and leading AI
| breakthroughs. What do you think facebook marketplace usage is
| like? Just because you don't like getting tested doesn't mean
| people who test well can't innovate. No matter how much you
| trick yourself into thinking that Facebook/Meta won't stand the
| test of time, it has and it will.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| Theres a difference between creating beautiful creative code
| and creating an innovative product that people want to use.
| Its a different type of intelligence, and why you dont see
| Math professors starting ecommerce/product businesses.
| kache_ wrote:
| good thing we have product managers whose entire job is to
| herd us cats :P
| jnwatson wrote:
| Come on. A decent engineer can pass the programming portion of
| FAANG interviews in 30-40 hours of study and they take at most
| 40% of the interview time.
|
| Source: I got offers from 3 FAANGs last year.
| bognition wrote:
| I mostly agree with you here.
|
| The other big thing is that Zuckerberg is really good at seeing
| the business value in other people's ideas. He chases financial
| value by copying what other companies do.
|
| Instead companies like Amazon and Apple are obsessed with
| generating real world value for the customers and let financial
| value follow.
|
| Without a doubt Zuck sets the business culture, people that
| think like him and solve the problems he sees get rewarded.
| This has a massive trickle down component to the entire org.
| cycomanic wrote:
| > Instead companies like Amazon and Apple are obsessed with
| generating real world value for the customers and let
| financial value follow.
|
| While I would argue that even Apple is mostly about execution
| not innovation (many of Apple innovations had been around for
| a while, but apple took execution to a different level), but
| Amazon?! What are the big Amazon innovations? The one click
| checkout? Having pushed selling books online (arguably
| failing to become profitable for a long time)? I would say
| amazon is of all these companies the example which shows that
| you don't need to innovate anything as long as you have
| enough finances to push massively into any market you want.
| abbusfoflouotne wrote:
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| Heard of AWS, Alexa, One click checkout, Amazon Prime?
|
| They literally invented cloud computing
| spudlyo wrote:
| Time-sharing was the prominent model of computing in the
| 1970s, it's really not that different from cloud
| computing. Seems like a stretch to say that folks at
| Amazon invented it. I do take your point though, Amazon
| was the first to market with what we now view as "modern"
| cloud infrastructure.
| threeseed wrote:
| I don't know where to start with this comment.
|
| a) Meta can be accused of so many things but failing to build
| new, ambitious products is not one of them. They are literally
| pivoting the company to AR/VR and betting the future of the
| company on it. Quest2 is a huge success and their demoed R&D
| work on new headsets looks genuinely exciting and innovative.
|
| b) You are clearly ignorant of how product management works in
| a large company. Bookish engineers which you weirdly use as a
| slur are not solely responsible for inventing and releasing new
| products. And so if they hired people who had less
| understanding of how to write scalable code you wouldn't
| suddenly get better products.
| techdragon wrote:
| Small caveat there... they didn't build AR/VR ... they bought
| it then poured tons of money onto the smaller and more
| innovative company to get growth before trying to put a
| bullet though it's customer base by forcing Facebook accounts
| in order to get greater synergies with the rest of Facebook
| only to backflip because the gaming market hates it so much
| it was hurting sales.
| threeseed wrote:
| Oculus was acquired in 2014. Meta deserves all the credit
| for the success of Quest2 and unquestionably for all the
| R&D work going on at the moment:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zHDkdkqd1I
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Theory on facebook failure/Google failure to innovate:
|
| > They have the highest leetcode standards out of FAANG. As
| does Snap. They hire people that basically memorized computer
| science algorithms.
|
| These are mature Big Tech companies. While they do empower
| engineers to innovate, they still task Product Managers with
| managing product, just like every other big company.
|
| The product direction isn't very related to the LeetCode
| interviews given to dev candidates. I think you might be
| missing the context for the entire product side of a company
| and their interview processes and incentives.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| I have commonly seen Senior engineers drive completely new
| product innovations at big tech. This hard split between
| product and engineering is commonly not real. Especially when
| the innovation requires understanding large scale systems
| deeply.
| whateveracct wrote:
| Good product is always a result of a back and forth between
| product and engineering.
|
| Engineers aren't machines who implement flawless specs - they
| make a lot of decisions along the way.
| thefz wrote:
| > They have the highest leetcode standards out of FAANG. As
| does Snap. They hire people that basically memorized computer
| science algorithms. And so their employees are bookish, not
| innovative people. Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon do not have the
| same issues with creating new products.
|
| I don't think this is necessarily true because the people
| designing products are not the same people
| creating/implementing them. Even the most innovative company of
| the planet has some programmers and sysadmins doing "bookish"
| jobs as you say.
|
| Don't fall in the trap of thinking a smart and well trained
| tech can't be creative; there's some code out there that is a
| work of art and can inspire awe in everyone. Don't think that
| if their work is not evident or easy to comprehend it is not
| creative.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| Commented this elsewhere:
|
| Theres a difference between creating beautiful creative code
| and creating an innovative product that people want to use.
| Its a different type of intelligence, and why you dont see
| Math professors starting ecommerce/product/clothing
| businesses. The classic dichotomy between steve jobs and
| wozniak.
|
| I have worked at a few big tech companies, I have regularly
| seen engineers drive huge innovation in how something is
| done. Product people cant always do that, they dont have
| enough understanding of large scale systems.
| WalterBright wrote:
| You don't see math professors doing startups because they
| have tenure and are financially risk-averse. They also
| simply _like_ being professors.
|
| There may be another factor - universities are dominated by
| anti-capitalist sentiment. Doing a business startup means
| exiting that belief system.
| dagw wrote:
| Admittedly I'm over a decade out of university so things
| might have changed, but when I was getting my masters in
| mathematics several of the math professors had various
| 'side hustles' doing cool and advanced stuff at startups
| and in industry or finance.
|
| _universities are dominated by anti-capitalist
| sentiment_
|
| I know this is trendy to say and I'm sure there are
| individual universities where it is true, but I see
| little evidence for it at large. If nothing else every
| hedge fund and investment bank in the world basically
| only hire university graduates, and they can hardly be
| accused of being anti-capitalist. Every economics course
| I ever took was based, almost axiomatically, on the
| premise that capitalism is awesome.
| WalterBright wrote:
| University graduates are not the same as professors.
|
| The econ class I took at Caltech was taught by an award-
| winning leftist anti-capitalist professor, and if you
| didn't regurgitate his ideology on the tests, you got a
| bad grade.
|
| Hedge funds only hire a particular subset of graduates. A
| lot of left-wingers set aside their ideology to get those
| high salaries.
|
| My father was a finance professor at two colleges. He was
| the only faculty member who believed in free markets. He
| was constantly challenged in this by students and
| faculty. One time the faculty even challenged him to an
| open debate - the faculty against him. He took them
| apart. Faculty and students came up to him later saying
| they had no idea there was even a _case_ for the free
| market, and thanked him for opening their eyes.
|
| I wonder where you suppose Sanders' constituency comes
| from?
| FrenchDevRemote wrote:
| >there's some code out there that is a work of art and can
| inspire awe in everyone.
|
| and the people who wrote it didn't spend thousands of hours
| memorizing the same stupid leetcode exercises to pass lame
| interviews for 6 figures job, they worked on real projects
|
| tell me the fast inverse square root from Carmack would have
| been praised in an interview...
| chowells wrote:
| Perhaps if you spent more time with books, you'd know that
| John Carmack didn't invent the fast inverse square root
| algorithm associated with his name.
| FrenchDevRemote wrote:
| I found out about this after writing this comment, didn't
| bother to edit it(because what's the point?)
|
| Who cares if it's carmack or buddha?
|
| it's still brilliant code written by creative people, who
| can do stuff beyond memory copy/pasting code from other
| people
| closewith wrote:
| Would that improve the products the GP worked on?
| welshwelsh wrote:
| Leetcode isn't an alternative to real world projects, it's
| an alternative to textbooks and lectures for beginners.
|
| Zuckerberg was able to build Facebook because he got a good
| education and understood graph theory enough to apply it to
| social networks.
|
| In the past, the only people who really understood concepts
| like graphs were people who endured rigorous four-year
| computer science curriculums. And only top students at
| elite schools would learn this. The average CS graduate has
| a very poor understanding of fundamental data structures
| and algorithms.
|
| But with Leetcode, anyone can solve 5-10 graph problems and
| obtain the same knowledge. It's extremely efficient. In a
| couple of days, you can learn what used to take years.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Zuckerburg stole the idea of the product and knew php. I
| don't think he needed graph theory to built it and his
| education was really only Exeter at that point.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > understood graph theory enough to apply it to social
| networks.
|
| Facebook accounts have a friends list. Why would you need
| to understand graph theory.
| RobRivera wrote:
| bless his comment in code for a magic number in >Q3 engine<
| I think?
|
| // don't change this number, not sure why it works...
|
| not an exact quote but something like that
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Love that, I have also written a pretty much identical
| comment in the past lol
| kristopolous wrote:
| Disagree with the thousands of hours. The tasks are
| actually pretty easy and take about maybe 5 hours for any
| competent coder to brush up on.
|
| But that's the problem. If a few hours of exercise can
| dramatically change someone's results then it's not an acid
| test and it speaks poorly to the quality of whatever team
| the candidate would be joining.
|
| All interviews are two way streets and the problem is
| everyone knows what kind of results pass through the leet
| code filter and so if it's a bad process, perhaps your best
| candidates will decline to proceed or accept.
|
| You want people whose time is more valuable than your
| money. That's kinda the whole point of employee/employer
| social arrangements.
| hipshaker wrote:
| Don't fall in the trap of thinking creativity nescessarily
| applies accross borders.
|
| Being creative with coding is not the same as being creative
| with painting or inventing new products.
|
| Of course smart and well trained techs can be creative, it
| just may not apply as well to creating new products line
| other types of creative minds.
| thefz wrote:
| I disagree. Creativity != art.
| bilsbie wrote:
| You might be on to something! They also seem have a yes-person
| culture and you can't question the group think.
| saos wrote:
| Well don't these ideas come from PM's? They must be hella
| bookish
| niknoble wrote:
| I wonder how many of the people echoing this sentiment have
| tried and failed to clear the Leetcode bar at these top
| companies. It's hard to explain this level of consensus as
| anything other than motivated reasoning. As an earlier
| commenter stated, "I can believe that Leetcode is uncorrelated
| with creativity, but I have a hard time believing it's
| inversely correlated."
|
| The anti-Leetcode leaning on this site has the same flavor to
| me as the anti-crypto leaning. If you missed out on the easiest
| money in history (as I did), you're going to have a strong
| psychological block on accepting that crypto can be interesting
| or positive, and you're going to be drawn to arguments saying
| it's doomed to disappear. I have to explicitly set aside my
| emotions about that topic in order to see it for what it is.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| I have worked at two top tech companies, and previously
| worked on an ML research team for an investment firm. I am
| speaking from first hand experience
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon do not have the same issues with
| creating new products.
|
| Microsoft? Really? Is Azure more innovative than Cloud? Where
| is MSFT innovating? Acquiring Xbox and Minecraft?
|
| And for that matter, where is Amazon innovating outside of AWS
| (their primary profit engine)?
|
| FB & Google innovate in Ad Tech - that's their core business.
|
| Apple is just more in your face about innovation because their
| core business is convincing people they need to endlessly spend
| $2000 every year to get the latest and greatest gadgets.
|
| Even Exxon is innovative in gas exploration... All decent
| companies are innovative in their core business. Some core
| businesses aren't as sexy as AirPods.
| chadash wrote:
| This seems like wishful thinking. Why assume that academic
| intelligence makes you less creative? Do you think that people
| who graduate with high grades out of Harvard/MIT/Stanford are
| less creative than people who graduate from second-tier
| universities because they are too bookish?
|
| I think the reality is probably that it's hard for any large
| company to be truly innovative. Once you get to a certain size,
| red tape and size make you slower. You also have an existing
| golden goose that you don't want to kill (for these companies,
| ad revenue), so you are more constrained. Furthermore, you only
| care to take risks that have massive payoffs... new ideas at
| Google need to be $1b+ to make a dent and $50m ideas don't
| really matter much anymore. In any case, are there any large
| companies that don't do leetcode that you would consider
| innovative? I'd argue maybe Amazon (1 day delivery) and Apple
| (M1 and M2 chips), but not so much in their software divisions
| where the leetcode happens.
