[HN Gopher] FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friend...
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FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts
Author : Erikun
Score : 631 points
Date : 2022-09-13 16:25 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (old.reddit.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (old.reddit.com)
| varelse wrote:
| revskill wrote:
| FB is still doing good job ! It's finding its way to the real
| death of social media. Thanks Mark and the team !
| colordrops wrote:
| I recall discussions of this problem years ago. I did a measure
| of what percentage of my feed was actual content with friends and
| it was roughly the same as this current measure. I'll have to go
| through my comments and find it.
| monkpit wrote:
| I have noticed this also, I got around it by clicking "feeds"
| instead of browsing my default feed via "home". The "feeds" tab
| doesn't seem to give me any of these suggested pages.
| kyleblarson wrote:
| People still use Facebook?
| vlod wrote:
| Looks like this is using the FB app, which the users has little
| control over.
|
| I don't use FB or Instagram anymore, but when I did, I used
| Firefox, so I could at least use uBlock or a Tampermoney script.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| We're posting Reddit thread with exaggerated number and zero
| detail now?
|
| I know FB is bad but come on.
| bluetidepro wrote:
| Same. This also stems from the fact that no one I know (outside
| of my Boomer parents) even uses Facebook anymore, so Facebook has
| next to no "real" data to use like they used to. I've even
| started noticing this on Instagram, as well. Back in the prime of
| Facebook there was so much content to use from friends they could
| fill a feed and even "curate" it, but now I think majority of my
| friends post AT MOST 1 time a YEAR on Facebook. With the lack of
| data, they have to just fill it with nonsense to make it look
| "interesting", but my guess is that it fools very little people.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Very true. There was a segment where the news asked a bunch of
| kids (like actual kids - not 25 year olds people just want to
| shit talk about) and hilariously this one little boy just yells
| "FACEBOOK?!?! THATS FOR OLD PEOPLE!!!"
| Melatonic wrote:
| So glad I deleted that crap years and years ago.
|
| Also you can deactivate your account and still use the separate
| messenger app
| Vrondi wrote:
| Yes, Facebook seems to be determined to get rid of as many users
| as possible by eliminating their core functionality.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| I mean Facebook is a dying platform. All the fake numbers won't
| make a difference.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| "death" in this case will likely be quite slow, they're still a
| 100+ billion dollar company and are still the largest social
| network by quite a large number (hundreds of millions)
| antegamisou wrote:
| Mind you, communities/groups, obviously imitating subreddits,
| as well as the marketplace are saving it quite well from ending
| up like MySpace/Hi5. It's also evident that there has been a
| significant boomer infestation to the userbase the past 10
| years.
| cpsns wrote:
| The communities/groups are significantly higher quality than
| the average subreddit, especially for niche subjects.
|
| Frankly they're the only thing I use Facebook for, because
| the people on hobby groups are way more knowledgeable than
| those on reddit and they largely don't tolerate meme posts.
| bbarn wrote:
| yeah, 90% of what I use it for is my internal group from my
| work friends about who's taking what shift on my side job,
| and Volkswagen repair groups - which are an absolute gold
| mine of experience and info.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Didn't Myspace think it was going to save itself with the
| music it eventually accidentally deleted?
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Yes it's a negative feedback loop created by the very bad product
| decisions they made to optimize for local maxima of getting more
| ads revenue. You inject more and more ads followed by more and
| more suggested content, thereby reducing the in network content.
| The in network content doesn't get as much of traction, therefore
| people stop posting. This in turn forces the feed to have more
| and more suggestions and a few stale in network posts from days
| ago. This drives engagement down from people who want to see in
| network content and they leave. So what is left is people who do
| engage with suggested content, pushing the product to make
| decisions to push even more suggested content. All of this
| continues till eventually fatigue sets in and a sudden rapid drop
| in engagement kicks in because your global maxima of a quality
| product was lost long time ago and your product dies.
| legitster wrote:
| It's not just the ad revenue or suggested content. FB's most
| sticky offerings are groups and pages. Well, FB actively hides
| posts in these _to their own followers_. You end up having to
| pay just sponsor messages _to your own group_.
| [deleted]
| tootie wrote:
| I quit FB a few years ago when I realized the suggested posts
| were just way more interesting than anything my friends posted.
| Idk what that says about their algorithm. Or my friends.
| ericraio wrote:
| Instagram turned into being what Facebook was supposed to be.
| umeshunni wrote:
| and now it's moving away from that and pushing more
| suggested content.
|
| The death spiral is:
|
| 1. Show friends content to attract users
|
| 2. Realize that friends don't product enough content to
| increase engagement.
|
| 3. Start introducing suggested content to increase
| engagement
|
| 4. Friend stop producing content since their content is
| deprioritized and not getting engagement
|
| 5. Now your feed is full of suggested content and isn't
| interesting any more
|
| 6. You leave and find another platform
| edgyquant wrote:
| Almost like building a business around "engagement" is a
| model that leads to a death spiral. Social media sites
| are basically giant MLM schemes that sell the idea that
| become real companies before the scheme runs out.
| languageserver wrote:
| ahhh,,... I would say billions in revenue makes it
| anything but. A short lived idea, maybe, a novelty, maybe
| _dain_ wrote:
| Reminds me of Gresham's Law[1]: "Bad Money Drives Out
| Good".
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| I was going to disagree with the GP for the same reason you
| pointed out. I liked all the page and group posts because
| they were funny and not someone I haven't spoken to eight
| years planning their wedding in public. There aren't as many
| organic posts from my friends to share anymore.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| LinkedIn went through the same algorithm led spiral of decline.
|
| Initially, they seemed to stop pushing out good on topic
| content. Instead, they rewarded and promoted Facebook style
| posts and made up stories probably due to metrics and A/B
| tests.
|
| The good authentic posters then either stopped posting or had
| to feed the beast by pushing out the same crappy content in the
| house style which the algorithm rewards.
|
| Almost everyone on there now is writing purely for the
| algorithm and not their industry peers whether they realise
| that or not. They are just chasing the doamine hit of likes.
|
| The product is worse for it and I'm sure it ultimately kills
| the golden goose for social platforms despite a short term
| uplift. They become much less engaging and sticky when the
| social element is lost.
| projektfu wrote:
| When LinkedIn arrived, it seemed like a good idea -- sort of
| a way for people who aren't great at networking to see how to
| expand their network. Then, like any dating site, you needed
| to buy credits to participate, and only "players" are willing
| to do that. Then, they erased any additional value brought by
| their thought leaders by promoting third-rate content with
| catchy headlines like you mentioned. Now, why would I trust
| them with my resume? And if I have no interest in them,
| likely anything else on there is either out of date or some
| sort of lie.
|
| Friendster, Myspace, Orkut, Facebook.... Similar things for
| social. Use the network to find more people to hang out with,
| feel less alone. But then, again, that is not actually a
| business and people aren't paying for it. So, you either show
| generic ads (not a bad idea) or you get people to pay to get
| their content in front of you. But then people stop caring
| about what they see there and move on.
|
| I agree with other posters -- I used to keep Facebook around
| because my family was there. Now I don't even see their posts
| when I'm on it. So, there's no value anymore.
| fairity wrote:
| No, this isn't a consequence of the status quo newsfeed
| algorithm. This is a consequence of Facebook making a
| purposeful strategic shift away from in-network content to
| suggested content. This strategic shift was highlighted in
| their last earnings call as a way to compete with TikTok, whose
| success is partly explained by their focus on suggested
| content. On the earnings call, they signaled that they were
| shifting more to a mix of the two content styles in the coming
| quarters, but the OP is likely enrolled in some sort of test
| that is giving them 98%.
|
| See the below excerpt from Meta's Q2 earnings call:
|
| "One of the main transformations in our business right now is
| that social feeds are going from being driven primarily by the
| people and accounts you follow to increasingly also being
| driven by AI recommending content that you'll find interesting
| from across Facebook or Instagram, even if you don't follow
| those creators. Social content from people you know is going to
| remain an important part of the experience and some of our most
| differentiated content. But increasingly, we'll also be able to
| supplement that with other interesting content from across our
| networks. Reels is one part of this trend that focuses on the
| growth of short-form video as a content format."
| yamrzou wrote:
| Yes, here is a chronology of key events:
|
| 2020 -- Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels:
| https://www.axios.com/2020/08/05/facebook-launches-its-
| tikto...
|
| 2021 -- TikTok overtakes Facebook as world's most downloaded
| app: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/TikTok-
| overtakes...
|
| Feb. 2022 -- Facebook loses users for the first time in its
| history -- https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/02/
| 02/faceboo...
|
| July 2022 -- Facebook and Instagram are going to show even
| more posts from accounts you don't follow --
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/27/23281451/facebook-
| instagr...
|
| July 2022 -- Instagram knows you don't like its changes. It
| doesn't care. -- https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/20
| 22/07/27/instagr...
| alistairSH wrote:
| Mid-2021, I stop using FB for anything beyond Marketplace.
|
| Mid-2022, I find Instagram to be just as useless as FB.
|
| I find I'm spending far less time on big social platforms.
| And a little more time in niche web forums. And I mostly
| feel better (sanity-wise) for it.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Discord has completely displaced the need for other
| social media in my experience. And they get hundreds of
| dollars per year from me. If this isn't a winning model,
| I don't know what is.
| effingwewt wrote:
| It's a failure out of the box for me, as it silo's
| information and once a server is gone so is that info.
|
| The gatekeepers on some of the more popular gaming
| servers (where they know they are more necessary than
| usual) are reddit levels.
| sshine wrote:
| It's a winning model.
|
| Who would have thought that paying for something is
| correlated with positive expectation of outcome?
|
| Someone should formalise this business model.
|
| I'm just spitballing, but I might call it: Doing
| business.
|
| I'm not sure what's going on with internet ads.
|
| I've blocked them everywhere I can.