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I recommend a book called "inside the tornado", which deals
| with innovation at larger companies.
|
| https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Inside-the-
| Tornado...
|
| His previous book "Crossing the Chasm" was also good, but
| that dealt with startups trying to find market fit.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| I posted this elsewhere, creativity with regards to creating
| and intuiting what will be a good product is completely
| different than creating a beautiful algorithm. Math
| professors arent known for their sense of style. And I agree,
| size hampers it, but here we have Amazon, Microsoft, and
| Apple all creating new products that people like. And who you
| hire as engineers permeates through the culture.
| aesh2Xa1 wrote:
| I think OP, and others like myself, are questioning
| something else. It's not that being creative is different
| from being "bookish," it's that the two are not mutually
| exclusive.
| anyfoo wrote:
| > here we have Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple all creating
| new products that people like
|
| And you think that those companies don't test proficiency
| of working with algorithms when hiring? What?
|
| Two of them (arguably all three) make _operating systems_.
| That 's just one of many parts of what they do where
| proficiency in algorithms and data structures is a strong
| prerequisite.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| Im not saying they dont test, but not anywhere near to
| the same degree. You absolutely need to be able to solve
| some of these problems, but FB takes it to another level.
| Its almost not even comparable in terms of the rigor.
| anyfoo wrote:
| This does not make sense just in the light that every
| division, every team probably, tests differently
| according to their needs. I have a suspicion that you are
| trying to extrapolate some small anecdotical experiences
| to whole massive companies.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > This seems like wishful thinking. Why assume that academic
| intelligence makes you less creative?
|
| Unfortunately - it's common on HN - I've seen all sorts of
| hobby-horses tied to creativity. Everything from the economic
| system (capitalism vs "socialism"[1]), to "freedom", wealth
| and race (or something close to it as one can make on HN
| without being flagged - which is close indeed).
|
| In all these scenarios, the commenter's favored group are
| creative and predestined for success because of their
| affinity, and the others _should_ fail and therefore _will_
| fail and the author will resort to all forms of
| justifications, despite not having any evidence (or while
| ignoring the existence of contrary evidence)
|
| 1. Once, I couldn't get an answer why DJI was kicking all
| American drone companies asses (back,when they existed in
| comparable form), despite all the alleged inherent creativity
| from living in a country overflowing with freedom.
| barnabee wrote:
| > Why assume that academic intelligence makes you less
| creative?
|
| Perhaps it's not the academic intelligence that makes you
| uncreative, but the lack of willingness to play those games
| means that anyone who does endure the process is bound to be
| both intelligent and uncreative.
|
| The most intelligent and creative people I know are beyond
| uninterested in big tech (one even went as far as foregoing
| millions of dollars after their company got acquired by a
| FAANG because they couldn't motivate themselves to turn up
| after their induction and quit). They have plenty of career
| and lifestyle options, and most of them are way less driven
| by money than the average.
|
| You won't find any of them at Meta.
|
| I don't think this is just about the environment you find
| once you get there. I suspect these companies are unwittingly
| selecting for dullness and failure to innovate from the very
| start of the process.
| nprateem wrote:
| Facebook is in one industry. Amazon just keeps expanding into
| more and more.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| Right but the question is, what in the DNA of Amazon allows
| them to expand like that?
| threeseed wrote:
| You simply acquire 100+ companies:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisiti
| o...
| threeseed wrote:
| Meta is also in the AR/VR space.
|
| And expanding into more and more industries is not
| necessarily a good thing.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I have no opinion on the quality of any particular employees,
| but the thing about Google interviews is that they seem to
| optimize for a certain kind of personality. Lots of people are
| "bookish" but Google seems to somehow further optimize for
| people with high IQ but low emotional intelligence. That lack
| of empathy is further reinforced by the needs of the
| advertising business, which is actually Google's primary
| business.
| throwaway29303 wrote:
| Google failure to innovate
|
| I disagree and, in fact, there's a whole website dedicated to
| its _failed_ innovations[0].
|
| Google's problem is not a technical one. It's a social and
| cultural one. Google is way ahead of the pack in terms of
| innovation but it's stuck in the past (and by past I mean
| present). Remember Google glasses? Remember how that turned
| into the Glasshole meme? (And apparently it's coming back[1].)
|
| The rate of innovation is greater than people's willingness to
| adopt them. And also let's not forget that Google has a very
| specific modus operandi.
|
| [0] - https://killedbygoogle.com/
|
| [1] - https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/25/23054367/google-ar-
| glasse...
| klabb3 wrote:
| Google in particular is great at tech but grew from a very
| simple product (simple as in product surface area - a search
| box - the supporting infra is a different story). Their
| biggest issue is inability to deliver complex products that
| are coherent (1) with each other and (2) with itself, over
| time. I think mainly this is because they're not respecting
| the user (ironic, since that's officially their core tenet).
| Why? Because they are evil? No, mostly because they don't
| understand them. Employees live in a different world,
| demographically, socially, economically, everything. They've
| also never had a strong culture of truly understanding and
| embracing their user base. So they decide everything upfront
| without validating it externally first, and are genuinely
| surprised when they miss the mark. "That's so weird, all the
| execs & directors thought this was a good idea. Well anyway,
| I got my promo, better move on to the next team."
| eftychis wrote:
| That is a hopeful idea but I feel it might be our naivety that
| propagates it.
|
| To my understanding Google's interviews have gotten easier and
| more arbitrary perhaps over time. The competition is high and
| thus there is the expectation of having studying to pass.
| Google is famous in the end.
|
| Consider there are the following cases (kind of complete):
|
| a) New employees hired are not brilliant
|
| b) Google doesn't want to hire brilliant employees thus the
| leetcode interview
|
| c) Leetcode has little effect on "they are brilliant" check, so
| a different trait is selected and indirectly brilliance
| distribution inside of Google is different but not the main one
| affected
|
| d) Even if Google was full of brilliant people it wouldn't
| matter; they have no power over what happens by design (or
| inadvertently)
|
| Google is huge. The main job of everyone there, I claim, is to
| not screw up the money maker: ad auctioning. After that they
| can do as they wish. The job of every manager there is to make
| sure that doesn't happen. Innovation is next. And they do
| innovate but not on things that make enough money to sustain.
| There is no direction thus.
|
| As evidence I provide the following. They have been throwing
| ideas at the wall for years trying to see what else sticks even
| as close to the ad auctioning and data collection scheme and
| they kill what doesn't appear to. Thus, their reputation of
| killing things.
| decafninja wrote:
| I have a few friends at Google, all of whom got in many years
| ago. They all claim the interview has gotten a lot harder,
| and that there's no way in hell they'd pass the current level
| of scrutiny.
|
| Although FWIW, they also say they also would not have passed
| the interview for the time period they got hired if they had
| to do it again a second time.
| rajup wrote:
| > They have the highest leetcode standards out of FAANG. As
| does Snap. They hire people that basically memorized computer
| science algorithms. And so their employees are bookish, not
| innovative people. Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon do not have the
| same issues with creating new products.
|
| I call bs on this. All of these companies have pretty similar
| interview processes.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I think you mention the real reason as a footnote. Ads are _SO_
| lucrative that it isn 't worth it to be innovative or take huge
| risks. They do a little here and there but why invest $10B in
| an idea that is unlikely to have higher margins or larger
| volume.
| akomtu wrote:
| Having spent a good number of years in these companies, I can
| say that there is no shortage of creative and skillful
| employees there. What kills innovation is the lack of real
| ownership and the feedback-driven politics. Employees with
| great ideas and ability to execute can't go ask for funding and
| work on their ideas - those ideas would be either stolen
| (politics), or priorities would change (no real ownership),
| they would still have a manager to answer to, and they'd still
| have to be careful to not cross anyone's feelings for the
| inevitable complaint will wreck their careers (no real
| competition). So everyone plays it safe, wears a fake smile and
| cheers the team even when that team is surely going to sink the
| ship. The bigger a corporarion gets, the more pronounced this
| risk-averse safetism becomes. The terminal stage of such
| corporations is a gov-like bureaucracy where safety is the idol
| and risk is a slur word.
| btheshoe wrote:
| leetcode isn't that hard though.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| exactly, its very doable for a certain type of
| brain/personality
| Aunche wrote:
| It sounds like you have an irrational grudge against Leetcode-
| style interviews.
|
| > Theory on facebook failure/Google failure to innovate: They
| have the highest leetcode standards out of FAANG. As does Snap.
|
| As does Tik Tok, perhaps even more so.
|
| > lower level engineers hired ten years ago do rise to the top
| and run whole divisions
|
| Engineers have little say into product decisions, even if they
| run whole divisions. Nobody is criticizing the engineering
| decisions Facebook and Google are making. Just their products.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| I have worked at two big tech companies, and previously
| worked on an ML research team for an investment firm. I am
| speaking from first hand experience
| petre wrote:
| > copy other business ideas
|
| Copy Chinese business ideas. CCP propaganda is over optimized.
| It should work fine for ads.
| jrpt wrote:
| This theory is wrong in many ways, but just one point should
| suffice: engineers at these companies don't set the product and
| business strategy.
| noidiocyallowed wrote:
| They keep the talent from doing their own thing, basically
| innovate. That's how you choke innovators. Give a fat paycheck,
| a sense of accomplishment, while bleeding them out. That's all.
| benbristow wrote:
| Definitely can't be helping.
|
| I saw an ad on LinkedIn a few months ago for Coinbase and
| applied out of curiosity. Was very intimidating as a British
| 'commoner' who went to a very average university to be being
| grilled on Leetcode/Hackerrank questions by fresh male-Asian
| Stanford/MIT/top-US-university graduates (not being
| stereotypical - this was true!). Didn't stand a chance really
| as I don't do well with algorithmic questions although the
| interviewers were friendly enough and I did somehow manage to
| stumble to the last stage of 1 recruiter interview and 3 coding
| interviews. One answer I was expected to answer the complexity
| of my code to which the answer was something involving
| logarithms which I genuinely don't have a clue. I consider
| myself to be a pretty good developer and constantly get
| praise/compliments from my colleagues.
|
| Dodged a bullet really after all the news I've seen recently
| about staff having their applications revoked due to hiring
| stoppages.
| giobox wrote:
| > One answer I was expected to answer the complexity of my
| code to which the answer was something involving logarithms
| which I genuinely don't have a clue.
|
| Being asked the logarithmic time complexity of some code you
| just wrote is literally one of the most common interview
| questions in Software Engineering, no? I'm assuming at least
| this is what you are referring to. All the well known
| interview help books in the industry ("Cracking the Coding
| Interview" etc etc) and websites like Leetcode spend a lot of
| time teaching it for a reason!
|
| I've never had a software engineering interview where I
| wasn't asked to discuss something related to time complexity
| of a given bit of code, and given the regularity in which it
| will crop up its worth just spending the time to learn.
| benbristow wrote:
| Yes, it was about the time complexity. I have a very
| primitive understanding of big-O notation from back in
| sixth form but I never did logarithms in maths (never did
| maths to a high enough level really).
|
| My fault for not dedicating a bunch of time to read loads
| of books to pass an interview and instead spending my time
| making a living at a full time software engineering job.
| eropple wrote:
| The heuristic for this, FWIW, is to think about reducing
| the number of things you're messing with (such as a
| search set) by a factor (usually 2, not always) on every
| iteration. A binary search is a logarithmic algorithm
| because you chop off half of the (sorted) search set on
| every pass. That's all you really need to know about it
| to identify one (and thus realize you have a sublinear-
| time algorithm).
| eropple wrote:
| I'm comfortable enough with time complexity, and I like to
| think I'll sniff out a logarithmic-class solution when I've
| written one, but I don't think I've ever had a problem with
| a candidate bucketing a problem into
| sublinear/linear/superlinear.
| kuboble wrote:
| I don't know if that is helpful but logarithms are quite an
| easy concept that helps with thinking about code complexity.
|
| It's an inverse of exponent which translates to " grows very
| slowly with input size. 10 for a thousand, 20 for a million
| etc.". It helps to quickly ballpark feasability the same way
| exponential complexity usually means "doesn't scale above 30"
|
| Log(n) is a
|
| - number of digits required to write a number
|
| - depth of a balanced tree of size n
|
| - running time of any algorithm working on input of size n
| which does fixed cost operation to cut input in half (e.g
| binary search). If your code has cost function f(n) = 1 +
| f(n/2) then it has logarithmic performance.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Maybe the problem is that these companies just need to stop
| trying to innovate? All successful social media platforms start
| out as fun places to be. Then they become feature complete, but
| the laws of SV say they have to continue to grow for eternity,
| so what do they do? They mess up the timeline, throw
| increasingly irrelevant content at everyone, add and sunset new
| features every month, try to copy other platforms, screw around
| with people brains (oh, I mean increase engagement). Couldn't
| they just try for profitability instead of infinite growth?
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I could believe that leetcode ability is not correlated with
| creativity but I have a hard time believing it's inversely
| correlated.
| vannevar wrote:
| Social media companies are in a bind. They're companies, so they
| have to grow or die. But they're invested in their current
| platform, and the likelihood of a particular innovation being
| successful is low, so it's tough for them to do radical R&D,
| they're limited to tweaking their current platform. This opens
| the door to startups, which can capture the new (young) users who
| aren't committed to a platform. A small number of startups
| succeed and experience exponential growth that starts cutting
| into the growth of the established players. The Instagrams of the
| world have to chase features to retain growth (a strategy
| ultimately doomed to fail), or they will have to acquire the
| upstarts. Because of its close ties with the Chinese government
| any kind of merger or acquisition with TikTok is fraught with
| potential problems. Instagram is taking the only path available
| to it, as unlikely to succeed as it is.
| samwillis wrote:
| > They're companies, so they have to grow or die.
|
| This is a failing of modern corporate culture. There is nothing
| wrong in reaching a stable equilibrium, becoming profitable,
| and if you are a public company, paying dividends.
|
| It's unfortunate that it's become growth at all costs, there is
| something to be said about public companies just stabilising,
| and paying out profits to shareholders.
|
| Now, that's not to say Facebook is able to reach a stable
| equilibrium. I think they are struggling to maintain that, and
| that's the problem. It's a case of not loosing market share,
| especially when you have promised your shareholders the world.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _a failing of modern corporate culture. There is nothing
| wrong in reaching a stable equilibrium, becoming profitable,
| and if you are a public company, paying dividends_
|
| It's the failing of _a_ culture. Plenty of companies do this.
| (I cautiously venture that most American companies do this?)
| alt227 wrote:
| Its not a failure of culture, it's Capitalism.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _not a failure of culture, it 's Capitalism_
|
| Plenty of capitalists are happy running businesses at
| steady state. Some, even to wind down. (We tend to have
| nasty names for the latter.)
|
| Growth at all costs is not a problem with our commercial
| culture at large nor with capitalism. It's a convenient
| bogeyman for when we want to punt on a problem.
| matsemann wrote:
| If at least the algorithm was any good, people might not have
| complained as much.
|
| Like, I only follow sport stuff. Some triathletes, professional
| bicyclists, skiers etc. What does Instagram then decide to show
| me? A female cyclist with her zipper down and lots of cleavage, a
| skier in bikini, ass pics of swimmers etc.. Probably that's the
| most trending stuff related to my interests, but I follow no
| accounts related to that, anf scrolling through my likes they're
| nowhere like that, so please show me what I want instead.
| can16358p wrote:
| That's interesting. The algorithmic feed, even though I'm not a
| fan, shows me stuff that I'm actually genuinely interested in,
| and I'm not generally interested in the pop culture so it's not
| that, it really is targeted and successful.
|
| Having said that, I used to love Instagram much more when it
| was a photo, forget reels, not even regular video/IGTV,
| platform.
| shortstuffsushi wrote:
| Yeah, this is frustrating. My content isn't just my tastes,
| it's my taste + sex because <20-40 yo male>. So, I don't really
| feel good even opening the explore tab anywhere that isn't
| private, because there's a good chance there will be
| questionable content.
| grishka wrote:
| I'm not open to discovering new content in social media, that's
| it. If I want to see someone's posts, there's a handy "follow"
| button for that. If I don't want to see someone's posts, I
| don't follow them. Force-feeding me content from people I don't
| follow in an attempt to manipulate me simply annoys me. The
| best algorithm is "ORDER BY `created_at` DESC".
|
| If I want to see content from people I don't know, I use
| YouTube, Reddit or HN -- simple as that. I don't use TikTok out
| of principle.
| rcpt wrote:
| Same problem here but to be honest I do click on those ass pics
| gdulli wrote:
| When Twitter forced the algorithmic timeline on people, someone
| tweeted:
|
| "Is the algorithm based what everyone else likes, or what I
| like? Because I hate what everyone else likes, and I don't know
| what I like."
| jsemrau wrote:
| What I like also changes frequently. I think that is the
| magic of TikTok that they adjust quickly to what I want to
| see and now like Twitter / YT / etc what I have looked at in
| the past
| shmatt wrote:
| I don't have TikTok, but for 2 years this is what I've been
| hearing from people who love it. They figured out a way to
| show you exactly what you're interested in, without you
| giving them any specific input
|
| There have been many articles about the phenomenon of the
| "For You Page"[1][2]. But the funny part is Meta sees this
| and figures - people are looking at videos, we'll do videos.
| And not - people are seeing what they specifically like, lets
| do that
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/business/media/tiktok-
| alg...
|
| [2] https://repeller.com/tiktok-algorithm-bisexual/
| alexb_ wrote:
| I think one of the biggest things TikTok does is that it
| shows completely random videos from time to time. I often
| get videos with 0 views that were just randomly shown to
| me. So the platform actually has some randomness that can
| spontaneously find something interesting instead of having
| people build up a base first.
| mrtksn wrote:
| TikTok quickly learns what you don't like and the homepage
| becomes a mix of your subscriptions, new content that you
| might like and very new kind of content that you haven't
| been exposed or stuff that you outgrew but you might like
| to revisit.
|
| Learning the things you don't like is important. It's much
| more pleasant experience when you are not exposed to the
| stuff you don't like. Unlike Twitter, the stuff you don't
| like doesn't mean things you disagree with. You very well
| might not like politics, TikTok keeps you out of the
| culture war then.
| indiv0 wrote:
| Interestingly it also seems to mix your content with
| content your friends tend to view. Or at least it does so
| tentatively, to see if you share the same interest. When
| I friended a pilot friend of mine on TikTok, I
| _immediately_ started seeing pilot /plane content. This
| is after having had an account since forever and not once
| having seen pilot content on my For You page before. It's
| an interesting way to broaden your horizons, but it does
| turn a little common denominator, depending on what your
| friends like.
|
| Similarly (and I have no way of proving this, but I
| believe it 100%), TikTok seems to alter your feed to
| incorporate videos from other people watching TikTok near
| you. My friends and I have made a game of this where we
| cast TikTok to a TV, watch videos, and try to guess which
| of us the video was intended for.
|
| I've never once had a "oh wow that's a neat content
| discovery method" moment from Facebook/Instagram/YouTube
| but it has happened _multiple_ times with TikTok. I 'm
| not saying TikTok is the end-all-be-all of social media,
| but it's a good window into _what social media could be_
| , if they stopped chasing ad revenue and anger-driven
| content.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Oh it definitely keeps track of you social circle and
| shows similar content. Bedtime browsing on the same phone
| often yields some "I've seen this before" reactions.
| winternett wrote:
| Most political things don't generate huge amounts of
| platform advertising money probably on TikTok... The
| autopilot ad revenue is easy for them to make on
| political content as well because right now, there's only
| a few different aspects competing with each other... It's
| likely that a lot of users don't primarily go to TikTok
| for political content, it's primarily music and social
| influencer based as well... This is why TikTok allows
| users to avoid political content, it's not a "cash cow"
| niche for them.
| mrtksn wrote:
| There's definitely political content too. It's just that
| it tends to be expressed much more creatively, through
| music, dancing and acting.
| winternett wrote:
| Of course, I'm just saying that there are more fart
| jokes, memes, and makeup tip videos than political ones
| on TikTok at this particular moment in time.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| I think that's probably exactly it. I don't know whether
| the ad ratio is different, but you're just far more likely
| to see something new and interesting on TikTok vs scroll
| pass mountains of uninteresting or meh things until
| something comes along. I dunno in terms of where you'd see
| more ads and who knows you probably do see more ads in the
| low-reward boring app that you have to scroll forever on.
| But when your thumb is hovering between launching two apps,
| it's not rocket science where it's going to learn to land.
|
| And I agree with the other commenter that TikTok is good at
| finding novelty in ways the other is not. Things like
| YouTube or whatever will just show you endless variations
| of the things you've already liked. TikTok will throw you
| things you like from way out of left field.
| password4321 wrote:
| Yes, TikTok must do per-user model tweaking to whatever
| degree they can afford, right?
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Yep, TikTok learns really fast and after it has learned it
| shows you mostly stuff it knows you like.
|
| Then - maybe one video in 20 or something - you get stuff
| that's either completely different, completely new (under
| 100 likes/views) or related to something you liked a long
| time ago. And then the next one is again something you
| actually like.
|
| The Instagram model is just shoving "recommendations" to
| every 3rd slot on my screen. And every 4th one is an ad.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _They figured out a way to show you exactly what you 're
| interested in, without you giving them any specific input_
|
| They optimized their primary user interaction to provide
| specific input!
|
| By distilling user choice down to {watch time} or {swipe},
| and preferentially promoting short pieces of content that
| generate more swipes, they get unambiguous and frequent
| input.
|
| Which isn't to lessen their achievement, but is to
| highlight that they engineered their entire experience to
| provide their algorithms more and cleaner feedback.
| foobarian wrote:
| Maybe they will figure out how to not show me ads for
| months for the item I just purchased.
| togs wrote:
| Here's hoping for a large U.S. company to go under for once.
| mpalmer wrote:
| > But users are notoriously fickle, and complaints often don't
| align with their behavior. While some Instagram users claim that
| they want to see more photo-based posts in their feed, Mosseri
| said users are posting less of this content, _choosing instead to
| share pictures to their Stories or through direct messages_
|
| Maybe they use DMs because they hate your ad delivery. Maybe they
| use stories because you make every effort to push users to it, so
| that's where the eyeballs are.
|
| Pretty tiresome to position your company as a victim of its users
| when you have a shocking level of influence over their behavior.
|
| Not to mention how credulous this passage is from a journalistic
| standpoint.
| alexashka wrote:
| The infinite growth beast comes for everyone. It's the second
| coming, again and again, and again.
|
| https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-comi...
| l33tbro wrote:
| Did you really just post a Yeats poem in response to some
| feature changes on Instagram?
| Ensorceled wrote:
| All of social media is broken right now.
|
| Instagram actively hides pics from my step kids, nephew and niece
| to show me "reels" from people I don't follow. Last night a photo
| from my step daughter flickered briefly and then was lost. I
| couldn't find it again until this morning. I literally can't find
| their content anymore without scrolling and dodging videos that
| keep popping up.
|
| Youtube broke entirely a few months ago. The content creators
| I've subscribed to are now rarely in my feed which is full of
| "recommended for you" videos and movies for rent. Several content
| creators I follow have their business dying from sudden drop in
| ad revenue due to the changes.
|
| Facebook does this weird thing were after someone I know
| recommends a video, my feed switches to recommended videos
| entirely until I click back to home. Stuff appears from friends
| or family days after posting, now at the top of my feed.
|
| Twitter is, surprisingly, the least broken, at least I mostly
| still see the people I follow. I still miss stuff because of the
| algorithm, but it's not, yet, forcing a ton of stuff I'm not
| actually following down my throat. And the ads are still clearly
| ads.
| kpierce wrote:
| All entertainment seems to be broken. Let me watch something on
| netflix my recommended list is almost identical to comedy,
| adventure, etc. Their machine learning must show that people
| will just watch what is in front of them.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| My audible app is full of recommendations for books I ALREADY
| HAVE I MY LIBRARY.
|
| Netflix seems to be actually getting better, for a while,
| watching a single video could entirely change my recommended
| list.
| onychomys wrote:
| Facebook served me an ad a couple of months back urging me
| to apply for a job at the hospital I've worked for since
| 2015, WHILE I WAS ACCESSING FACEBOOK FROM MY WORK VPN. I
| have it listed as my workplace and I was coming from a IP
| addy owned by it and still the computer thought it should
| show me the ad. I just don't get it.
| aquova wrote:
| Using Twitter as an example, it ran into the problem around
| 2010 or so where it, in my opinion, had found the perfect set
| of features. All of the tweets from the people you follow would
| be shown in chronological order for you. Liking a tweet simply
| showed support for that tweet, while retweeting it would repost
| it for all of your own followers. It was simple and clean.
| However they then ran into the problem where they felt the need
| to do _something_ to maximize user retention on the site.
| Algorithms dictate what order things are seen in, new users and
| tags and trendy things are being shown to you, your likes are
| now also shown to the people who follow you but only sometimes,
| anything they could do to try and get people to consume more.
| It 's not just Twitter; these long running social media
| networks are so afraid of becoming stagnant that they are
| chasing every trend they come across, and at some point it's
| going to catch up to them.
| dharma1 wrote:
| You can click on the little star top right on Twitter and
| choose "Latest tweets" to get a mostly chronological feed
| MikusR wrote:
| Youtube has a whole section with all the people you follow.
| https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions all the videos are
| in reverse chronological order.
|
| Twitter has a button with stars where you can select to show
| only the tweets of people you follow in reverse chronological
| order. Called Latest Tweets.
| csours wrote:
| The YouTube subscriptions page is my shortcut to YouTube.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Stop blaming users for problems introduced by massive tech
| companies.
|
| Yes, _I_ know how to find my subscriptions, that 's how I
| know the channels I like are dying; they are posting "my
| channel is dying videos" and only a subset of their users are
| finding them.
| NCC1701DEngage wrote:
| If you're looking to find more interesting content on
| YouTube you might want to check this out:
|
| https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCcefcZRL2oaA_uBNeo5UOWg/
|
| They have lists of channels by similarity. That one is the
| list for the Y Combinator channel. You can look up a
| different channel in the search bar on top of the page.
|
| I've definitely found a bunch of new channels through it,
| like Yannic Kilcher and pretty much the whole AI section of
| YouTube. Despite watching stuff like Robert Miles and Lex
| Fridman YouTube never showed me the depth of the AI section
| on its own. After I found it the YouTube algorithm started
| showing me videos in the new areas I was discovering which
| brought even more content.
| lovehashbrowns wrote:
| Your other comment said:
|
| > The content creators I've subscribed to are now rarely in
| my feed which is full of "recommended for you" videos and
| movies for rent.
|
| The solution is to go to your subscription feed. This also
| wasn't a few months ago. This changed many years ago. I
| remember hating having to put the subscriptions page in my
| list of URLs because it was harder to go there. Previously
| there was a section of the YT home page for your latest
| subscription uploads, I think? I don't remember exactly.