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| Maybe? Beuller?
| bazeblackwood wrote:
| Bad strategy, imo. Sounds like they should have tried to
| answer why people used their product in the first place. "A
| competitor does it" isn't a valid excuse--its like suggesting
| The French Laundry switch to fast food because McDonald's is
| a competitor.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I think your analogy is too generous. It's more like
| putting an engine on your stapler because people buy cars
| more often than staplers at a higher margin despite having
| a monopoly in the stapler market.
| JediLuke wrote:
| kolbe wrote:
| They also need to be honest with themselves about whether
| TikTok is a competitor, or if TT has simply won a
| completely different business that happens to take
| customers' finite resources (time) from Facebook.
| OJFord wrote:
| When you're an ads-funded social media company, is there
| a difference?
| tofflos wrote:
| I think it's pretty cleat cut. They're competing
| attention farms. How we the product perceive them doesn't
| matter.
| mingfli wrote:
| The French Laundry is a very niche product, which Facebook
| is not. I think a more apt analogy is suggesting McDonald's
| to include more "healthy" options or a coffee bar because
| the competitors do it and it's a successful business
| strategy.
| rightbyte wrote:
| More liking pushing "healthy" options in your face in the
| menu and hiding the BigMac & Co in some obscure small
| print somewhere.
|
| "Do you want plus sized carrots with your meal?"
| mingfli wrote:
| Not saying either is a good strategy, I'd rather see more
| posts from my friends than random pages. Just pointing
| out the analogy.
| derefr wrote:
| > but the OP is likely enrolled in some sort of test that is
| giving them 98%.
|
| Couldn't it just be that suggested content is not only placed
| "between" in-network posts to achieve a certain minimum
| ratio, but also some small number of suggested-content posts
| are inserted at a constant drip into your feed (e.g. every N
| minutes in the feed's timeline) to ensure a certain minimum
| absolute amount of advertising happens per day per account?
|
| Which would mean that, if all your friends are people who
| don't post very much on FB any more, there could be 50
| dripped in suggested-content posts (to achieve the minimum
| absolute suggested posts per day) for each one in-network
| post.
|
| Even without "ensuring a minimum absolute amount of
| advertising", I presume this would have to be happening on
| some level, to ensure that anyone who tries to use Facebook
| "like TikTok" (effectively an RSS reader for suggested
| content), ends up with a non-empty feed.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| Facebook is the fax machine.
|
| The real danger FB finds themselves in is that the initial
| value prop (make and maintain your friendships with less
| friction) is LONG gone.
|
| Instead, they are relying almost entirely on the network
| effect now. You have to be on Facebook because your grandma
| is on Facebook. This is not sustainable long-term, for
| obvious and perhaps morbid reasons.
| wolpoli wrote:
| Has anyone kept track of the number of times they shifted the
| Facebook newsfeed algorithm?
|
| At different point in time, the feed prioritized: posts from
| friends, posts from games from your friends, friends' sharing
| of links to compete with Twitter, videos to compete with
| Youtube, moments to compete with Snapchat, comments that
| friends made, posts from friends again as growth slows down
|
| I wonder what percentage of users drift off every time they
| shifted the algorithm.
| wnevets wrote:
| > This is a consequence of Facebook making a purposeful
| strategic shift away from in-network content to suggested
| content.
|
| In an ironic twist these changes has made it much easier for
| me to stop using Facebook and Instagram. My usage was never
| high to begin with but some people in my life only used those
| apps and I wanted to stay connected. Now every single time I
| visit either of those apps and I see suggested content I
| close the app and move on with my day.
| itake wrote:
| I think the crux is do users want to see in-network or out-
| of-network posts?
|
| FB's bet (that tiktok user behavior validates) is high
| quality out-of-network creates higher engagement than in-
| network content.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| This is easily solved by having 'suggested content' (ads) once
| every (eg.) 10 posts from friends. 28 ads in a row is a total
| overkill
| drc500free wrote:
| Slightly pedantic - this is a POSITIVE feedback loop, with an
| unwanted outcome. A negative feedback loop would be self
| correcting.
| greatpostman wrote:
| This is basically the flaw in A/B testing
| voisin wrote:
| Sounds a lot like Google Search results. It's almost as if
| advertising dollars are an addictive drug that ultimately kills
| the company.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| For those annyoyed with ads on Google search, Kagi [1] is
| worth trying. It's not free, but does not show ads and uses
| the Google index behind the scenes. I've been using it on
| desktop for few months and have no complaints.
|
| [1] https://kagi.com/
| JohnFen wrote:
| > uses the Google index behind the scenes
|
| Does it give better results than Google? I find Google's
| results to be pretty horrible, and worry that if Kagi is
| using Google's index, then I wouldn't get better results
| with them.
| scarmig wrote:
| It actively makes the product worse. E.g. from yesterday, if
| I search for "high tc record," I'm not looking for the set of
| bedsheets with the greatest number of threads.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _if I search for "high tc record," I'm not looking for the
| set of bedsheets with the greatest number of threads._
|
| FWIW, I would also have no idea what that search is
| supposed to return.
| reaperducer wrote:
| But you don't have a 20-year dossier of almost every web
| site he's visited; a list of 90% of his credit card
| purchases; an AI scrutinizing every photo he's ever been
| in that's been in, or in the background of, on the
| internet; a list of his previous searches; and a list of
| the places he's brought his cell phone.
|
| To improve user experience.
| Arnt wrote:
| Google says it spends about 0.3Wh per search, of which
| roughly one third is for scraping and two thirds for the
| search. I think you may be overestimating how much
| processing they could do with that budget (assuming they
| want to do that significant user-based tweaking, which is
| IMO not a given).
| nomat wrote:
| Ken Liu's "The Perfect Match" is a sci-fi short story
| about this topic.
|
| https://gizmodo.com/lightspeed-presents-the-perfect-
| match-by...
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| You know you spend/have spent too much time on Blind when
| you immediately think "TC" means "total compensation."
| JustLurking2022 wrote:
| In fairness, reading your search term, I had no idea what
| you were talking about so it's not entirely surprising the
| organic content producers don't match those terms well.
| Looks like the SEO folks do though.
| ericraio wrote:
| Google is supposed to be able to understand this given
| how much data they collect on individuals and the web.
| blowski wrote:
| Perhaps there are multiple groups searching with the same
| terms, but expecting completely different results. Google
| takes its best guess at which group you're in. To get
| better at that they have to gather more info about you
| personally. I'd prefer to change my search query than
| give lots of extra personal data to Google.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Works fine in DDG:
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22high+tc%22+record
|
| Edit: and also Google:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=%22high%20tc%22%20record
| ipaddr wrote:
| What are we looking for here? The results seem equally as
| confusing as the query
| [deleted]
| jacobolus wrote:
| The other commenter was obviously interested in the
| record for high-temperature superconductors.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| temperature_superconducti...
|
| Or perhaps more generally for materials with a high Curie
| temperature,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie_temperature
|
| Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about this field.
| topaz0 wrote:
| Then again, Tc means different things in different
| fields. E.g. critical temperatures for all kinds of
| critical phase transitions. Note that the google search
| you posted above gives results for various phase
| transitions many of which are not superconducting phase
| transitions. I also was lost when I saw the original
| query.
| callmeal wrote:
| Tc is the high temperature for superconductivity. I
| noticed this about google a long time ago - they started
| "dumbing" down their search results. Don't blame them
| because that's where the money is, but it is annoying
| when you're searching for something and the results are
| full of celebrities because someone famous happened to
| say something like your search term.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| temperature_superconducti...
| antisthenes wrote:
| > Looks like the SEO folks do though.
|
| Pretty sure at least 80% (probably 95%+) of low-quality
| SEO content is generated by computers, or at least by
| very low-skill outsourced labor in a machine-assisted
| way.
|
| It then makes sense that the mature Internet can probably
| match any search query in a manner that leads to a site
| that sells something vaguely matching the query, through
| sheer quantity of available content.
|
| In other words - there is enough SEO content generated
| and indexed that most queries will be able to be
| monetized by a search engine like Google.
| lizknope wrote:
| I have no idea what you are expecting from "high tc record"
|
| I'm getting links about the highest temperature on earth
| and it is listing it in Fahrenheit so if the "tc" means
| "temperature celsius" it is failing for me.
|
| All the other links are about high temperature
| superconductors.
| kidme5 wrote:
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie_temperature
| lizknope wrote:
| These are the top 2 links I get
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest_temperature_recorde
| d_o...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| temperature_superconducti...
|
| "High-temperature superconductors (abbreviated high-Tc"
|
| Seems like google search is working quite well if the
| second link is what the person wanted.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| > high tc record
|
| I don't know what you are trying to search for. A record
| for total compensation? Something related to Tesla coils?
| Turing Complete? Thread Count is a totally valid
| interpretation.
| drcongo wrote:
| My next single, High TC, doesn't come out for another
| month. You'll be able to search for it then.
| jqgatsby wrote:
| I agree. More generally, any business model where your users
| and your customers are disjoint sets will cause a
| misalignment of interests that generates an ever-increasing
| negative feedback loop. It seems like it can take a long time
| to play out though.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Except Search volume and MAUs are still growing like a weed,
| whereas FB's growth has slowed dramatically.
|
| Search is not perfect, for sure. It has different problems.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| But at least now a few MBAs can put "increased revenue at
| Meta by X%" on their resume!
| edgyquant wrote:
| It's the resource curse in corporate form
| mtgx wrote:
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Never thought I'd see the day, but I actually use Yandex for
| image search now because they basically deliver the google
| image search experience of a decade ago. While Google Images
| has had no one with Vision in charge and been tweaked, buffed
| and downgraded to the point of uselessness. And you can tell
| no one on the team actually uses it.
|
| Google Search could honestly be dethroned if someone really
| wanted to. The usage at this point is habit, not because it's
| still a good search engine.
| krferriter wrote:
| I've noticed recently Google image search has gotten
| surprisingly terrible for some things. I use Bing image
| search when the Google image search lets me down. Haven't
| tried Yandex.