|
| You also need to actively watch content from your
| subscribed channels in order to get their videos
| recommended to you. I have a ton of channels I'm subscribed
| to but not all of them show up in my recommendations
| because I don't watch their content enough.
|
| I feel that's actually better because there are channels
| I'm subscribed to that I don't watch all of their content,
| e.g. conference channels, but I do want to occasionally see
| if they uploaded anything I want to watch. Channels I
| actively watch frequently have their newest uploads pop up
| in my recommendations almost immediately.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > Your other comment said:
|
| >> The content creators I've subscribed to are now rarely
| in my feed which is full of "recommended for you" videos
| and movies for rent.
|
| It is, and I presume so is everyone's. I wasn't asking
| for help, I was explaining a bunch of problems I'm
| seeing.
|
| > This also wasn't a few months ago.
|
| No, something seriously changed a few months ago. 5
| different channels are all suddenly have the same problem
| where their views are all down to 50% or less without
| explanation.
| grishka wrote:
| Wait, people use _something else_ to see the videos from
| their subscribed channels? I 'm genuinely curious.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| I got super excited for that YouTube functionality, then I
| clicked the link and realized that either I follow way too
| many people for this to be useful, or the people I follow are
| producing way more content than I can handle. I guess maybe
| if I "un-ring" the bell for a few of the bigger channels this
| could be useful...
| csours wrote:
| It's painful, but I have pruned my subscription list of
| people who upload often but I rarely watch. At this point
| my YouTube subscription list is channels where I open the
| video more than 50% of the time.
|
| I don't know if that's "fair" or not, but it's how I keep
| the subscription page useful.
| twiceaday wrote:
| People harp on social media algorithms but this right here
| is the actual problem. Your stated preferences, to see and
| be notified of all those videos, run contrary to your
| revealed preferences. And services catering to the former
| will lose to services catering to the latter. By harboring
| these mismatches we train these systems to ignore what we
| say we want or risk losing profits and market share.
| praestigiare wrote:
| The problem is that engagement is a poor proxy for
| preference.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah I did the same. I find the best way to use YouTube
| with a lot of subscriptions is just to click the
| subscriptions list and it shows you who has a new video and
| you can decide what you're in the mood for based on the
| channel.
| lizknope wrote:
| Every morning I to go youtube and check my subscriptions
| for new videos. I have zero bell notifications because I
| just find it really annoying. I work from home most days so
| I play the interesting new videos that day from my
| subscriptions and really don't bother with anything else.
| leviathant wrote:
| When in the Instagram app, click on the word Instagram. A
| select menu appears, and you can choose "Following" - you have
| to do this every time you open the app, and who knows when it
| will get the axe, but it's made this terrible platform a little
| more usable for me.
| e_i_pi_2 wrote:
| I agree that they're "broken" in that they don't work the way I
| want them to - but they're functioning perfectly normally to
| maximize profit. I think TikTok kinda broke the dam on this and
| we see it in more apps now, but it seems like we've found out
| that people will spend more time on the app when you show them
| random new people based on their interests compared to showing
| them just the people they chose to follow.
|
| I think the main solution to this would be some sort of public
| social media platform that isn't trying to be profitable. As
| long we we're requiring companies to prioritize profit we're
| not going to get outcomes that go against that
| chadlavi wrote:
| This. They're not broken, they're working as intended for
| their customers, who are quite emphatically not us.
| loudandskittish wrote:
| > Instagram actively hides pics from my step kids, nephew and
| niece to show me "reels" from people I don't follow.
|
| I find it all that for all the data these companies have, they
| don't seem to be using it well...or stopped using it.
|
| Facebook has suddenly started flooding me with posts from
| political meme groups I never joined and have never even looked
| at.
|
| Twitch's recommended section _used_ to be spot-on. Now they 're
| trying to push me to watch women in hot tubs for some reason.
|
| For me, YouTube is the only one that still manages to surface
| things I actually want to watch.
|
| I don't know what changed (I've really only noticed this in the
| past two months), but this is starting to feel like the old
| broadcast TV model of executives deciding we should all watch
| the same thing.
| 2c2c2c wrote:
| these changes are all driven by a/b testing and watching user
| average watchtime increase.
|
| this stuff is appealing to most people. they measured it.
| it's how they make money
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| > I find it all that for all the data these companies have,
| they don't seem to be using it well...or stopped using it.
|
| They've stopped using it to serve their users. They use it to
| serve their customers. The content they show you is what they
| want you to see so they can sell to advertisers, not what you
| want to see.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Twitch has a situation where they are trying to improve
| discoverability of underperforming streamers. The directory
| used to just be sorted by live concurrent viewers, which I
| guess does do a lot to ensure that the front page is full of
| streams that people will watch (by virtue of them already
| being watched) but it also leads to the site being dominated
| by a very small group of people.
|
| Youtube does very well but it's a lot easier to categorize
| and tag 10-minute videos than it is to do so to a currently
| active livestream... and I will point out that discovering
| livestreams on youtube is abysmal. I've got one person that I
| follow pretty closely and if they arent super good about
| setting up the stream beforehand it is real easy to miss
| because youtube will make zero effort in informing you.
| loudandskittish wrote:
| But the thing is, a year ago, Twitch actually did a good
| job suggesting people with only six viewers. *Now* for some
| reason, they're pushing people in hot tubs who already have
| thousands of viewers. That's what I'm complaining about.
| grishka wrote:
| > All of social media is broken right now.
|
| Not all, at least for me.
|
| VKontakte is the least broken of them all. There's still
| chronological feed and 95% of it is posts from people and pages
| you follow. But I imagine it's not very popular, or even known,
| outside of Russian-speaking countries. Don't get me wrong,
| there are product managers now and they do keep on relentlessly
| pushing their agenda (the TikTok clone aka "clips" no one asked
| for), but compared to what Facebook/Instagram routinely pulls
| off, VK feels extremely conservative.
|
| Twitter has an algorithmic feed _at all_? I tend to forget
| that. There 's a small button at the top right that I never
| click. One thing that DOES annoy the crap out of me though, is
| their insistence on exposing me to people I don't follow. Those
| "%user% liked" and "%user% follows" things. If only there was a
| dedicated button for showing someone else's tweet to your
| followers!
| thebradbain wrote:
| Say what you want about Twitter, but as someone who's been on it
| since 2011 and has made it my primary platform for social media
| since 2016, I'm grateful that fundamentally it's still the same
| old Twitter.
|
| Yes, they've fallen into the copy-cat temptation machine in some
| regards - i.e. "fleets" (stories) - but unlike Instagram will at
| least admit when it's not working and revert (fleets are no
| longer a feature on the platform). Of course, their failure to
| innovate definitely cost them TikTok-level success with their
| mismanagement of both Vine and Periscope, but at least their
| stubbornness to change has kept the core experience intact.
|
| Obviously there's some larger issues around Twitter's direction
| ("who is going to be in control of the company?") and the ever-
| present critiques of misinformation/harassment/"moderation versus
| censorship" that comes with the territory of being a public
| forum, but overall it's still the Twitter I know.
|
| I wonder if instagram's downfall will be a boon for Twitter in
| this regard: at least I know what it is.
| system16 wrote:
| It's fascinating how reactionary and directionless Instagram and
| Facebook have become. Instagram in particular has become
| Frankenstein's monster over the last few years, pathetically
| trying to reproduce functionality from other apps. The latest
| cloning of TikTok's feed is almost embarrassing. It's a testament
| to how deep the lack of a creative culture at Meta runs.
| solarmist wrote:
| This was exactly my experience in a dev productivity team that
| had fulfilled its purpose well enough.
|
| It's not a lack of creativity, but a lack of
| mission/vision/true north.
|
| Basically they're flailing about trying to find something that
| sticks. If they can't they'll go the way of yahoo.
| dont__panic wrote:
| It's sad that they keep trying to bolt this functionality
| onto existing apps. Why not leave Instagram and Facebook
| alone as functional tools with purposes -- posting statuses,
| photos, keeping in touch with friends and family -- and then
| create a separate TikTok competitor? And a separate Snap
| competitor? Is it just because FB's awful awful Snap clone
| crashed and burned and nobody used it, so they're afraid to
| launch a new app these days?
| throwaway_4ever wrote:
| > and then create a separate TikTok competitor? And a
| separate Snap competitor?
|
| They did, it was called Threads and no one used it.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/17/instagram-will-shut-
| down-i...
| dont__panic wrote:
| Oh my. I was referring to the earliest attempt,
| [Poke](https://techcrunch.com/2012/12/21/facebook-poke-
| app/).
|
| Later, there was
| [Slingshot](https://www.engadget.com/2014-06-17-facebook-
| slingshot.html).
|
| And now Threads.
|
| I guess my original comment was unfair -- Facebook _does_
| try to launch clone apps. They just don 't work!
| solarmist wrote:
| Because you have to start shrinking when you acknowledge
| this.
|
| It's a form of loss avoidance, I think. That or trading the
| known for starting something new.
| maronato wrote:
| > It's a testament to how deep the lack of a creative culture
| at Meta runs.
|
| This seems to be it. Meta only "innovates" to copy competitors.
| WhatsApp was a threat and was bought. Same for Instagram.
| Snapchat couldn't be bought, so it became stories and is now
| part of every product Meta owns.
|
| TikTok is the latest threat, and history repeats itself.
| Instead of creating a superior product that people want to use,
| Meta is sacrificing Instagram to replicate TikTok's every
| feature (including finally paying creators).
| alexashka wrote:
| What creative culture? A billion user beast does not know, need
| or want creative or culture.
|
| It wants profits and more of them, every quarter.
|
| TikTok's only 'innovation' is paying billions of dollars to
| teenagers to create meme videos. Instagram isn't losing to
| TikTok's 'creative culture', it's losing to American elite's
| favorite move - throwing money at a problem until everyone else
| quits, at which point you give talks and write books about how
| it was due to innovation, freedom and democracy, oh and LGBTQ+
| or whatever the term is nowadays.
|
| Source: know a couple of people who could barely scrape by on
| Instagram/youtube, switched to TikTok and are all of a sudden
| making more money than me. The infinite money faucet at TikTok
| will soon run dry and it'll become just another shit social
| media platform, like all the rest.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >TikTok's only 'innovation' is paying billions of dollars to
| teenagers to create meme videos
|
| TikTok has at least done three innovative things. One is the
| frictionless sign in that doesn't require an account,
| secondly the well done video editing tools and most
| importantly abstracting away the social graph.
|
| And on the finance site this doesn't check out either. TikTok
| is on track to triple revenue this year alone and top
| creators generally make more money from outside sponsors and
| deals than from the company itself. Of all the social media
| site TikTok arguably chips in the least amount of money
| themselves.
| [deleted]
| alexashka wrote:
| > Of all the social media site TikTok arguably chips in the
| least amount of money themselves.
|
| How do you know that?
| nickthegreek wrote:
| hank green video on tiktok creator fund:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAZapFzpP64
|
| article recap:
| https://www.tubefilter.com/2022/01/24/hank-green-tiktok-
| crea...
| hellomyguys wrote:
| I would also say spending billions on user acquisition is a
| bit of an innovation too because they did it and it paid
| off.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| My impression back in the day was that Facebook bought
| Instagram for the same reason. They couldn't get the younger
| crowd to stay on Facebook. It's more of a testament about to
| how much youth are not interested in living their lives on
| their parent's platforms.
| solarmist wrote:
| That was my impression too, that and buying potential
| competitors.
| jeremymims wrote:
| Steve Jobs famously said that he saw the computer as a "bicycle
| of the mind." He saw technology as a tool to amplify humanity's
| abilities.
|
| Mark Zuckerberg has chosen to build a "casino of the mind."
| Facebook and Instagram have been purpose-built to amplify and
| prey on humanity's weaknesses.
|
| The fact that "Meta" is now trying to make their casino _even
| more_ addictive to compete with TikTok does not bode well for the
| world.
| and-not-drew wrote:
| While casino is probably the best comparison, I've always
| thought of social media as kind of the high fructose corn syrup
| for this generation. We took something that in small doses
| isn't really an issue and over optimized without thinking of
| the human cost. We've figured out the most addictive part and
| have turned that up to 11 and are now realizing, "oh shit,
| maybe that was too much".
| xtracto wrote:
| This is the problem with most "free" digital services now:
| games, social nets, news sites, etc. They are optimizing user
| behaviour to cater their customers (advertisers), so they
| estimulate addictive behaviour.
|
| I blame advertising based internet. It pushes the wrong
| incentives for service providers.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I've developed a deep dislike for Mosseri following his Instagram
| Kids predation. The lack of empathy seems a recurring theme.
|
| Is there inside ball on why he commands respect at Facebook? Or
| is there a conservation of clowns rule in play with David
| Marcus's departure?
| kvetching wrote:
| It's IMPOSSIBLE to make an instagram account based solely off of
| images now.
|
| You're content will NOT even be pushed on the Recent tab of the
| hashtags you choose. You are essentially not seen at all unless
| someone is following you.
|
| The only way to be seen by the algorithm anymore to grow your
| account is to make videos.
|
| This is what happens when a company loses it's vision. Just check
| out how the filters have changed over the years. It's just
| Instagram losing it's soul and what made it unique.