| 6510 wrote:
| I still weekly make the mistake to try to find something
| that I know to exist. Sometimes I know there are hundreds
| of pages on the topic. I type query after query, again and
| again, nothing shows up. It's like in the 90's, I tell
| stories about.. I forget his name and the place, when it
| happened but it was something like this and that. pfft!
|
| edit: I just attempted to look up what kind of taxes on has
| to pay if one receives donations. I cant carve out a query
| that gives me anything other than tax deductible donations.
| The "receiving" part is completely ignored.
| rolph wrote:
| --that coupled with inability to realize that blasting ads at
| people doesnt make your product look better, it makes your
| product a source of frustration, and a daily/hourly
| annoyance, your product is associated with bad, and is
| avoided.
|
| the answer to the problem includes the concept of less is
| more.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Not really since no one's cares about the annoyances-if
| they did no company would run ads but the exact opposite is
| true
| duped wrote:
| Which companies were killed by ads?
| bikson wrote:
| Digg?
| timr wrote:
| Yahoo comes to mind.
| ycta2334209 wrote:
| Tumblr - banned 18+ content in 2018(?) in an attempt to
| make their site more advertiser-friendly and lost most of
| their userbase within a couple of months. Site was thriving
| before that.
| edgyquant wrote:
| This is a dishonest answer. Tumblr died because it's
| niche was adult content. Banning your niche is choosing
| to fail.
| topaz0 wrote:
| Or maybe profit is an addictive drug that kills the company
| csw-001 wrote:
| I'm not sure it's the advertising dollars that are addictive
| as much as it is "growth". To keep the stock price up you
| have sustain a PE that reflects revenue growth, and once you
| are done signing up new users... Well... Something's got to
| give.
|
| I see the ads as a lot like cutting timber out of a finite
| forest - it's profitable, but potentially harmful to the
| ecosystem in a way that can make it unsustainable. As long as
| you don't cut too much, replant aggressively, then you can
| make a sustainable business out of it - but it doesn't scale
| past the point where your harm to the ecosystem causes
| collapse. Once people exit FB because it's all ads, then the
| network benefits begin to evaporate, a little bit at first,
| then all at once...
|
| Then again I don't run a social media company, so what do I
| know. ;-)
| nostromo wrote:
| Amazon seems to have taken a different route.
|
| Keep margins low and don't make too much money in order to
| starve any potential competitors of capital.
|
| Of course - you still need to grow revenue for this to work
| - just not profits.
| danudey wrote:
| Doesn't help that their recommendations are always "Oh,
| you bought an air conditioner? Come look at this wide
| variety of other air conditioners we have!" rather than,
| say, adapters for connecting air conditioners to
| different window types or home electricity usage
| monitoring or something.
| nostromo wrote:
| This is a common complaint. The reason they do it is
| because... it works!
|
| It can be counter-intuitive but this is often seen in
| recommendation systems. In music for example, the song
| most likely to be played after a song is... that same
| song again.
| danaris wrote:
| It may work in the general case.
|
| However, it is _painfully_ clear that there are _very
| obvious categories_ of products that it does not work on.
| 99% of the time, if someone buys a refrigerator, they
| will not be interested in buying another refrigerator.
|
| It would _not_ be that difficult for Amazon to detect
| these product types and give other kinds of
| recommendations for them. Unless their algorithms and the
| data that drive them are much, _much_ less comprehensive
| than they want us to believe.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| It seems to me that Amazon has the same problem, but with
| their physical products instead of ads. Cheap junk,
| fakes, and scams pushed up sales for a while, but then
| people give up on the site and go to other sources that
| are perceived to be more reputable.
| JohnFen wrote:
| This is most of why I stopped using Amazon entirely.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > To keep the stock price up you have sustain a PE that
| reflects revenue growth, and once you are done signing up
| new users... Well... Something's got to give.
|
| Facebook need to just settle back and offer dividends. It's
| over.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Then again I don't run a social media company, so what do
| I know. ;-)
|
| Maybe not a little as you think. Just because the social
| media companies are "runing", running into the ground is
| still running. They just have so much momentum that the
| ship is going to keep moving along.
| r00fus wrote:
| If our profit-uber-alles capitalist model has nothing to
| restrain it... it raises the question - is the growth
| benign or malignant?
| csw-001 wrote:
| If the logging analogy holds, then I don't think this is
| purely an issue of profits above all - it's more an issue
| of short-termism. If you are Facebook, you could
| reasonably stay relevant, focus on content quality, and
| shift to a profit model that looks a lot more like Morton
| Salt's - steady as she goes. In the long run, sans other
| goals, that might be the rational thing to do.
|
| On the other hand, if you are looking to preserve stock
| price in the short-term you need to at least create the
| illusion of sustainable revenue growth. And there is a
| lot to be said for this later strategy if you don't
| really want to run Facebook in maintenance phase. Seems
| that Mark and Co. might not be all that concerned about
| "deforesting" Facebook with ads because the end game here
| is the Metaverse...?...
| in3d wrote:
| Exactly. By adding more and more ads, their own widgets, and
| pushing down smaller sites in the search results to favor
| brands, Google made it very hard for smaller sites with user-
| generated content to grow and profit organically. And then
| fewer people searched for them or expected to find them.
|
| I'm kind of enjoying the fact that newer sites and apps like
| Discord don't let Google index them after Google killed off a
| large part of the independent Internet. We're missing out on
| a lot of good content that would be put up in an alternate
| universe with a less greedy and shortsighted Google.
| fullsend wrote:
| Users click more on big brands. The average internet user
| doesn't want to browse hobby websites, they use the top 10
| sites and never leave them. Accept it. Some of them never
| leave only Reddit or TikTok.
| mrtesthah wrote:
| Cynical proclamations tend to sound authoritative, but
| that's not the same as being true. Sources?
| spiralx wrote:
| I was interested as well, but couldn't find anything
| specifically answering the question. According to the
| link below social media, email and watching videos counts
| for about three-quarters of most people's internet usage,
| which could easily mean they spend most time on just
| three or four sites. The two smallest categories -
| searching and shopping - could also just mean Google and
| Amazon for the most part, so it's the "Surfing content
| (19%)" that's ambiguous... although even then I assume
| that Google is a big part of that, and otherwise surfing
| for content is pretty much the opposite of visiting a
| site regularly, although I guess it probably includes
| news websites, which probably are a regular visit.
|
| I'd guess that it is possible most people visit a dozen
| or fewer websites regularly, of which half a dozen or so
| are in the Top 10, and the rest include things like
| news/media sites that are most likely to be popular (if
| only nationally). Seems likely the older the person the
| narrower range of things they do online, apparently the
| most common activities for the over-60s are email and
| checking the weather lol.
|
| https://www.creditloan.com/blog/how-the-world-spends-its-
| tim...
| alexc05 wrote:
| I'd also add that the optimizing the timeline for engagement
| (including negative engagement & arguments) wound up making me
| quit the platform entirely. There were no positive
| interactions, just deeply unpleasant arguments with people
| spewing vitriol.
|
| Like ... why would I stay on a platform that was so deeply
| unpleasant to interact with all the time?
| pen2l wrote:
| It's an interesting exercise to think about:
|
| suppose you're in the meeting room and you're the product guy
| and you'll make this case. Indeed let us not optimize for the
| presently advantageous local maxima lest it come back to
| swallow and end us. How is this communicated? And what does it
| take to convincingly persuade people, or investors of this --
| to even bear through a temporary downward period with the
| understanding that fundamentals must be respected?
| max51 wrote:
| >And what does it take to convincingly persuade people, or
| investors of this
|
| As long as their top priority is next quarter's result, you
| can't. You may get small wins here and there, but nothing
| fundamental will change unless they have a long term vision.
| When I say "long term", I'm talking 10 - 20 years, not 1
| year.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Convince on vision, not data.
|
| They didn't build the iPhone or even like Google Maps and
| Google Images by walking into the meeting room with data.
| They instead said "what if maps were as easy as we've made
| search"
|
| Of course it becomes a problem when no one even to the CEO
| level has lost vision. Never put the numbers guy in charge.
| lemmiwinks wrote:
| From my comprehension of Mad Men? You hire a PR firm to
| convince those investors and decision people, to sell them an
| idea instead of KPIs.
|
| It can go both ways, of course: Mad Men is full of examples
| of stupid business ideas that went spectacularly wrong. And
| while it wasn't the focus of Mad Men, the real world is full
| of examples of business that went the metrics way and were
| successful.
|
| But IMHO, if I was the CEO of a social media company, I sure
| wouldn't focus on A/B testing and engagement metrics.
| fmajid wrote:
| Well, yes. Your friends are not paying for placement. If they
| are, they are "influencers" and you need better friends.
| ineptech wrote:
| Crazy idea: FB should stop trying to lure people back from Tiktok
| with weird features and just lean in to its one remaining
| strength, which is that among social media sites, it's the most
| generic and boring and ubiquitous. Being the default place for
| non-influencers to do quotidian stuff like hearing about school
| closings, joining the PTA or HOA, coordinating family gatherings,
| see your nephew's school photos, etc would be a pretty good
| little business. And they already have all of that functionality
| built, so they could run significantly leaner, and hence not have
| to drive their remaining users away with excessive ads.
|
| This seems like a good idea to me. But I also think it's about as
| likely to happen as President Stallman.
| themagician wrote:
| FB's core strength today is the boomer market. Definitely
| something I did NOT see coming 10 years ago. The 60+ crowd
| practically lives in Facebook Groups now and they will buy
| basically anything that they see in an ad on FB. You can sell
| people who are 60+ basically _anything_ on FB if you target
| them. The pandemic really solidified this, and now the
| conversion rates are higher than anything I have ever seen
| anywhere.
|
| It's interesting to me because many older FB users barely know
| how to use the platform and they have invented their own tricks
| and conventions--my favorite of which is commenting "Following"
| because they don't know how to follow something, but know that
| if they leave a comment they will get notifications about
| responses. I see that every day and I always find it
| interesting. Every now and then someone calls them out on it
| and they just don't care. They have developed their own memes
| and are probably the only group that uses those Bitmoji-esque
| "What's on your mind" cards.