| haspoken wrote:
| https://archive.ph/FF2d1
| pessimizer wrote:
| Snapchat knew the same thing. A Kardashian even told them. Not
| working out so well now.
|
| Instagram is a slightly different story, because they've probably
| got official guarantees that government is going to finally ban
| TikTok in their endless campaign of aggression towards China. So
| Insta replaces their pissed-off old users with young TikTok
| users, and the government can tell angry TikTok that there's a
| red-blooded Jesus equivalent to the evil Chinese internet drug.
| haskaalo wrote:
| Everytime I get on Facebook, the navbar seems to have a new
| combination.
|
| Watch, Gaming (Streaming), Dating, Marketplace, "News" Feed,
| Shop, Groups, Home, etc... These could all be different
| applications under the same login.
|
| Kylie Jenner is right (for once)... Nobody knows what Facebook or
| Instagram is for nowadays.
|
| Reddit - Communities and memes
|
| Snapchat - Sending snaps and watching stories of your actual
| friends
|
| Tiktok - Fast paced entertainment (Short videos)
|
| Twitter - What's happening right now?
|
| Instagram and Facebook is trying to be all of those at the same
| time.
| drusepth wrote:
| This seems like a great place to ask:
|
| Does anyone have a suggestion for a good alternative for old-
| Instagram (e.g. just sharing photos)? I only joined originally
| because of their cool map view that had pins around the world
| showing where each of your shared photos were taken, and they
| removed that feature a few years ago; I haven't found any other
| app than Google Photos that does it well. However, Google Photos
| does it for _all_ of my photos (there 's a lot!) and I'd much
| prefer a separate app just so I can edit and curate a very small
| collection for the map instead (1-2 photos per place), and
| ideally be able to share that map with other people.
|
| Anyone know of a good photo-sharing app for that?
| nikivi wrote:
| https://glass.photo/
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| +1 on glass. It's so purist about not having algo or becoming
| destroyed by influencers it's actually hard to find other
| photographers currently. Paid by users and no ads. I hope
| they work on some human-curated suggestions in the future!
| anthropodie wrote:
| iPhone only
| anthropodie wrote:
| Not sure if map thing is supported but PixelFed is good
| alternative to Instagram in general.
| ISL wrote:
| I was very happy to learn that I could "Snooze suggested posts"
| for 30 days. That we can't disable them is, well, perhaps
| predatory, but here's how to do it.
|
| There's an X at the top-right of any suggested post. If you click
| it, an option appears to snooze those posts for 30d.
|
| Mosseri is right to be concerned about supporting creator-
| discovery, which is a huge problem on the supply-side of IG's
| creator/consumer marketplace. If suggested posts were only a few
| percent of posts and didn't favor eye-catching Reels, but rather
| content in the same spirit as a user already follows, quality
| content could again rise to the top.
| instastuff wrote:
| [anonymous account]
|
| No matter how many "users" Instagram has, TikTok is absolutely
| destroying Instagram in terms of minutes of user engagement.
| People are spending way, way more time on TikTok than Instagram
| and the trend is accelerating.
|
| Meta is in full panic mode. They see the sand slipping through
| their fingers. They are trying to turn Instagram into TikTok
| because they think that is the only move. After all, it worked
| for them last time when they copied Stories and beat Snap.
|
| But this time, not only is that strategy failing, but it is
| making their still enormous user base revolt.
|
| Stories was a relatively useful extension to Instagram that
| didn't break the core app, so adding it worked. TikTok is a
| different thing and doesn't slot into Instagram as cleanly. Meta
| already tried making their TikTok clone a new "tab" in the app,
| but that didn't get the kind of results they needed. So now they
| are trying to make the whole app into TikTok because they don't
| know what else to do .
|
| I'm not really sure where they go from here. Instagram isn't
| satisfied being Instagram - they need to lead the world in order
| to attract ad revenue. But they are losing ground quickly.
|
| In the social media game, momentum is everything. TikTok has way
| more watch time so creators get more user engagement and can
| build their profiles much more quickly. Instagram is behind in
| engagement, so there is no incentive for creators to jump ship
| and get worse results. Instagram gets less fresh content which
| leads to less engagement and less ad sales. It's a vicious cycle
| that puts TikTok further ahead.
| toddh wrote:
| While having to respond to TikTok is understandable, what's their
| point of differentiation? It's hard to tell the difference
| between the two now. Maybe that's a good thing for insta?
| mnd999 wrote:
| "I guarantee that every single person who liked and shared that
| post about bringing Instagram back to what it was, would spend
| way less time on Instagram if it reverted back to how it used to
| be"
|
| Sure, because they could get the information they want without
| having to wade through the mountains of crap you're pumping out
| of the septic tank into your users faces. You're optimising the
| wrong metric you fucking clown.
| Strom wrote:
| You have a good point that would stand even stronger without
| the name calling.
| gjs278 wrote:
| mjburgess wrote:
| It does seem very appropriate though, doesnt it?
| [deleted]
| creddit wrote:
| Actually, it's a terrible point because Tommy Marcus, the
| Brooklyn based content creator, has no say in Instagram's
| optimization choices!
| sh4rks wrote:
| I'm not sure it would have
| t_mann wrote:
| I have a feeling that from Meta's perspective, that is the
| right metric. It's probably also a decent metric for that guy,
| because his influencer business depends on people wading
| through his content.
| creddit wrote:
| Tommy Marcus, the content creator from Brooklyn, probably
| doesn't get much of a say in what Meta optimizes for. Glad you
| got your insult in, though!
| cowtools wrote:
| Tommy Marcus, the content creator from Brooklyn profits from
| his instagram fame. Of course he wants the company do to well
| even if it's at the cost of the users.
|
| He does have a say in the way that facebook acts because he
| has leverage through his popularity. Not to mention that he
| is going on the news giving apologia to the corporation. And
| you're saying we should we should just twiddle our thumbs and
| not contest his ridiculous ideas because he's not a
| shareholder or something?
| creddit wrote:
| _Sure, because they could get the information they want
| without having to wade through the mountains of crap you're
| pumping out of the septic tank into your users faces.
| You're optimising the wrong metric you fucking clown._
|
| Tommy doesn't optimize Instagram metrics. Instagram does.
|
| Tommy doesn't have users. Instagram does.
|
| Tommy doesn't pump "mountains of crap out of the septic
| tank into" users faces. Instagram does. Tommy pumps out
| whatever content he wants to the people who follow him.
|
| It's clear from the quote that OP thinks Tommy works at
| Instagram and is criticizing what he think is an Instagram
| employee.
|
| It's not even apologia for Instagram, it's just Tommy's
| statement of belief that Instagram won't be negatively
| impacting users' time spent with these changes. There's no
| value statement at all from Tommy.
|
| It's not even a "ridiculous idea". It's just that Tommy
| thinks these changes will increase users' time spent on
| Instagram. You're just imputing mountains of additional
| context into what he says.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| He has a say on what he says about metas feed optimization
| though, and he clearly supports where their headed now.
| That's fair to criticize, even if the insult is a little
| heated.
| creddit wrote:
| It's not clear that he supports it. It's clear that he
| thinks users will spend more time on Instagram.
|
| Tommy's say on Instagram's product choices is probably
| about equivalent to my say which is to say no say.
| dang wrote:
| Could you please follow the site guidelines when posting here?
| Note this one:
|
| " _When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of
| calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be
| shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3._"
|
| Similarly, 'You're optimising the wrong metric you fucking
| clown' can be shortened to 'You're optimising the wrong
| metric'.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _You're optimising the wrong metric..._
|
| They're optimizing for the metric that suits their interests.
|
| It occurs to me that Facebook and related companies may well
| become the equivalent of ransomware companies - controlling
| more and more of the world's information and making more and
| more abusive demands for access to it.
| go_elmo wrote:
| You seem to forget that the user is the product, this is all
| not about his pleasure. As a publicly traded company you may
| not counter act this.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Interestingly, I remember when Facebook made a similar change
| to their feed, it was about 12-15 years ago, where they
| essentially made it much more like Twitter. I absolutely
| despised it, I _still_ despise it to this day, and I think it
| was the point where I realized how social networks are all
| actively out to basically destroy you (I 'm being hyperbolic,
| but only slightly).
|
| That is, if they really wanted to make it easy for you to
| connect and share with friends, or maybe meet some new ones
| (remember Facebook's "poke" feature?), they could easily do
| that. But they've found they are much better at the endless
| scroll of mindless WALL-E human crap, having optimized the
| right brain chemicals to make you feel like you can keep
| boredom at bay with one more upward swipe.
|
| The only winning move is not to play.
| xtracto wrote:
| I want the social network equivalent of "slow food": All
| social networks try to optimise for very the wrong metrics
| for the _users_ , but right metrics for their _customers_
| (advertisers).
|
| I want a social network where it is OK for people to
| sporadically add vanal posts. A social network that does not
| prioritize outrage or contention. And a social network were
| my close circle is actually discoverable, with high SNR.
| bowsamic wrote:
| "We listened to the customers and they were wrong"
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Except time spent on instagram is exactly the metric they care
| about. More time spent scrolling = more ads served.
| zachrip wrote:
| "You are not the customer" - ring a bell?
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| Let me be devil's advocate for a second and say:
|
| I guess Meta must be knowing what they're doing? I'm sure they
| are basing their decisions entirely on actual analytics and A/B
| testing results. If the numbers say users are moving towards
| videos, away from photos, than that's what they will cater to.
| That's why public emotions won't sway them.
| TheChaplain wrote:
| I wouldn't mind trying to build the new IG or Facebook, but issue
| is how to fund it without angel investors or others who push
| towards eyeball/click/attention-frenzy we have today.
| Marazan wrote:
| This is what happens when you manage to metrics.
|
| "Engagement" is the metric and the incredibly obviously stupid
| problem with it as your optimisation goal that is apparently
| ungraspable by the leadership of every single social network.
|
| It infects everything down even to Google search rankings.
|
| If you can quickly and easily find the info you want then that
| reduces "engagement" and that is bad, apparently.
| fleddr wrote:
| It's totally graspable.
|
| Users are unable/unwilling to spend a penny on social networks,
| hence ads it is, hence engagement it is.
|
| If users would pay a monthly fee at scale, it wouldn't be
| needed. They'd in fact be happy if you'd keep your engagement
| brief.
| CoryAlexMartin wrote:
| > "I guarantee that every single person who liked and shared that
| post about bringing Instagram back to what it was, would spend
| way less time on Instagram if it reverted back to how it used to
| be"
|
| I'm likely not in the majority here, but my average usage of
| Instagram these days is me scrolling through my feed for about 20
| seconds before getting frustrated and closing the app. All the
| ads and things I never opted into seeing make it an unpleasant
| and uninteresting experience. I was far more engaged when it was
| just a reverse chronological timeline of images from people I
| follow.
| alexpotato wrote:
| As a casual user of both Facebook and TikTok, I would share my
| impression of how they share videos:
|
| TikTok
|
| - Their algorithm seems to very quickly hone in on things I
| actually want to see.
|
| - e.g. if figured out that I like to see comedy clips, some
| woodworking videos etc
|
| - I suspect that they do this by a combination of showing you
| some "test" videos that quickly bucket your interests and then
| using additional data based on other videos that have paired well
| together from other users
|
| - Keep doing the above and I would imagine you get to a pretty
| good graph of what I'm into
|
| Facebook
|
| - Have been a user for YEARS
|
| - they have almost all of my personal relationships mapped
|
| - choose to show me videos with "Wait till you see what happens!"
| titles that are ~10 minutes of build up to an incredibly
| anticlimactic ending
|
| - As a user and a SRE/Developer, I ask myself: "The smartest
| people in tech + essentially limitless computing power and this
| is the best you can do?"
|
| I would guess one of two things is going on:
|
| 1. I remember seeing those video ads about 10-15 years ago that
| went on for about 20 minutes and there was no fast forward or
| skip etc. Someone pointed out: "Advertisers care a LOT about
| people who are willing to just sit there and watch a 20 minute
| video"
|
| 2. What I'll basically call the "Groupon Effect" (based on [0])
| which is basically "Well X is good, X+1 is better so X*1000 must
| be great". Andrew Mason talks a lot about this in the linked
| article and how Groupon just blindly followed the "metrics"
| rather than thinking through "Ok, what is really the best for our
| users/community". It seems the tech giants have gone for "What
| makes the most money RIGHT NOW!" vs "How do we build a larger LTV
| over the next couple years"
|
| [0] - https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/andrew-mason-on-
| grou...
| dboreham wrote:
| otoh, learned many things about the behavior of cats with dogs,
| dogs with rabbits, mammalX with mammalY, bears crossing the
| road, ducks crossing the road (no other types of mammal cross
| the road).
| slig wrote:
| For me, it feels like the recommendations from Youtube, FB,
| Instagram, Spotify, etc, are really what _they_ would want you
| to see, not what _I_ would want to see. Never listened to those
| shitty podcasts, and that 's what recommended for me on
| Spotify. The Youtube search is flooded with "recommendations"
| and "what's hot" that are hot garbage. Google search is getting
| useless, with tons of spam and obvious duplicated content.
| shriphani wrote:
| It could be that the deep bench of high quality content is not
| there on reels yet. Most of the power user base of ig
| (horology, woodworking, crafts, fine arts etc) knows how to
| take high quality pictures and need to adapt to making videos
| (i don't think it is that easy to do - totally different medium
| + style + maybe your current followers wont like it).