|
| FB can lean into the boomer market and basically print money.
| FB is going to replace QVC. Hell, they should just buy QVC.
| nradov wrote:
| That would be the low risk strategy. Just run it as a cash cow
| value business and extract as much profit as possible until it
| dies.
|
| However, Mark Zuckerberg has chosen to bet the company on AR/VR
| and is investing $10B into that area. If they get it wrong then
| he'll look like an idiot. If they get it right by building the
| next major platform for humans to communicate then he'll look
| like a visionary genius. We won't know which for at least 10
| years.
| yojo wrote:
| People gave Google a ton of crap for buying YouTube for 1.6
| billion (~16% of annual revenue at the time). That $10B FB
| spent is more like 8.5% of their revenue.
|
| I'm skeptical of the metaverse, but I was also pretty
| skeptical of user-generated video. And given their current ad
| take, $10B is not a crazy bet.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Everyone wanted to watch and share video clips on their
| computer directly on the web without and without having to
| care about codecs, file formats, and hosting.
|
| No one wants to have business meetings wearing VR headsets
| or give NFTs to virtual panhandlers or any of the other
| silly usecases for a modernized version of Lawnmower Man.
| nradov wrote:
| At one point no one wanted to have business meetings on
| Zoom, but the technology improved and the culture changed
| such that it's now ubiquitous. Metaverse technology is
| still really clunky today and used only by a few early
| adopters, but it's entirely possible that the experience
| will improve a lot in 10 years. Who knows?
| JohnFen wrote:
| > no one wanted to have business meetings on Zoom, but
| the technology improved and the culture changed such that
| it's now ubiquitous.
|
| No one wants to use Zoom now. It's either required or the
| lesser of two evils (the other evil being working in an
| office).
| VancouverMan wrote:
| A significant factor to consider with that situation is
| that the recent widespread use of teleconferencing
| software wasn't organic.
|
| Many people and organizations that started using it
| frequently during the last three years only did so
| because they were forced to, mainly due to absurd and
| unjustifiable government-imposed lockdowns and other
| restrictions. Otherwise, the remaining adoption was
| mainly driven by paranoia, and only occasionally by
| convenience.
|
| We've seen a tendency for such people and organizations
| to return to in-person interactions as soon as they can,
| which usually starts the moment that government stops
| interfering.
|
| While the adoption may have been rapid and widespread, we
| also see the reverse happening as soon as it's possible
| to.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Yeah, no. Zoom had a product that worked good enough
| (send out invite email and join a video conference) at
| the right time (global pandemic).
|
| Step one of the metaverse is everyone invests in a VR
| headset. This is a complete non-starter. There is no
| counter-factual where this becomes a success.
|
| I still can't believe this is the "A Game" of a public
| company worth $550bn. If this is the best they can come
| up with, whatever of "Meta" that is left in 10 years
| won't be worth 1/20 of that.
| yojo wrote:
| Maybe? I generally agree with you, but playing devils
| advocate:
|
| What does the generation raised on Minecraft and Roboblox
| do when they grow up? They spent their adolescence in
| virtual worlds. Do they grow out of that? Or does it
| start to bleed into other parts of daily life?
|
| VR still seems clunky as hell, but if the tech gets less
| obtrusive I can imagine a world where a sizable chunk of
| daily life is mediated through a headset.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Find a new form of escapism? A large driver of kids and
| teens seeking out escapism like this is that compulsory
| education is unsatisfying and they have very little self-
| determination generally. This isn't new to Minecraft and
| Robolox. A generation ago, it was watching way too much
| TV. What are those kids who watched 6 hours a night of TV
| doing now?
| stonogo wrote:
| Why do we need to wait ten years? He's building Second Life
| with a higher-resolution mesh. Is that visionary?
| thehappypm wrote:
| Yes! Exactly this.
|
| Facebook is your online second life. It's actually you.
|
| With that, it doesn't make as much sense to be the place to
| mindlessly scroll dance videos, or discuss politics with
| strangers.
|
| It does, however, make for a great place to discuss local
| things, discuss hobbies, buy and sell things, message people,
| keep up with friends and family
| mrweasel wrote:
| "Won't someone please think of the shareholders"... It seems
| like the obvious idea, it is exactly their strengths and their
| user base is old enough for those features to be of value.
|
| The thing is that would mean making Facebook less valuable,
| causing the current shareholders to lose money. It's going to
| be hard to get someone to accept a business plan that will cost
| them money, even if the alternative is worse long term. Perhaps
| because you're betting that you can of load our shares before
| the whole thing goes belly up (whenever that may be).
|
| I think your idea makes a lot of sense, it would be cheaper to
| run, there's less fancy features to develop, might be cheaper
| to run andless use for moderation. The thing I don't understand
| well enough is the ads: Can you charge more, because your users
| are older and buy different things, or do teens and younger
| people have more disposable income?
| nerdponx wrote:
| > The thing is that would mean making Facebook less valuable
|
| Would it? Is the stock market completely irrational and
| incapable of seeing the long-term value here? Or does the
| market know something we don't?
| bluebit wrote:
| Instructions unclear, piled all available capital into the
| "metaverse" instead.
| greatpostman wrote:
| Their current market cap can't be sustained by going back to
| their roots. They need addictive attention
| ratg13 wrote:
| Yes, but it's still a dumb idea to make instagram into tiktok
| rather than catering to their existing audience.
| nerdponx wrote:
| This seemed to be their strategy for several years in the early
| 00s. Facebook was pretty enjoyable to use back then!
| ok123456 wrote:
| Marketplace is the only reason a lot of people still use the
| site. This is since especially true for people looking for
| beater cars since Craigslist started charging $5 to post ads
| for cars.
|
| If Apple or someone else with an ax to grind with Facebook
| really wanted to bust Meta's kneecaps, they could off to
| subsidize this charge. Maybe also help them out with fraud and
| spam detection, since that's where most of the overhead on that
| section is going to come from.
| acdha wrote:
| That seems to be getting the same Zuckerberg death-spiral:
| Facebook has lots of users so it's tempting but everyone I
| know who's tried it was deluged with blatant scam attempts &
| Google MFA phishing attacks. Skimping on abuse just seems to
| be the corporate default.
| elcomet wrote:
| That might be the reason for you, but there are many other
| reasons why people still use the site. For example,
| coordinating events with friends, discover local events,
| discussing on messenger, sharing photos, discussing in
| groups...
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| I hear this all the time but SMS/MMS/iMessage/whatever
| Android has does this just as well.
| Infinitesimus wrote:
| For cross-platform communication, Messenger/Whatsapp win
| over the above. (Telegram, Signal, etc in some circles).
| ok123456 wrote:
| The people using Marketplace are the people who wouldn't be
| using the site otherwise, and who are there for the express
| purpose of doing commerce. No one over 40 would be caught
| dead of facebook otherwise.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > No one over 40 would be caught dead of facebook
| otherwise.
|
| What? The over 40 crowd is FB's main demographic.
| max51 wrote:
| >No one over 40 would be caught dead of facebook
| otherwise.
|
| Until their HOA or their sports club start using Facebook
| as their official platform for announcements and
| communication.
|
| I know there are other free platform that could fill the
| same role, but you will never find one where literally
| more than half the adult population already has an
| account and is familiar with the interface/features. Lots
| of groups use it because it's the path of least
| resistance.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Enough people don't have or won't use facebook in 2022.
|
| Email is still the lowest common denominator.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Source? This sounds like conjecture at its finest.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Taking an average of the various reports about Facbook
| usage in the US, about 70% of internet users use Facebook
| at least once per month.
|
| Somewhere near 100% of internet users use email.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Can you sign up with Facebook without an email? I know it
| asks for your phone number but not sure if it still
| requires an email.
| ok123456 wrote:
| It's not conjecture. Just look at any form your fill out,
| from taxes, to medical, to employment. They all ask for
| your email address and not for your facebook url.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| BbzzbB wrote:
| It's funny how much projection people do when speaking of
| FB, as if their personal experience offers some deep
| insight into a platform of 3.5 billion users whose usage
| varies by user, demography and geography.
| ok123456 wrote:
| It's funny how people try to deny the simple truth that
| the site hasn't been fun to use in 15 years.
| krferriter wrote:
| Whether or not it's fun doesn't isn't the primary driving
| factor in its continued popularity. People use it because
| other people use it. It got big and now has a network
| effect of inertia holding it in place until something
| else takes off and replaces it.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Then, why does my original post have +30? It must have
| struck a nerve with more than just myself.
| elcomet wrote:
| Because there's a certain group of people who feel the
| same way as you do. And maybe people who read HN are more
| likely to belong in this group. But HN is not
| representative of the world.
| drusepth wrote:
| I'm not sure an opinion (how fun a site is to use) that
| surely varies wildly across FB's billions of users can
| even be a universal "simple truth".
| drumttocs8 wrote:
| Huh? In my experience, no one _under_ 40 uses the site
| much anymore for its original purposes. The only status
| updates and memes being posted are from the older crowd.
| ok123456 wrote:
| I meant under.
| donkey-hotei wrote:
| Might be true for you. But this is so not true for a lot
| of the world still. Lots and lots of young people (late
| 20s, early 30s) still use FB. Anecdotally, quite a few of
| my friends still do, if not mostly for the groups.
| legitster wrote:
| FB is also actively making Marketplace worse.
|
| They keep relegating their local pickup products and trying
| to turn it into a generic online marketplace.
| drstewart wrote:
| It's annoying, but welcome. As soon as Marketplace dies, I
| can delete FB forever
| achenatx wrote:
| I use it for groups. Many of our local clubs do great on
| facebook
| addicted wrote:
| The problem is that FB has changed groups as well. Groups
| seem to be redesigned to become more like open billboards
| than private enclaves with a limited membership.
|
| They haven't gone all the way there, so the groups are
| still useful, but I'm worried that's the direction they're
| taking.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Private groups mean less people and less engagement. So
| they'll try to trick you into opening.
| Sharlin wrote:
| FB is also the only popular platform where you can do actual
| "miniblogging" as in record and share your actual thoughts and
| experiences in a few-paragraphs textual format. But that's
| pretty much the opposite of trendy right now.
| wikitopian wrote:
| This period is best understood as a brutal hangover from several
| years of market subsidized growth. We had cheap Ubers, cheap meal
| delivery, and free web services all paid for by a speculative
| bubble which is in the process of popping.
|
| Meta can't just admit that they don't have a viable business
| model or their stocks will truly crash, so they have no choice
| but to cannibalize their remaining customers, like how phone and
| cable companies screw the remaining people with landline phone
| service and traditional cable packages.
| fullshark wrote:
| They made 6.5 billion in pure profit last quarter. The business
| model is sound the question is just if they are managing it
| poorly.
| llaolleh wrote:
| Facebook is adbook.
| oofbey wrote:
| Resolution: WON'T FIX. WORKING AS INTENDED.
| YouWhy wrote:
| Knowing the beast firsthand, there's no trace of doubt in my mind
| that the convergence to a junk product outcome involved a
| monotonous increase in ad revenue and likely, engagement metrics.
|
| There's a tragic dimension that a system which connected so much
| of humanity to itself so well would be rendered so toxic as a
| product and as a community in just a few years.
| pfortuny wrote:
| Ordinary people put up with a lot of inconvenience just to stay
| connected (in some way). This is why fb has not collapsed yet.
|
| I left it years ago when I realized it was just annoying me.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| It hasn't collapsed because _everyone_ with a half-baked idea
| feels they _need_ to purchase ads to syndicate across
| Facebook or Instagram
|
| and some of the fully baked ideas with a budget do it too
|
| its the crux of most modern online marketing strategies, its
| always an overhead cost, recurring
| dvtrn wrote:
| I made the conscious effort before leaving Facebook to trade
| phone numbers, addresses and birthday dates from the people I
| wanted to really wanted stay in touch with, and put them in
| my phone. This was all within the last three years.
|
| I've sent birthday gifts in the mail, and I've gotten gifts
| in mail from these very people.
|
| Sometimes, when I wonder where the convenience that gets
| talked about in the context of Facebook and "staying in
| touch" ends and a more delicate form of "you're probably not
| as close to some of the people on your friends list as you
| think" (which was absolutely the case for me) begins.
|
| It took really minimal effort on my part to find other ways
| of staying in touch, but I think maybe the key is you have to
| WANT to stay in touch with people?
|
| Just a shower thought.
| avgDev wrote:
| I'm doing this too and it has been great for me in general.
|
| I looked at my fb friends and thought to myself which
| people I really liked and would like to reconnect with. I
| messaged "facebook friends" I have not talked to in a while
| and told them it may seem weird but I really would like to
| reconnect. I have never done anything like this, as I am
| extremely prone to losing touch with people.
|
| I ended up reconnecting with a few people in real life and
| it has been great. I also plan on sending cards and stuff.
| robert204 wrote:
| Same. I've been pretty happy with Clay
| (https://clay.earth). They just rolled out a Facebook
| birthdays integration and between that and Linkedin /
| iMessage it has most of the people I care about seeing.
| pfortuny wrote:
| I do send _postcards_ and people like it so much they ask
| me not to stop.
| badwolf wrote:
| Big fan of this. I also print and mail memes and
| photoshops I make to people. It's nice getting something
| in the mail that's not a bill.
| ticviking wrote:
| The art of deliberately staying in touch has been lost, and
| taking the time and effort to do so makes one stand out.
| webmobdev wrote:
| Users of FB have migrated to Instagram and WhatsApp (all
| owned by Meta) ... FB is now for old people / those who don't
| like new tech.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Instagram and Facebook don't have the functionality that
| Facebook has, that's the problem.
|
| Instagram is for photo sharing. Hell, it's not even for
| that... it's a dating app for women, that doesn't advertise
| itself as a dating app for women.
|
| WhatsApp is just another telephone and messaging app,
| there's not much special about it as far as I can tell.
| It's ICQ on a smartphone and I guess, maybe, a better
| interface.
|
| I was more connected back in the email / ICQ / Skype /
| forums age than I am in the so-called "social" media age.
| WHYLEE1991 wrote:
| in what respect is Instagram a dating app for women or
| anyone? Because it's a social media site primarily used
| by younger-ish people? by that metric any site that
| features young people is just an over-glorified dating
| platform. (not to say that this is a negative
| implication, dating websites are great to some extent)
|
| Do you believe that young people are capable of using
| social media platforms for things other than base urges
| or is that something only middle aged people are able to
| accomplish?
| cbozeman wrote:
| This wasn't meant for you, but the other guy deleted his
| question, so here we go.
|
| Instagram is a photo-sharing application at it's core.
|
| So when you share photos, you're sharing your lifestyle.
| You're advertising. This is especially prevalent down
| here in Miami. So much so that people oftentimes at clubs
| don't exchange phone numbers; they exchange Instagrams.
| The women can see by your Instagram posts what kind of
| life you live and whether or not they're interested. You
| can see by their Instagram who and what they are. If you
| go to it and you're inundated with a ton of booty pics in
| string bikinis and a little string barely covering her
| titties, hanging on for dear life, you know she's
| advertising, "I am a hoe and I do hoe things." If you go
| to her Instagram and you see a lot of landscape photos,
| ancient monuments, etc., you know she's advertising, "I
| like to travel and have a genuine interest in culture."
|
| If you go to a man's Instagram and he's got photos of
| himself stepping off a private jet, photos of him on a
| sailboat or a yacht smoking a cigar with a label that
| clearly reads Arturo Fuente Opus X and holding a glass of
| amber liquid with a bottle that says Louis XIII on it,
| photos of himself in a sharp suit leaned up against his
| Aston Martin DB11, he's advertising, "I am a successful,
| wealthy man who lives a life of luxury." If you go a
| man's Instagram and there's pictures of his woodshop,
| some photos of a new chest of drawers he crafted, a
| picture of him sitting by the lake with his trusty
| Labrador retriever lovingly sitting by his side, he's
| advertising, "I'm a down-to-Earth craftsman who enjoys
| the serenity of nature."
|
| And then all these people go sliding into one another's
| DMs, as the cool kids say...
|
| If you don't believe that, start listening to the podcast
| _Blocked and Reported_ with Katie Herzog and Jesse
| Singal. I 've been listening since episode 29. They're on
| episode 131. They report on Internet ridiculousness and
| culture-at-large. A shocking amount of stories eventually
| have the phrase "slid into the DMs" in them.
|
| It's clear to me that Instagram is being used as a dating
| platform as much as it is a storytelling or photo-sharing
| platform. And I don't think Meta should do anything about
| that at all. It's a dating platform on the down-low. I
| think that might be a good thing.
| ziddoap wrote:
| I can see your argument, and it's certainly an
| interesting way of looking at it, but this just explains
| the "dating app" part of your assertion (" _... it 's a
| dating app for women,_"). It's missing the explanation on
| why it's a "dating app _for women_ ".
| cbozeman wrote:
| Because even now in our so-called "sexually liberated"
| world, men make the overwhelming amount of approaches
| that indicate sexual interest. Put simply, "Men make the
| first move."
|
| In a way, Instagram is the digital / technological
| pinnacle of the "Personals" ads from newspapers of
| yesteryear.
|
| I wonder if Rupert Holmes will update "Escape" with the
| line, "There was this post that I saw... on my Instagram
| feed..."
| brandall10 wrote:
| In addition to that, it's pretty common on other dating
| platforms to say something along the lines of "don't use
| this much, it's better to reach me on instagram".
|
| Part of that is looking for new followers, part of that
| is using IG as the primary social portal for their lives.
| [deleted]
| anotheracctfo wrote:
| Can you please stop sending cringey DM's to every woman
| you see on Insta? I can assure you that the woman posting
| her yarn project is not into you.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Sir, this is a Hacker News.
| indigochill wrote:
| > There's a tragic dimension that a system which connected so
| much of humanity to itself
|
| How would you say Facebook connected humanity differently from
| what MySpace was doing before Facebook ate their lunch with a
| more consistent UI?
|
| I also am increasingly of the opinion that humanity is not
| wired to connect globally. Our local social networks give us a
| buffer against centralized bad actors. When everyone was
| connected directly to everyone else, what we used to call
| "chain letters" before social media took off won the
| information war because they could bypass fact checkers that
| would refuse to pass them to their network back when social
| networks were more separated.
| hbn wrote:
| I recall a 4chan post where the author pointed out how before
| the internet, if you were a person that wanted to have sex
| with toasters you'd never bring it up and live a better life
| for it, whereas now you go to Google and find a community
| with 1000+ members of people who have sex with toasters and
| inevitably ruin your life.
| acdha wrote:
| > I also am increasingly of the opinion that humanity is not
| wired to connect globally
|
| I view it as similar to the health hazards of widespread
| cheap calories - it's not a new problem but we've cranked it
| up to 11 and put a large fraction people on the planet at
| risk, and approaches which tell people to exercise willpower
| are basically pointless.
|
| I think the fixes have to be regulatory but seriously
| question the political will. Facebook was able to avoid any
| real consequences for their role supporting the Rohingya
| genocide and if that's not enough, what will be?