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| Instagram's biggest failing in trying to copy Tiktok is their
| feed algorithm.
|
| Tiktok has nailed the delightful "stumble upon" effect of getting
| users of all ages to keep going to the next and the next video. I
| don't mind how each new piece of content is paged because the
| content is better for the format and it doesn't feel clunky when
| I do want to skip to the next one.
|
| Instagram couldn't switch their algorithm because people think
| they still want to see the content they've been seeing...
| otherwise they'd just be using TikTok.
|
| In insta, we are used to scrolling really quickly until something
| catches the eye and THEN we engage. That is because the content
| in the insta feed is not as good and there are more ads. The new
| scrolling/paged UI in Instagram feels terrible because I can't
| fly through bad content to engage with what I want.
| idrios wrote:
| > Tiktok has nailed the delightful "stumble upon" effect
|
| Am I the only one who hates this usage of the word
| "delightful"? I think of delightful as nearly a synonym to the
| word "serendipitous", in that there's a rare joy to it --
| difference between those two words that serendipitous is
| unexpected while delightful could be expected. I associate this
| with events like running into close friends or family, or just
| having a beautiful day and being able to have fun outside. It
| needs an element of rarity, whereas TikTok and Instagram are
| novelty on demand, and so that serendipitous joy fades into
| habit-forming addiction.
|
| I am probably making an old-man-yells-at-cloud argument here,
| but I recently read an article that described the Android
| Compose toolkit as a way to make developing Android apps a
| "delightful experience" and it made me realize how much I
| despise that usage of the word for fairly mundane things.
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| Yes, delight has been overused and dumbed down to industry
| vernacular for any positive user emotion.
|
| It has a connotation that includes rarity or almost... (and I
| am putting on my over the top sales person hat) "something to
| be treasured". But I chose the word intentionally to
| reference stumble upon which I think a lot of folks on HN
| feel nostalgia for.
| labrador wrote:
| > Tiktok has nailed the delightful "stumble upon"
|
| I didn't understand the appeal of Tiktok until just now when I
| read your comment. I was a StumbleUpon.com addict in 2006-07. I
| spent hours a day on it, saw really interesting content and
| even made some IRL friends.
|
| I have no idea why they killed that site. I'll give Tiktok
| another try.
| tayo42 wrote:
| I don't get how that description sounds like a good way to
| spend your time. Why do you need hours of throway content in
| your life from people you don't have any connection to? Why
| not like go to the gym or hike or cook your self a healthy
| meal.
| mateo411 wrote:
| They killed the site, because they ran out of money.
| solarmist wrote:
| I think they just never found a way to make money that didn't
| destroy the experience.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I think Reddit also kind of replaced it. Back then, Reddit
| was more of a social bookmarking site like del.ic.ious but
| with expanded community features. You would go to the front
| page, and see a pretty similar selection of links to what
| you would get smashing the Stumble button that day, only
| it's been curated and sorted by the community through the
| karma system. Each link also came with a very well designed
| comment section where users could discuss it.
| joshu wrote:
| reddit was never social bookmarking.
| solarmist wrote:
| Somewhat. Reddit's never been nearly as serendipitous as
| Stumbleupon
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| But back then, I assume the content was 90% original, 10%
| ads/marketing/brand building, whereas now it is 90% ads, 10%
| original.
| saurik wrote:
| I haven't checked recently and I don't have the phone with the
| new version of Instagram on it with me (so maybe this changed)
| but for a long time (and I think still) I have one account that
| has the paged UI and one account that still has the fling UI
| logged in to the same copy of Instagram simultaneously (as in
| where I can switch between them using the account selector).
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| Yeah, I am sure there is some strategy to rolling out such a
| big change. It limits a Day 1 blast of complaints and media
| posts when they slowly roll it out. Plus it lets them
| eliminate any issues (according to them hah) before it
| reaches the masses.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| TikTok is banned in my country but friends from UK and US say
| that the algorithm is much better at recommending videos.
|
| True or just plain individual bias?
| dahdum wrote:
| Very true, but partly due to the broad content variety TikTok
| has. Their tools to help creators are excellent and they do a
| lot to promote highly niche content.
|
| Instagram is a clunky mishmash of features rolled out in
| desperation. TikTok may suffer the same fate eventually, but I
| think they are years away from that.
| Quikinterp wrote:
| It's algorithm is way more aggressive than other social media.
| Sometimes it's almost creepy. I don't care about a lot of stuff
| on there but it's easy to find yourself in very niche
| communities on tiktok.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| https://restofworld.org/2021/instagram-and-class-in-india/ I
| saw this last year and it does a great job telling the story of
| how Instagram's recommendation engine biased towards "elites"
| system16 wrote:
| In my experience it's absolutely true. Maybe it's just early in
| Instagram's phase of their new feed and it's not optimized, but
| all I see are a bunch of seemingly random memes and videos that
| don't interest me at all, and they only appear targeted to me
| in the most superficial of ways. Essentially I skip past the
| videos looking for friend photos, and after about 30 seconds
| get bored and shut the app.
|
| TikTok on the other hand seems to know me better than I do
| myself (or care to admit). I go out of my way to not open it
| because I know 30 minutes of my time will vanish in an instant.
| Animats wrote:
| The key point here is that TikTok is now beating all the US
| social networks.
|
| This may be the beginning of the end for what Silicon Valley
| calls "tech", but is just ads with social content. Peak Facebook
| was in Q2 2021.[1] Instagram is losing to TikTok.
|
| (If you think the "metaverse" is going to be important in the
| social space, check out what's happening in China in that area.
| While the US has been distracted by the NFT clown car and
| Facebook's rather pathetic efforts, companies in China are
| actually building it.)
|
| [1] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2022/02/peak-facebook.html
| biztos wrote:
| I'm a huge admirer of TikTok and love to use it -- once a week
| only! -- but I sort of agree with the US government that it's
| crazy to give that much of (mostly) your youth's attention to
| an adversary.
|
| However I find it baffling that all the VC in the Global West
| is unable to come up with a popular alternative, even though
| it's glaringly obvious[0] what the "secret sauce" is in TikTok
| and why it works so well.
|
| Instead we get stuff like this, where a quite good photo-
| sharing service radically undermines its inherent advantages in
| order to play catch-up, with most of the videos still sporting
| a TikTok logo.
|
| At some level I'm happy if Zuckerberg destroys my artists'
| community on IG because it at least opens the door to creating
| a better one elsewhere. But I'm also a little worried that this
| coterie of billionaires keeps having their lunch eaten by a
| pretty straightforward system run on a pretty classic Valley
| model.
|
| [0]: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/a16z-podcast/tiktoks-
| al...
| t0mas88 wrote:
| > but I sort of agree with the US government that it's crazy
| to give that much of (mostly) your youth's attention to an
| adversary.
|
| In a way Europe has been doing that for many years. The US
| does not have any privacy protection of foreigners, the NSA
| is only not supposed to capture data on _US citizens_.
|
| Only now are we seeing Google Analytics banned in many
| European countries. But it's a very small step.
| colonwqbang wrote:
| You have a point, but the way Europeans see the US is very
| different from how they see China. The US has done some
| morally questionable things in recent memory (War on
| terror, Snowden/Assange, Trump, etc) but on the whole US is
| seen as an ally, not an adversary.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Wait until Europeans find out all of their bank data is
| analyzed in the Google Cloud
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Not that bad as Chinese investments in European
| universities. Shaping education by foreigners that not
| accept democratic principles is far more dangerous.
|
| Sure, we can speak about political correctness from West
| in campuses, but that has no future by definition.
|
| However... Both trends has similar goal to steal freedom
| from citizens.
| Zeebrommer wrote:
| That is not nearly the same thing. The US and western
| Europe have been roughly aligned about geopolitical
| interests, values (democracy, freedom, mostly liberal,
| based on a secularising Christian foundation), rules and
| laws. China is diametrically opposed on all those things.
|
| The cultural influence of the US on Europe is enormous, and
| the US has often crossed the line spying on European
| citizens, but the US is not an adversary.
| alexb_ wrote:
| What are Chinese companies doing metaverse wise?
| edm0nd wrote:
| Likely waiting on stolen metaverse R&D from American
| companies given to them from the Chinese government. That's
| the entire Chinese nation-state backed hackers MO. Steal R&D
| from Fortune 500 companies to then give it to private Chinese
| businesses to further the Chinese economy. Why waste your own
| time/money/resources on R&D when you can just steal it. Same
| with IP and IP laws.
|
| - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinese-hackers-took-
| trillions-...
|
| - https://fortune.com/2021/04/21/suspected-chinese-hackers-
| tar...
|
| - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/china-
| technolo...
| t_mann wrote:
| Copying is a great source of innovation and industrial
| development. Take German engineering ('Made in Germany' was
| a label originally intended to make the German copycats
| more visible in England, from where the processes were
| copied, but that sort of backfired in hindsight), the Swiss
| watch and pharma industries (based on French patents that
| were practically unenforceable in Switzerland at the
| time)...
|
| Once you have a process up and running, it's almost human
| instinct to try and improve it. If you start by copying the
| latest stuff, chances are you'll find a few new tweaks.
| rightbyte wrote:
| The mere thought of Facebook codebase being usable anywhere
| else but by Facebook is silly. If someone gave somebody a
| dump of Google's monolith were to even begin looking?
|
| You need the engineers too. There is no Bond-like blueprint
| to steal.
| bsder wrote:
| And all that Silicon Valley is doing is funding young 20
| somethings for the next social groupcrap over and over and
| over. It's not exactly like Silicon Valley is being
| innovative.
|
| TikTok is just making Silicon Valley mad because they
| finally met a bigger VC (the Chinese government) running
| their own playbook and they can't beat it.
| [deleted]
| asdff wrote:
| I don't blame them tbh. On a whole species level, why _are_
| we inventing the wheel hundreds of separate times just to
| satisfy pedantic legalese? Any alien observing earth would
| think we are idiots and clearly nothing to be worried about
| because we do stuff like this, in the name of profits
| usually, instead of just sharing ideas openly with each
| other.
| FredPret wrote:
| Actually it's pretty smart to reward the inventive ones
| and punish the freeloaders, or else there'd be a rush to
| become a freeloader and stop the hard work of inventing -
| leading to species-wide collapse.
| asdff wrote:
| The reward of a novel invention is enough to keep it
| going. Look at science. All ideas are published and
| shared and you don't have this freeloader issue, because
| the rewards follow innovation even when those innovations
| are pubically shared. Also take a look at your own work.
| Chances are you are freeloading on someone else's ideas
| with everything you do, and there are huge chunks of
| process that you are only able to do because someone
| decided to make those ideas freely available to other
| people.
| zizee wrote:
| But science has a big system of distributing money up
| front to people to do the work of innovating. There is no
| such system in place to fund people developing innovative
| products that require significant up front investment.
|
| Also the "product" of science innovation is the actual
| innovation and being first to publish. An equivalent
| freeloader problem would not be someone copying the
| idea/papers after they are released. It would be spying
| inside the laboratory, copying the ideas and releasing
| competing papers before the actual researcher releases
| their own. If that was happening, I am sure you would
| object.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| What have these rewards truly given us?
|
| The open/free scientific communities are responsible for
| most tangible benefit - meanwhile, those reaping the
| biggest rewards give us... planned obsolescence
|
| I understand the sentiment and even agree to an extent,
| but the reality is things are abused and wasted as well -
| to a shocking degree, in pursuit of 'mine'
| FredPret wrote:
| False. Tangible benefits are frightfully hard to bring
| about. Nobody does that for free. Newton came up woth
| calculus, shared it for free, and transformed the world.
|
| But all tangible benefits arising from that involved a
| lot of people, a lot of work, and a lot of risk. Planned
| obsolescence, bad as it may be, is a non-issue in the
| bigger picture.
| drusepth wrote:
| Within the context of this comment thread ("freeloaders"
| copying the R&D of the "inventive ones"), it seems like
| the opposite is true for global innovation: inventive
| ones are being punished by freeloaders copying their work
| and being able to offer it for a lower price, due to not
| having to recoup R&D costs/investments (among other
| factors).
| LionTamer wrote:
| How do you think humans should incentivize R&D without
| allowing for those who successfully deployed R&D to
| protect their ability to reap the fruits of their
| efforts? I'm sympathetic and am very interested in the
| idea of the government creating public goods out of
| intellectual property on a national level (ie instead of
| rewarding copyrights/parents the government would buy out
| the creator and make it free for citizens to do what
| they'd like), but that could work because the government
| has sovereignty over its territory - how do you prevent
| international free riding on R&D?
| asdff wrote:
| A lot of government funded R&D e.g. from the NIH or NSF
| has stipulations actually that say the data and results
| be made publicly available so that other researchers may
| benefit. At the end of the day we have to decide where
| our values lie. Do they lie with individualized benefit?
| Then we allow people to have protection legally so they
| may individually profit off of that technology using a
| perverted market condition (them having the sole rights
| of distribution for a period of time). If we value the
| collective whole, then we would share these ideas with
| others who would benefit from them and further them
| still, like we do medical research. You have to decide
| where your moralities lie.
| igorkraw wrote:
| For the research part (figuring out something previously
| impossible)? No need to incentivise, the kick of figuring
| it out is enough to motivate people, just provide UBI so
| the nerds can tinker.
|
| For the development/application part? Let people race to
| figure out the best way to deploy things before someone
| else does, the way the swiss and Germans and Chinese did
| in the free for all time. I've heard competition be
| called something that incentivises people to find edges
| that aren't easily copied, and trade secrets can still
| exist
| babypuncher wrote:
| > For the research part (figuring out something
| previously impossible)? No need to incentivise, the kick
| of figuring it out is enough to motivate people, just
| provide UBI so the nerds can tinker.
|
| I think this is only true to a certain extent. We have
| reached a point where a lot of new innovation and
| invention is only possible with a truly tremendous amount
| of financial investment. No amount of tinkering in your
| garage is going to bring about the next advancement in
| EUV lithography. You need an entity with a lot of capital
| and a strong incentive to bring many of these things
| about. That can come from either the private sector or
| the government, but it cannot realistically be pulled out
| of thin air.
| polio wrote:
| I'd just make the individuals involved rich with a lump-
| sum payment ($10m, say) and a lot of good press. Then
| make it public domain.
| zizee wrote:
| What if they spent $20m to create the innovation? Who
| judges when an innovation is appropriate to convert in
| the manner? What happens to the innovations that aren't
| deemed worthy of conversion?
| not-my-account wrote:
| Profits matter, though! We need them to pay people to do
| the research and development, which people will not do
| for nothing - our dependence on food and shelter makes
| this necessary. If an American firm absorbs all the
| costs, but gains none of the benefit, it will not survive
| as long, meaning the research will also disappear
| alongside it.
|
| China, on the other hand, can spend those funds elsewhere
| while also poaching the work of the American firm, which
| would put them at a great competitive advantage.
| asdff wrote:
| Profits aren't necessary for R&D, that's just one model
| where R&D is funded by consumers through direct
| purchases. Another model is where R&D is simply funded
| through taxation and grants. That is the model that
| medical research is often funded through, and it works
| well because it allows researchers around the world to
| help our species overcome disease.
| not-my-account wrote:
| Totally good point! Though, that is also quite
| restrictive. Some of the biggest innovations which change
| society the most are incredibly weird, out of left field
| innovations that a governmental or grant program would
| most likely not fund - just because the nascent idea is
| too crazy.
|
| You get a lot of money funding weird ideas in VC firms,
| where the incentive structure (of profit) makes it
| possible to fund a tonne of ideas, where it is expected
| that most of the ideas will fail.
| zizee wrote:
| This still has the free rider problem at a nation state
| level. Let's say China invests 100 billion a year in
| innovation, and makes it all open. France then comes
| along and says "I don't need to bother with spending on
| innovation, I'll just use China's legwork, and spend my
| billion on out marketing china". China would eventually
| run out of cash for research.
| itg wrote:
| Tbh I find this comment hilarious given the story we are
| commenting on. In this case, it is Meta/Instagram that is
| trying to copy TikTok, and yet still can't pull off as good
| a recommendation algorithm.
| [deleted]
| t_mann wrote:
| Yeah, the parent left us on a bit of a cliffhanger there re
| China.
| Animats wrote:
| www.google.com:
|
| https://www.china-briefing.com/news/metaverse-in-china-
| trend...
| ravenstine wrote:
| I won't be surprised the day that Silicon Valley finally sees a
| real correction. We are due for one, big time. Just look at
| what Google and Meta have been doing compared to the ability of
| newcomers like TikTok. China will win, and when reality comes
| knocking, it will be too late and suddenly that easy money is
| going to vanish.
| rpdillon wrote:
| TikTok feels radically less innovative to me than Quest VR,
| but if you're focused on MAU, I see how it TikTok feels more
| impactful.
| d4mi3n wrote:
| > Peak Facebook was in Q2 2021.[1] Instagram is losing to
| TikTok.
|
| Peak by what measure?
|
| If by profit, probably. From the perspective of a product I
| like and want to use? Facebook peaked long, long ago.
| solarmist wrote:
| Yup. Money I'm sure.
| alchemyromcom wrote:
| >This may be the beginning of the end for what Silicon Valley
| calls "tech"
|
| There's something about the way you phrased this that just made
| me just realize there's a very real possibility that the
| internet could turn into television part two. If you think
| about the most popular platforms, they are mostly video and now
| the other very popular ones are trying to follow in kind.
| There's also all the streaming platforms that are not really
| thought of as the internet, but work basically the same. It
| really might be that the internet as we think of it--text based
| --might be a bit of a niche interest (not that this is
| necessarily a bad thing).
| eruleman wrote:
| A text-based internet is mostly a relic of low broadband
| penetration.
|
| Video is more engaging than text for most people.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Boggles my mind how. Unless it is an arts and crafts or
| mechanical or some other hands on video, it is so
| inefficient to watch someone talk rather than just read the
| transcript.
| eruleman wrote:
| Most people don't judge content based on information
| density.
| oldsecondhand wrote:
| However creating text content is much cheaper than video,
| and I also don't see text comments replaced by video
| replies.
|
| Text is also easier to search both for humans (skimming)
| and computers. "This meeting could have been an email" also
| applies to entertainment.
| jsemrau wrote:
| TBH, for me this is already happening. I am mostly using
| Youtube as a source of news and information. News, there are
| many local news services of places that I lived in that I
| can't watch on "normal" TV and can now enjoy in this way.
| Summary of sport events check). Opinion panels on video games
| and movies (check)
|
| The discovery algo is still terrible. But the content is
| there.
| NCC1701DEngage wrote:
| You watch any of the TLDR channels for news? I just found
| them not too long ago.
| robotshmobot wrote:
| >There's something about the way you phrased this that just
| made me just realize there's a very real possibility that the
| internet could turn into television part two.
|
| My friend, we're already there.
| Finnucane wrote:
| 5 billion channels and nothing to watch.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| How? I can enter any URL I want and go to any page I want.
| Anyone can start a website, and I can effortlessly visit
| it.
|
| Does not seem at all comparable to being locked into what
| some bosses at a cable/satellite TV/TV channel company
| decide you have access to, at the time they say you can
| access it. With no ability to upload.
| smm11 wrote:
| Apple doesn't invent, as much as see what's out there and Make It
| Great.
| oconnor663 wrote:
| Equating "cares about something else more" with "doesn't care" is
| pretty toxic. Instagram is a big company that doesn't have
| feelings, so whatever, but this isn't a healthy discussion habit
| to reinforce.
| jmyeet wrote:
| One reason I'm skeptical on the government bringing down the
| antitrust hammer on Big Tech is because of things like this.
| Antitrust is a slow process and a crude (but powerful)
| instrument.
|
| Facebook originally bought Instagram because IG represented an
| _existential threat_ to FB 's business. Remember it was only a
| few years old and had _13_ employees at the time of acquisition.
| How can you be a monopoly when 13 people can threaten your
| business?
|
| So here we are some years later and Facebook is getting _killed_
| by Tiktok. IG, in particular, is no longer "sexy". it is not
| where influencers aspire to be anymore. Facebook proper has
| billions of DAU/MAU but many younger people don't even have
| acounts anymore. It's facing it's own myspace moment. FB (now
| Meta) is betting its future on something that (IMHO) will never
| happen: the Metaverse, much like how Uber (and even Tesla to a
| certain extent) were betting their futures on self-driving cars
| (both of which, much like AGI, are perennially 5-10 years away).
|
| The market will sort out FAcebook one way or the other. It
| requires no heavyhanded intervention.
|
| The MBA eventually turn every social media platform into an
| ecommerce platform because how else do you make money? When that
| happens that platform eventually dies.
|
| If you've been following IG redesigns, it's been moving further
| and further away from being creator-focused (eg the "create"
| button moved from the bottom bar to the top). IG has been pushing
| shopping, IGTV and other efforts to monetize the platform and/or
| tie it to commerce.
|
| Trying to clone Tiktok with Reels just isn't going to save it.
| simonbarker87 wrote:
| Creators aren't happy either. I have 107K followers for dev and
| learn to code content and the last few months have been a roller
| coaster.
|
| There's about 50 to 100 of us devs with that size of following on
| IG and we all see the same thing time and time again which is
| that the algorithm moves and you have to change your content
| style to see what it wants. The messaging and content stays the
| same but it needs to be packaged in whatever way the IG algorithm
| wants to push at that moment.
|
| IG is scared of TikTok but rather than accepting that platforms
| can be different and that's ok they've decided to force a move to
| basically copy them but without a guiding strategy - it's
| baffling.
| turrini wrote:
| One thing I hate was the change from "disable/never see again" to
| "see less often" that surrounds almost every app now, be twitter,
| facebook, instagram, etc.
|
| So they keep repeating VERY OFTEN all that crap.
|
| The result? I've been using them less and less.
| [deleted]
| ketchupdebugger wrote:
| only time will tell. Every gamer was upset about diablo immortal
| being a mobile pay to win game, but recent reports suggests
| diablo making boatloads of money. The shift could work out in the
| long run.
| kache_ wrote:
| You know what? I love the new instagram changes. And everyone I
| know has been using it more and more over the years. Interesting
| that the people who hate it so much are the same ones that are
| using it. Data doesn't lie.
|
| TikTok copied short form videos from.. vine. I mean youtube YLYL
| videos. I mean... newgrounds.
|
| Shit's been around, and both facebook and google are going to lap
| tik tok. Keep up :)
| jjulius wrote:
| >Interesting that the people who hate it so much are the same
| ones that are using it.
|
| You're jumping the gun there. The people who hate it and use it
| are the people who were using it before the change and want it
| to go back. They were strongarmed into it and they're not about
| to abandon their userbase/followers overnight - they'll try and
| advocate for change and then migrate elsewhere.
|
| But these changes are so relatively new that there hasn't even
| been time for any of that to play out yet.
| zippergz wrote:
| Data doesn't lie is, in itself, a lie. Data has to be
| collected, so it's biased by what you choose to measure. Data
| has to be interpreted, so it's biased by how you interpret it.
| Data is only a snapshot in time, so it doesn't predict the
| future. There are many, many ways to make engagement metrics
| look much better in the short term while absolutely destroying
| long term engagement. Whether that's what Instagram is doing is
| still up for debate, but I think there's a very real chance it
| is.
| TillE wrote:
| There are infinite reasons people might continue using
| something despite liking it less and less. The network effect
| is a big one.
|
| So pointing at numbers and saying "they've clearly made the
| right decisions" is...flawed, to say the least.
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| They rolled out this update slowly and when it hit my account, it
| happened to be the day Biden posted about his Covid diagnosis and
| that was the post at the top of my feed.
|
| I couldn't figure out why it was showing me this post with an all
| black border and not letting me scroll.
|
| First, I thought it was a bug and then I thought they were
| forcing everyone (or some subset of American users) to watch
| Biden's instagram lol. Not a logical reaction but was my first
| interaction with the new UI and I was very confused.
|
| My SO also thought it was a bug and we spent 5 minutes trying to
| fix the app before realizing it was just a clunky update.
| intrasight wrote:
| Is't the easy solution - both in FB in IG - to just go visit your
| friends profiles?
| doubtfuluser wrote:
| How do the micro kitchens look nowadays. That's where people will
| realize how the company is really doing
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I've never had an Instagram account but I stopped lurking when
| they forced me to make an account. I guess I'll look at butts
| somewhere else.
|
| Tangentially- what is the deal with social media sites forcing
| you to login to lurk? I understand they want more data but
| lurkers are still forced to view ads.
| hn8305823 wrote:
| > "I guarantee that every single person who liked and shared that
| post about bringing Instagram back to what it was, would spend
| way less time on Instagram if it reverted back to how it used to
| be,"
|
| Uh, no. I stop and close app as soon as I realize I'm being fed
| "videos you just can't stop watching."
|
| This unfortunately means I only use IG for about 2.5 seconds
| before I give up and try another day.
| jacquesc wrote:
| Maybe it'll show up in their usage numbers. I stopped using IG
| because it's near impossible not to prevent the sound from
| blasting from accidentally scrolling or clicking on a reel.
|
| I feel like a product team that gave any shit whatsoever would
| give people a mute button that stays put. People use their phones
| in lots of different locations (with other people around). And
| phones are constantly blasting music at random points because of
| Reels.
| Strom wrote:
| There is some way to mute it. I've already forgotten how
| exactly, but I think you have to open a non-reel video and mute
| that. Then all the reels are muted.
|
| This means that I now have the opposite problem. I can't
| selectively unmute reels in my feed even if I want to.
| Instagram is 100% silent for me, even though my phone is not
| muted and doesn't have the volume turned down.
|
| I really don't get it why they don't have a mute button on the
| reels themselves.
| alexashka wrote:
| Is there not a _physical_ mute button on your phone?