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I also am increasingly of the opinion that humanity is not
| wired to connect globally.
|
| Sociologists generally agree.
| darkhorse222 wrote:
| >How would you say Facebook connected humanity differently
| from what MySpace was doing before Facebook ate their lunch
| with a more consistent UI?
|
| It's simple, more people were on FB than were ever on
| Myspace.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| >before social media took off won the information war because
| they could bypass fact checkers that would refuse to pass
| them to their network
|
| Lmao, my mother used to forward me these political chain
| letters. I'd reply all with sources debunking them. I quickly
| got removed from the list :^)
| didgetmaster wrote:
| You probably got removed from the list because it cost
| someone a stamp to mail you the letter. These days if you
| respond to anything, that just puts you on the 'real
| person' list that gets distributed to all the spammers.
| Email and robocalls are essentially free so there is no
| incentive to take dead ends off the lists anymore.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Oh no, I thought we were talking about chain emails. I
| used to reply all
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Instagram isn't nearly as bad, but still seems to have an
| ad/suggested/sponsored post every 3 posts from people I follow.
| YMMV.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| I am so glad I stopped using that site 7 years ago. What an
| absolute dumpster fire it has become.
| herpderperator wrote:
| I've been seeing this with Twitter also... a lot of the stuff is
| suggested content and really clickbaity sponsored posts. :(
| koprulusector wrote:
| Disclaimer: I haven't used Facebook in forever.
|
| I just thought I'd point out this Reddit post is from nearly six
| months ago. I'd imagine there have been numerous tweaks to what
| users are shown since then.
| vkou wrote:
| Same for me. I checked in a few times this year, and it's utterly
| unusable. If I want to argue about clickbait on the internet,
| Facebook is the last place I want to do that.
|
| But I'm sure some PM's really proud of the engagement metrics
| they've generated.
| throwaway888abc wrote:
| Same crap with Instagam
| phantom_of_cato wrote:
| This is a good opportunity to reflect on how irrelevant and
| vacuous is the omnipresent "It's a private company, they can do
| whatever they want." We also have a right to criticize them for
| whatever reason.
| Animats wrote:
| Facebook has a declining user count and a market cap which
| assumes growth. (Although the stock is down 60% from peak.) So,
| they've tried to increase revenue per user by adding more ads and
| promotional content. User count declined further.
|
| This is sometimes called "pulling a Myspace".
|
| Facebook/Meta is now on metaverse failure #3 (Oculus, Facebook
| Spaces, Horizon), has lost $10 billion in that space, and
| investors are not happy. They're not getting out that way.
| Facebook remains a viable business for now, but not a growth
| business.
| aleksandarbos wrote:
| this is what my latest interaction with instagram looked like
| before i deactivated the account:
|
| 1. i'm consciously opening instagram to see what people/pages i'm
| following have to offer
|
| 2. i'm watching some random "suggested" reel of lion saving baby
| giraffe from two crocks
|
| 3. ads
|
| 4. closing the app and asking myself of what am i doing out of my
| life?
| cphoover wrote:
| and it's all crap. Very low quality content... especially on
| video. Terrible recommendations. YouTube has the same problem.
| Whoever is leading recs is doing a terrible job.
| titzer wrote:
| The recommendation system was really addictive for me for a
| while. I was wasting a _ton_ of time on YouTube. Then I
| switched off recommendations based on my watch history and it
| suddenly got abysmally bad. And hallelujah, that worked like a
| charm. I spend almost no time on YouTube at all now. Whoever
| thinks that recommendations aren 't predatory time sinks
| probably hasn't experienced both sides of that.
| cphoover wrote:
| They can be both addictive and bad.... I find myself clicking
| clickbait nonsense all the time. With annoying titles like
| "Funniest NFL celebration fails" or "Best cheeseburger in
| NYC" It's inane worthless content, that my brain is addicted
| to. I feel utterly unsatisfied after watching this terrible
| content, yet I still click more often than I would like.
| cphoover wrote:
| how did you disable recommendations based off watch history?
| pearjuice wrote:
| Deleted Facebook years ago and turns out if you have actual
| friends who you care about, you'll just send each other
| life/status updates via direct messages (whatsapp, sadly also
| owned by Meta).
| JonathanBeuys wrote:
| It wouldn't be that hard to write a bookmarklet that scrolls
| through your feed, removes posts from people you don't follow and
| sorts the rest by time.
|
| A good portion of people here on HN would be capable of writing
| it.
|
| That nobody does shows that there is not really a strong
| preference for this type of experience over the current
| suggested/ads/friends mix.
| pr0zac wrote:
| Unsure why you think no one has done it. Theres been a browser
| plugin/greasemonkey script for this type of functionality for
| over a decade.
|
| https://www.fbpurity.com/
| JZerf wrote:
| There are quite a few addons for Firefox for improving
| Facebook, here are three that I found right away and there are
| plenty more:
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/socialfixer/
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-faceb...
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fbcleaner/
|
| Facebook does make changes from time to time which makes it a
| bit of a cat and mouse game to keep these things working and
| that can easily get tiresome for people. Also some people might
| find the initial time investment to create these things to be
| too much.
|
| There is another post in this thread where someone mentioned
| that for many people (but apparently not all???) including
| myself, browsing to https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr tends to
| show your friends' posts in chronological order like many of us
| prefer. There are also several people who mention that using ad
| blockers like uBlock Origin do seem to be fairly effective at
| blocking most ads and other unwanted suggestions in Facebook
| and it does seem to work for me.
| hankdoupe wrote:
| The stickiest feature for me is Facebook groups. I go to Facebook
| to see what the people who share my interests are up to, where
| the next group bike ride is, etc. The recommended content (read:
| auto-playing reels) just distracts from that and literally any
| other content / media I'd rather be consuming. I'm really bummed
| that the platform is trending towards being a Tik-tok clone.
|
| I remember at some point there were a bunch of Facebook ads about
| how it was a great platform for groups. What happened to that
| focus?
|
| e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88mIXSdF7nw
| mtgx wrote:
| mrweasel wrote:
| > where the next group bike ride is, etc
|
| Didn't things like that become a problem once they switched the
| feed to not be chronological? LinkedIn has this problem. Top
| posts: Some meet up from two weeks ago that I am interested
| in... but it was two weeks ago, so, MEH.
| martin_a wrote:
| Yeah, I was bored and spend too much time on LinkedIn. Now
| all they can show me is events and promotions from three
| weeks ago. Not sure I should interact with that content
| anymore.
| jrnichols wrote:
| I noticed this as well and as a result I use Facebook a whole lot
| less. one big problem that I've encountered is that it's
| suggesting borderline NSFW content from the plague of OnlyFans
| "creators" that have flooded onto literally every social media
| platform out there.
|
| I've tried the "suggest less" and liking literally everything
| else I can but I continue to get a flood of borderline content.
| You click "Like" on one reel by accident and IG thinks that's all
| you want to see.
|
| less Meta usage for me. No TikTok either.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| Should I be moving everyone in my circle over to Mastadon or
| something?
| SamvitJ wrote:
| In my experience, what happened is that young people eventually
| stopped posting personal updates (this was a multi-year process),
| either because the novelty of it declined or because they entered
| a life phase change (e.g. leaving college) that made social
| updates less frequent or less shareable.
|
| In my friend group, this happened around 2018, about a year after
| we left college and entered the working world. I'd guess
| something similar happened with many cohorts.
| max51 wrote:
| For most people I know, they stopped posting when the feed
| started being filled with suggested crap. We didn't want to
| post on a feed we hated and where our friends would likely miss
| it anyway amongst all the garbage.
| gausswho wrote:
| I'm done with Facebook too but let's not post low effort reddit
| posts here with made up numbers for a headline.
| 60secs wrote:
| And FB default notification settings are cancer.
| b800h wrote:
| I'm waiting for WhatsApp to start serving me ads...
| ugjka wrote:
| That will cause mass exodus to Signal or something
| specialist wrote:
| My extended family has been the major reason I've held onto my
| facebook account. Nieces, nephews, cousins. Baby & puppy pics.
| Weddings, funerals, milestones, well wishes.
|
| Apple's Messages now largely serves that role.
|
| Feature Req: Make Messages savvy about Contact groups.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Agree, FB is trashing the place. But will say that, currently,
| putting feed in chronological order
| (https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr) reduces the number of
| suggesteds considerably; usually there is some (non-obvious) way
| to organize the feed in one of the menus too.
| throwmamatrain wrote:
| I noticed I saw way less information about shows in my area, the
| only thing I used facebook for. I missed nearly two months of
| shows at my local venues due to relying on facebook before I
| realized something had changed. Maybe they increased how much you
| had to pay to advertise or increase reach? No idea!
|
| Looks like I'll be writing my own scraper, fun times are here.
| ACV001 wrote:
| How do you think ads work on FB?
| freeslave wrote:
| There might be some other people out there like me with school
| age kids. I find that my kids schools and the various PAC
| (parents advisory committee) groups all use Facebook to
| communicate. So I have to be on there if want info and to be
| connected with other parents. I hate Facebook but for this
| purpose it is actually quite useful. Similarly, I am in a
| neighbourhood group and there is a certain amount of
| nimby/busybody type posts but it can also be great for knowing
| what is going on in the neighbourhood. The main page feed is all
| junk posts/ads but if I stick to these group pages it's useful.
| heliodor wrote:
| The current FB is great for productivity!
|
| No need to mourn the former FB. It's gone.
|
| I've given up on FB as a social network a long time ago. I
| unfollowed all my friends and started following things that
| interest me. Followed the astronomical society so I can be
| informed when they have a public night. I get ads for everything
| I need for renovating my house: roof sealing services, AC repair,
| contractors, new windows, cabinets, countertops, tiles, custom
| woodworkers, and more! The comments teach you a thing or two too.
|
| The other great things on FB are events, the marketplace, and
| groups. So much useful information out there if you tailor the
| platform to your needs.
| 1121redblackgo wrote:
| That is really clever, a swimming with the stream kind of
| strategy. Thanks for the tip.
| gukov wrote:
| >The current FB is great for productivity!
|
| Good guy Zucc.
|
| Is the platform salvageable at this point? Probably easier to
| acquire a new social media platform than steer the old
| behemoth.
| heliodor wrote:
| The point of FB is to make profit for shareholders. The
| platform can evolve into something new and profitable.
| There's no need to salvage the old. That's why the poor guy
| is driving his VR vision so hard!