| navanchauhan wrote:
| maybe, not everyone has an iPhone or a OnePlus device?
| prepend wrote:
| Instagram ignores the mute button on my iPhone. I have to
| manually turn the volume down to zero to consistently get no
| sound.
|
| It's a real jerk app.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I feel like it's even worse. Sometimes it does and
| sometimes it doesn't and I haven't figured out how to get
| it to do what I want 100% of the time. Just have a mute
| button on the player!
| winternett wrote:
| The volume control issues on IG are crazy. Having to mute and
| unmute everything is painful, I think TikTok wins a bit for
| just playing everything at whatever device volume is set at,
| but some content is manipulated to be loud, and some is low
| volume, it may even be an engagement algorithm driving that to
| keep people focused on the app.
|
| I also think with a lot of people on anti-work time these days,
| within these companies they may be having a hard time finding
| staff to manage the development issues, bugs and features may
| not get fixed any time soon simply because of that alone.
| matsemann wrote:
| What boggles my brain is when someone wants to show me a video
| on Instagram, but there is no way to play it from the
| beginning. So have to wait for it to loop around.
| delecti wrote:
| Typically the "solution" is to scroll up/down to the
| next/previous video and then back to the desired video.
| Though that only works for reels, not non-reel videos
| (whatever those are called).
| mbesto wrote:
| > I stopped using IG because it's near impossible not to
| prevent the sound from blasting from accidentally scrolling or
| clicking on a reel.
|
| I don't know a single person who doesn't hate the muting
| functionality in IG. I can't believe how overlooked this is.
| flerchin wrote:
| They make gobs and gobs of money, that's the signal, and they're
| optimizing for it. I tend to think that social media is harmful,
| for everyone. Send pictures of your kids to your grandmother
| directly.
| Theodores wrote:
| Hello WhatApp!
|
| In my family that is how pictures of grandchildren get to
| grandparents.
|
| It is a closed loop. The only people that care about each other
| are in the loop and there are no random gawkers.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| IG kept requesting to add my birthday, going fullscreen
| notification like even if I forced quit earlier/rebooted my
| cellphone, didn't use cause birthday thing. I uninstalled it,
| didn't kill my account as there are some stuff I appreciate but
| the dark patterns won't fly.
| throwaway4837 wrote:
| Instagram is phasing people like us out of its ideal customer
| profile, and optimizing the app for Generation Z. It has no
| choice but to adapt or become irrelevant in the current
| ecosystem.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > "I guarantee that every single person who liked and shared that
| post about bringing Instagram back to what it was, would spend
| way less time on Instagram if it reverted back to how it used to
| be,"
|
| This is what I also think. People (or, the mass of the users)
| keep following users that posts a lot of videos, they watch a lot
| of reels and like those... So instagram is doing the correct
| thing (for their goals of keeping people using it) in focusing on
| reels.
| praestigiare wrote:
| I disagree. It's certainly not the case for me - Instagram has
| become an app I open out of habit or because I got a
| notification, remember that it sucks now, and close again. But
| more generally, this is two things: the tail wagging the dog,
| because Instagram pushes reels hard you get more engagement
| there as a creator which pushes people into them; and the fact
| that low quality engagement is a poor proxy for what people
| actually want. Instagram can show me videos of women in sheer
| tops all day, and if I am bored it is mindlessly engaging, but
| it is never what I want. What I want is to skim over 50 posts
| from people I care about, and maybe interact with one or two of
| them. I think am far from alone in what I want, but Instagram
| does not want what I want, because it is harder to keep me
| looking once I get to the end of my feed, and harder to put ads
| in front of me I don't scroll past almost immediately.
| runjake wrote:
| We are the product, not the customer.
|
| Advertisers are Instagram's customers.
|
| They only have to do enough to keep adequate product (us) around.
| tremendo wrote:
| Personally I don't care they're just copying a rival. I do not
| have/use Tiktok and do easily spend a good chunk of time looking
| at the "reels" in IG. Even if most of these turn out to be direct
| lifts out of Tiktok, I'm not about to "switch" or even open an
| account over there, I already have the content over here. I
| assume that's part of the strategy to not hemorrhage users, in my
| case it works.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Adam Mosseri has been in full damage-control mode for years.
|
| Simply put, Instagram knows you're addicted and will make as much
| possible product change to make them more money while you
| struggle to get it out of your life given how personalized and
| predatory the experiences are becoming.
|
| There is a natural conclusion to "growth" of engagement though.
| Everyone is competing for our attention given we sit on devices
| longer each year. I think it's averaging about 3 hours today on a
| smartphone. That's crazy to think about.
| winternett wrote:
| It's interesting that they don't care, it's a Marie Antoinette-
| esque attitude to their lifeblood, and ultimately what will end
| their dominance.
|
| The truth is they converted a free service into a pay service
| (the gas-lights creators and businesses into paying for
| visibility). The visibility, even when paid for is not very
| fruitful for many as well...
|
| If you run a small business like a restaurant in the US, but get
| 40,000 views directed to your profile of people who live in
| Russia, it is unlikely to turn into a pipeline of sales that can
| sustain your business... This is just one way modern social apps
| gaslight people who are working very hard to build business... It
| undermines the very model of business success, to keep people
| working very hard... For no reward. These site let memes and non-
| business-related things flow all day on feeds provided they are
| not promoting anything, which makes the sites appear "full of
| life".
|
| People seem to be catching on that it was all one big gaslight
| after they've spent tons of money on ads, they are slowly
| realizing that it's a rigged carnival game, but social apps like
| Instagram have pitted the rest of the Internet, and they
| constantly play a dictatorial role. The carpet can get pulled at
| any time if they don't take these complaints seriously though,
| and I look forward to seeing how it all plays out.
|
| I really don't think TikTok is much better now either, these apps
| all use the technique of phasing adds and slowly reducing
| (external) visibility for creators, and just judging from
| comments I see on Twitter, the economy is imploding as a result.
|
| With the economy as bad as it is, this current creator economy is
| not sustainable, and not fruitful. We'll all see the quality on
| these platforms decline as creators quit and protest, while
| platforms will burn up cash reserves and disappoint investors as
| their overhead for hosting and operations increase.
|
| We've praised the arrogance of social platform leadership for too
| long and now it's coming back to bite all of us. The biggest
| worry is that there will not much to gravitate back to if social
| media implodes... But it's also a great opportunity for IRC and
| web sites to re-emerge, and for someone to invent hopefully
| something better than these giant platforms that really aren't
| "social" at all any more.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| That's a great theory. But judging by the number of people I
| see mindlessly scrolling instagram and TikTok I think they are
| going to be just fine.
|
| I think YouTube might be the one with the problems in the
| future. The younger generation seems to prefer the 30 second
| video clips, rather than the longer form YouTube videos. I
| think at some point Youtube is going to have to start deleting
| content, or restricting uploads. Their unlimited uploads for
| everyone strategy doesn't seem sustainable to me.
|
| Facebook is absolutely dead. Nobody under 25 cares about it.
| yunwal wrote:
| Anecdotal, but I've seen a few people say "I don't really use
| Instagram anymore" since these changes. For me it's pretty
| bad, and I'll probably only look at people's reels from now
| on. They really did just completely butcher the app, and I
| would bet money on their usership among young people going
| down over the next year or 2. Of course, older people are
| still signing up for instagram, so it's possible it just sort
| of replaces Facebook.
| winternett wrote:
| For most creators, the though of moving a volume of videos to
| a new location is terrifying. Also, a lot of the content on
| Youtube is formatted and made only based on YouTube (logos,
| watermarks, screen format, etc..).
|
| Right now YouTube uses downgraded storage for less-viewed
| content, that's why a lot of older low-view content takes
| time to buffer when it's played... If they delete stuff,
| creator hell might break loose.
|
| Instagram also has a strange infinite scroll that greatly
| impairs and discourages users from looking into older
| content... Facebook does it too. I wouldn't be surprised if
| they are planning on switching to these new formats as a
| springboard/catalyst for eliminating tons of older content
| posts, and that will also be a big problem, it's not just
| pictures of grandma that will be lost.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > it's a rigged carnival game
|
| A major "Aha!" moment for me was when I had it pointed out to
| me that the social media companies' algorithms that get and
| keep users attention by showing them what they want can easily
| be exapted to manipulate the metrics and ad buying behavior.
| winternett wrote:
| Yep, the algorithms are all geared towards serving company
| revenue, not towards finding the best content contributors...
| What you see on most platforms is now override by who pays
| the most to boost their posts. There's a whole bunch of smoke
| and mirrors goin on.
| rightbyte wrote:
| If wonder if TikToks success is just not doing this. Like
| "viral" articles and videos used to work on Facebook in
| like 2014, when "likes" actually mattered and could make
| something a chainmail-ish between friends.
| rvz wrote:
| > I really don't think TikTok is much better now either, these
| apps all use the technique of phasing adds and slowly reducing
| (external) visibility for creators, and just judging from
| comments I see on Twitter, the economy is imploding as a
| result.
|
| Exactly. Every single social media company with VC capital has
| thrown their small users and creators under the bus in favour
| of the ad driven corporations, mainstream media and boosters
| coming in and ruining the platform for everyone, hence why the
| small creators complain about the changes made to the platform,
| especially the very early adopters and the hyper-active users.
|
| I expect this to never change.
|
| > With the economy as bad as it is, this current creator
| economy is not sustainable, and not fruitful. We'll all see the
| quality on these platforms decline as creators quit and
| protest, while platforms will burn up cash reserves and
| disappoint investors as their overhead for hosting and
| operations increase.
|
| That is the basic power law that is being applied here. The
| early and successful creators on their have already reaped most
| of the rewards and the attention on there and will need to
| escape to other platforms in the long term, or find other ways
| of getting income (partnerships, deals, guest appearances, etc)
| to continue to be relevant. TikTok is no different to this and
| it doesn't matter how many users it has.
|
| The outcome is going to be _exactly_ the same as it was for
| Facebook today and the company (TikTok) is driven in the
| interest of its shareholders and to make money. Not its users
| as they are not the priority, so no-one should be surprised to
| see how the company will screw over its users and throw them
| under the bus if they ever did a redesign.
|
| Rinse and repeat for current hyped social network of the
| decade.
| winternett wrote:
| I've noticed (on multiple accounts) that TikTok stops view
| counts on videos after a point... Even though they can still
| be viewed directly, TikTok does not update view counts. Many
| creators stay in agonizing limbo even though they are getting
| views. It's pretty crazy how much TikTok gaslights everyone,
| there no better than anyone else.
| cwkoss wrote:
| 99+% of ads are unethical thought manipulation. Until
| citizens recognize this and take a stand with their wallets
| against the businesses who profit from unethical ad tactics,
| we're going to keep slipping deeper into the abyss.
| just_boost_it wrote:
| I can't see IRC coming back as there's just slightly too much
| friction for the common person to get up and running.
|
| I could see websites coming back (I mean like the way people
| used to actually browse websites instead of social media). The
| problem with websites at the moment is discoverability.
| Google's SEO is a major roadblock to this at the moment. A way
| around it might be a "web of discoverability", with meaningful,
| relevant links on each website curated by the site owners
| themselves. At the moment, this seems to be a void filled by
| ads, which is a sort of tragedy of the commons.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Wouldn't a search service that blacklists the giant players
| -- Amazon, Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. -- also
| serve as the same kind of "web of discoverability"? I imagine
| a search engine where the stewards manually whitelist
| websites that aren't full of SEO-speak, spam, and ads. Hell,
| I'm sure my own blog would rank pretty well!
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Yeah, chat and email basically prove that the vast majority
| of the public don't actually want to run and maintain a
| server themselves, which basically leaves
|
| * carriers (universally disliked by the population, tolerated
| at best, and pretty scummy trying to trap you into their own
| networks or bloatware if they can get away with it)
|
| * apps that monetize using ads
|
| * apps that monetize with payment
|
| * an OS-level standard (iMessage is very successful, the
| Android chatting less so, and nonexistent on desktop OSes)
| redblacktree wrote:
| > a "web of discoverability", with meaningful, relevant links
| on each website curated by the site owners themselves.
|
| Are you old enough to remember "web rings?"
| winternett wrote:
| I kind of do that on an individual level myself -
| http://www.ruffandtuffrecordings.com/SELECTIONS
|
| Those are music picks I regularly update... It would be
| really cool if there was the ability to standardize the
| format for small web sites like this and then be able to
| follow others with similar interests... Pretty much
| reviving the old Myspace in essence, but with independent
| micro-sites for hosting curated links and other content
| from each user.
| just_boost_it wrote:
| Not quite it seems. I was a kid when Facebook came out. I
| remember what it was like to find websites that had real,
| bizarre, and innovative content, but I was too young to
| pick up on the terminology or appreciate how any of it
| worked.
| winternett wrote:
| IRC, not in the classic essence of connecting to chat
| servers, but browser-based options exist. It would be really
| cool if someone made a tool like Twitter spaces, but for one-
| on one conversations with random people... e.g. A voice-only
| chat tool that paired you with random people within different
| fields for conversations.
| thepangolino wrote:
| dvtrn wrote:
| "Baudrillard was right"
|
| - me, often.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-07-27 23:01 UTC)