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| I actually concur with this. I largely abandoned the platform,
| but one thing that I actually got from it lately turned out to
| be... a fantastic local mechanic.
|
| I went to a fan group for my car in my country and asked for a
| recommendation for someone in my city. Someone gave me a tip on
| a guy within 20 minutes.
|
| This of course is something I would have found in a searchable
| public forum back in the day, but I think more people use the
| platform in this way than we think.
| intrasight wrote:
| Just get rid of things you don't want. "FBP" gives you find
| granular control over what information is displayed in the
| Facebook interface.
| ryanchoi wrote:
| I've found the same thing but for Instagram, though I think it
| might be similar on Facebook too. It's just that when I'm on
| Facebook it's only to check out some things in a few hobby
| related groups I'm in so I'm never on home feed.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Youtube is also turning into garbage. First 10 or so results are
| relevant vids, then it becomes a mishmash of _" people also
| watched"_, _" for you"_, shorts, and similar suggested vids.
|
| EDIT: As for FB. The other day I watched three Studio Ghibli
| movies on Netflix. The last time I watched anything anime
| related, was Akira some 30 years ago.
|
| Now the feed is being bombarded with anime and manga meme
| content. I click "hide all" from these random pages, but they
| just keep popping up.
| bobo_legos wrote:
| Youtube is a traiwreck anymore. Thankfully when this came up
| here a few weeks ago a users pointed out that the subscriptions
| tab is there to just show you what you're subscribed to.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| There are many browser add-ons that completely removes feed from
| FB. Since I use FB exclusively for adding links to my personal
| portfolio, thise plugins are handy and keep me away from
| distraction everytime I need to share anything.
| [deleted]
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| This Reddit post is 5 months old, is there a recent change that
| prompted this post?
| smallerfish wrote:
| What products are poised to pick up if and when FB nosedives?
|
| Craigslist is a clear fallback for marketplace (although there
| was evidently a reason people started using markplace in favor of
| craigslist).
|
| Nextdoor/Reddit are just as much cesspools as FB groups...is
| there room for an oldster friendly groups replacement that
| somehow solves the cesspool problem? At least in my area these
| fill the void of not having local news - but instead it's a local
| bitchy gossip stream.
|
| Social feed is the big one. Obviously insta for photos, if they
| don't screw it up. Do whatsapp/telegram/signal fill the void
| otherwise?
| taylodl wrote:
| The way I use FB these days is to logon at most once per week or
| every other week. It gives your friends/groups some time to post.
| Most people aren't posting on a regular basis and oftentimes the
| ones who are you don't need to read 90% of their posts.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Facebook is a fantastic product, as long as you use it properly
| and not remotely as Facebook wants you to.
|
| - Most important step: _Unfollow every single person and page_
|
| - Follow entertaining groups like 'This cat is c h o n k y'
|
| - Keep facebook messenger
|
| - Use FB events for party planning
|
| That's it, and it's easy: you get all the social graph
| functionality, all the event planning and chat stuff. The feed
| (if you even visit it, personally I might spend five minutes a
| week there) is fun and doesn't make you feel disappointed with
| your elderly family members.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| I don't know if I discovered this plan independently or if some
| like-minded person shared this strategy years ago and I copied
| it from them, but it 100% works. I miss the page "Memes so deep
| and dank they make you commit suicide". It was 100% the name
| that got it banned: the content was pretty much all reposts
| from /r/ComedyBuddhism (a.k.a. non-humor or, occasionally,
| anti-humor).
| Vrondi wrote:
| Following friends is the sole reason to even have a Facebook
| account. Installing Messenger is nothing but a sign of sheer
| ignorance or apathy.
| legitster wrote:
| ...why?
|
| The low effort meme reposts are the worst part of FB. When FB
| used to show me the things I followed at least it made sense to
| log in.
| munchler wrote:
| Why would you want to unfollow your own friends? To me, that's
| always been the one useful feature of Facebook.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| So you don't see the opinions that make you hate them and end
| the friendship over thoughts that would never be uttered if
| it were just the two of you.
| spoonjim wrote:
| The problem is FB uses that to suggest content from their
| friends. Then you get random stuff from randos
| psygn89 wrote:
| It's easy when you don't have any.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| I'm glad to find a like-minded person.
|
| I unfollowed all my friends years ago. If I want to see them, I
| peek into events we have in common, groups or I go to their
| feed directly.
|
| My feed is mostly content from pages I enjoy along groups and
| communities that cover topics which interest me. I have a
| handful of friends who post about technology or hobbies that
| are not blocked from my feed.
|
| I have an older account that has a lot of friends in common
| with my main one but without the blocks. I find its feed to be
| very painful to use. Photos of people's food, people's pets,
| people sharing "inspirational" quotes on stock photos, a lot of
| selfies and people's children. It takes forever to find
| information about topics I actually enjoy reading about.
|
| I would unfriend those people if it did not come with the
| social problem of them coming back disappointed asking why I am
| no longer friend with them. As if social network contacts were
| actually friends and as if unfriending someone on a social
| network meant you are no longer friend with them. I also enjoy
| being able to check up on them every now and them, which I
| could not do if I were not connected with them due the their
| privacy settings.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| The thing about "X is a fantastic tool as long as you use it in
| a way the developers never intended", is that sooner or later,
| some interaction you rely on will break because the devs either
| don't care about or actively want to remove your use-case.
| Which is a problem if you've invested a lot into it at that
| point.
| JZerf wrote:
| This is one of the major reasons why I try to limit my use of
| websites for anything important and prefer to use normal,
| local applications that don't rely heavily on someone else's
| servers. It's a lot harder for other people to stop you from
| using the applications and also helps prevent things from
| changing/breaking all the sudden.
| paparush wrote:
| so, garbage. Got it.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Quit social media! You don't miss what you don't see.
| alphabetting wrote:
| I never use FB but checked it just now and the mix seems fine.
| Out of the first 10 panels on my page 7 were friends or pages I
| follow. Remaining were 2 ads and one suggested post. I'm guessing
| it's worse if you use FB frequently and have seen all of your
| friends recent content already.
| rr888 wrote:
| Surely there is a replacement out there? Like FB from 10 years
| ago. Any suggestions?
| noneeeed wrote:
| This is just an extreme form of my problem with both Facebook and
| Linkedin, both of which have become utterly unusable over the
| last year.
|
| Linkedin is particularly aggressive with the "someone you know
| liked a comment by someone you don't know on a post by someone
| else you don't know, from three months ago about an even that has
| alredy happened...". Utterly irrelevant crap that it is convinced
| will get me to come back.
|
| I actually like the basic idea of social media, I _want_ to know
| what my friends and family have been up to, or the people I 'm
| professionally connected with, it's a nice way to stay connected
| to people you might not get to see regularly.
|
| The SM companies have all managed to utterly ruin their own
| products to the point where I don't/won't/can't use them.
|
| I would love it if someone could make a site that helped me stay
| in contact with my wider social circle without trashing it in the
| deperate pursuit of ad dollars. Sadly I can't see something like
| that happening and not then being ruined.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Ironic that a redditor is complaining about memes. I thought all
| the good people were driven away from Reddit years ago by the
| meme cancer.
| DennisP wrote:
| A lot of reasonably small, well-moderated subreddits are still
| pretty great.
| tomrod wrote:
| Memes aren't cancers, they are ideas.
| anon_123g987 wrote:
| The word "meme" was created by Dawkins to be similar to
| "gene", because they spread similarly. Cancer is, in a
| certain sense, a genetic disease, the result of the
| malfunction of genes caused by mutation. So, to continue the
| analogy, a badly mutated meme can be like cancer, and can
| spread like one.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme#Etymology
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer#Genetics
| chitowneats wrote:
| Certain unhealthy ideas throughout history seem to
| metastasize and cause great harm to their host societies
| until they are eventually discarded or defeated.
| tomrod wrote:
| What do you have in mind? I can think of few modern
| examples that resulted in failed states and losers in wars,
| but many other bad ideas persist (but identifying them as
| such can be socially and politically sensitive) without
| dying off.
|
| Memes aren't cancer, but I agree that they can be
| pathogenic.
| desindol wrote:
| ...and ideas can be cancer.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| I suspect part of it is that Real People are posting less. Since
| the feed doesn't have a bottom anymore it makes up the difference
| with sponsored and suggested junk rather than going empty.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| So ~3B people are now willingly going to Facebook to be served
| ads and (probably) bot farms that just repost/share junk
| articles (some of which are or will be computer generated).
| Can't wait for the metaverse /s
| drc500free wrote:
| Yup, it's in a death spiral. As each feed gets less real
| content, that person disengaged and posts less. So their
| friends' feeds get less real content.
| michaelhoffman wrote:
| I still log into Facebook pretty often, but most of my posts
| are no longer actually shared with friends, so I hardly ever
| make them anymore. What's the point of posting something
| almost no one will see?
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| If the average person's feed has less engagement from their
| friends, then they are probably less likely to post.
|
| There's probably a threshold where this problem starts feeding
| itself, and a threshold where it stops.
| ipqk wrote:
| I'm a relatively old person that still has lots of friends that
| use FB (and not instagram or tiktok) and 100% of my feed
| (except for ads) was stuff from my friends.
| jmugan wrote:
| I don't know. There's plenty of posts from my friends. I just
| don't see them because I'm not willing to wade through all of
| the junk ads and sponsored stuff.
| bombcar wrote:
| When they changed things to make it so businesses had to pay
| for "sponsored posts" to get their followers to see them, you
| could see the writing on the wall.
|
| If normal people's posts get seen by their friends and
| followers, what would a business be paying for? And so it
| starts a loop that ends in nothing but AI generated content for
| doomscrollers.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Agree, but I think this is an effect rather than a cause. They
| made the feed un-friendly and un-cool, and as a result, Real
| People stopped posting.
| swatcoder wrote:
| I gave up visiting Facebook a long time ago, so can't speak to
| whatever current algorithm, but even a few years ago, my feed
| was already flooded with outside content while only presenting
| a small fraction of my friends' content.
|
| If I wanted to see most of the friend-content I had
| "subscribed" to, I had to do a manual tour of their profiles.
|
| I'm sure people do post even less now, but I'm skeptical that's
| the root cause of what's being reported. The explicit bias
| towards political/commercial/promoted/engagementbait content
| over "subscribed" content has been there for years.
| londons_explore wrote:
| This.
|
| Most people have ~300 friends. Most of those friends _never_
| post, and the 10% that do probably only post a couple of times
| a year now.
|
| That means whenever you log in, there is no content from your
| friends to see.
| antisthenes wrote:
| That's an _extremely_ liberal use of the word friend.
|
| A more accurate way to state it would be to say 'facebook
| connections'. If you don't regularly communicate with them,
| they aren't your friends.
| cbozeman wrote:
| > 'facebook connections'
|
| This is called an acquaintance.
| hk__2 wrote:
| That's nitpicking. These people are called "friends" on FB,
| not "connections".
| antisthenes wrote:
| It's not nitpicking. It's the correct use of a word with
| its established definitions.
|
| If you want to use the FB corporate meaning, go ahead,
| but label it appropriately.
| bluebit wrote:
| Can we all agree to call them FB friends, not friends.
| ipaddr wrote:
| If they are only your friend because you talked to them
| recently they probably aren't your friend either.
| reaperducer wrote:
| If they won't help you move a couch, they're not a friend.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| And the 1% daily posters would actively drive you away from
| Facebook if their spam of posts showed up in your newsfeed.
| [deleted]
| wincy wrote:
| I'm not so sure about that. My mom posts on Facebook and gets
| a few likes with pictures of Jesus with text in them, and my
| wife posts every day with political hot takes, literally just
| text posts and gets hundreds of likes on virtually every post
| she makes with tons of comments and engagement.
|
| My high school peers post pictures of their kids all the
| time. I like their pictures and they like mine. My
| grandparents all like my posts too, except grandpa who told
| me not to curse on Facebook so I blocked her. I'll curse on
| Facebook if I want, damn it!
|
| Edit: You know, I haven't even posted this but just to verify
| I went to Facebook and... 90% was suggested pages and barely
| any of my friends posts. I swear it wasn't like this
| yesterday. Did someone push an algorithm change and screw
| everything up in prod for Facebook?
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| I have also noticed a lot more suggested pages recently, I
| think they pushed a junk algorithm change.
| badwolf wrote:
| You can see this by going to
| https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr
|
| This temporarily forces chronological feed by most recently
| posted. My feed of actual people turned into a ghost town.
| pkamb wrote:
| People post liberally to private Groups you're a member of,
| and you don't need to be their friends. Group posts should be
| the majority of your newsfeed.
| jerlam wrote:
| By comparison, Instagram - the other part of Facebook - still
| puts a "no new posts" item in the feed, so there's a clear
| indicator that you can put Instagram away and you won't miss
| out on anything.
|
| However, Facebook has been slowly chipping away at it, by
| putting suggested posts afterwards (instead of accounts you
| actually follow) so if you're not paying attention, you'll
| still get ads / engagement. I expect the "no new posts"
| indicator will be made smaller and smaller, and eventually
| disappear.
| ufmace wrote:
| Funny, I see the opposite on Instagram - it's loaded with
| "suggested posts" based on things you liked, other accounts
| you follow, or apparently just things that you stopped
| scrolling for a second or two on, which I guess it detects.
| It even switches you to an endless list of suggested posts to
| scroll through once you have seen all of the posts from
| people you actually follow since the last time you opened the
| app - you have to click to an alternate screen/feed if you
| want to see an "old" post again.
| Vrondi wrote:
| Nah. People are posting, and then it doesn't show up in their
| friends' feeds, sometimes not for days. You can see this easily
| if you talk to people IRL. "I posted those photos two days ago,
| didn't you see?" and then the photos show up in your feed a few
| days later. Or never.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| That's a really important consideration. I post virtually
| nothing and neither do the majority of my old friends from
| school. Maybe it is due to being older and generally less
| interesting, but I suspect it is also because my friends who
| are inclined to post prolifically have moved on to Instagram,
| TikTok, or Twitter.
| kevstev wrote:
| I was actually going to post vacation photos a few months ago,
| after my first real trip post Covid. But... it just felt really
| awkard to do so all of a sudden. My feed is just stuffed with
| shared content and other crap, it no longer felt like something
| I would be welcome doing.
|
| Its been making me wonder if its time to sell my shares, which
| I have held since the IPO. It just feels like FB errr "Meta" is
| really losing its way, and this Metaverse stuff just seems like
| its going to be a furnace into which billions of dollars are
| going to be thrown into. My gut says its time, but I just can't
| quite pull the trigger yet.
| phhlho wrote:
| This was what led me to quit Facebook as well. I just got a
| real sketchy feeling sharing photos of my family knowing that
| other people would see them intermingled with all sorts of
| awful content.
| rconti wrote:
| I don't understand your hesitation to share your photos (or
| at least, not based on that criteria). "[wouldn't] be
| welcome"? By whom? Facebook? Or your friends? Would that
| imply they'd rather see ads and shared crap content than
| original content?
|
| IMO Facebook needs an "original content only" setting. I
| block every single page that some idiot shares, but I'm not
| sure how much it helps. I will literally never want to see
| something shared from another page.
|
| It seems like this would be a good thing for FB too. Keep
| engagement up, keep inserting ads. Hell, they could insert
| MORE ads if the content I saw from my friends had a greater
| signal:noise ratio.
|
| Anyway, I recently shared some vacation pictures and quite
| enjoyed it. So much better than a bullshit "story" that lasts
| 24h and nobody can engage with except via DM. Such a weird
| impulse for an app. (okay, I get that they want you to use it
| constantly so you have FOMO about missing content that
| disappears after 24h, but I don't get why they don't want any
| real user engagement on the content).
| yakovsi wrote:
| I totally get what he says. If your feed no longer feels
| like it's your feed, more like some bazar on your phone,
| than why post anything private?
| Vrondi wrote:
| This makes absolutely no sense, and is totally your own
| mental trip. Your friends (at least some of them) want to see
| stuff from their friends. Now, Facebook might not show your
| photos in their feeds, but most people would rather have that
| than more ads.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I think it makes a great deal of sense. The concern (I
| assume) is that his posts will be surrounded by all the
| nonsense that FB is filling people's feeds with.
|
| The context in which you share stuff is incredibly
| important. If the platform will bookend your posts with
| crap, it reduces the value of your own post.
| benevol wrote:
| Literally all my social contacts have left FB for quite a while
| already, myself included. I'm surprised people still talk about
| this.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Use this URL[1] to open it in a browser _with adblock_. It gives
| your feed in reverse chronological order, with a 90%+ ratio of
| friends posts. (Just verified)
|
| [1] https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr
|
| [Update] If you click _anything_ it takes you away from that
| feed... that 's why I have it in my Bookmarks toolbar. If I find
| myself going "wait.. this feels different"... I look up and see
| the URL is now the generic one, and I've fallen off the path.
|
| Also: I have 141 friends... not sure if that's a high or low
| number relative to others.. but there's always someone posting. I
| just read until I've seen it before, twice. (Some people repost
| other people's stuff)
| jonny_eh wrote:
| This didn't work for me at all.
| gnicholas wrote:
| This has been broken for me for the better part of the last 5
| years. It would show me posts from several days prior, when I
| had just seen that there were posts from a few hours prior.
| It's almost as if FB didn't care to fix the chronological feed,
| since they wanted you to use The Algorithm instead...
| notacoward wrote:
| I've been using and recommending this for years. They've broken
| it twice that I can recall, but both times only briefly. It's
| the only thing that makes the site tolerable for me. I don't
| know why other people are reporting that it doesn't work for
| them. Usually the explanation for such differences would be
| that they're on the other side of a gatekeeper setting
| (gatekeeper being the system that FB uses for gradual rollouts)
| but that doesn't seem likely in this case. Maybe some sort of
| caching artifact, or something broken about their configs, or
| HNers just lying because they have an axe to grind, but it
| _does_ still work at least for some of us.
| bbarn wrote:
| Yeah... I had to scroll 9 posts down to find one from a single
| friend. uBlock running.
|
| That trick hasn't worked in a long time, in fact I've had that
| same URL as my bookmark for years.
| gjm11 wrote:
| With h_chr + SocialFixer + uBlock Origin (but, note, FB have
| been messing with their HTML in ways that currently break
| SocialFixer's sponsored-post detection filters, so this is a
| bit worse than usual) the top 50 items in my feed are:
|
| 34 posts from friends, 9 of which are vapid feel-good glurge (I
| have a couple of friends who post, or rather share, a lot of
| this)
|
| 1 birthday message from one friend to another
|
| 5 posts in groups I belong to
|
| 10 sponsored posts, of which 8 are completely 100%
| uninteresting to me and two are only 90% uninteresting (e.g.,
| one of them is an ad for a play I might conceivably be
| interested in seeing, if I lived anywhere near the place it's
| running).
|
| The SNR is definitely worse than "90%+ friends" but also much
| better than "98% suggested pages and barely any friends".
|
| (I am using "friends" in the Facebook sense, but I am fairly
| discriminating about this and all my Facebook "friends" are
| people I have actually met in the physical world and would
| enjoy spending some time with.)
| vatotemking wrote:
| Tip: Use android firefox with ublock and open m.facebook.com
| matchagaucho wrote:
| And the irony is Reddit social feed is "broke" when trying to
| view details about how FB is broke :-/
| dpedu wrote:
| I'm seeing the "You broke reddit" screen as well but you can
| still access the post if you use .compact or the
| `new.reddit.com` domain.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/tvqddc/fb_feed_is...
| qjx wrote:
| i also keep getting the "you broke reddit" screen (even
| though it's a 503 so actually reddit broke it, but blaming it
| on the users?) on old.reddit.com but works on new.reddit.com
|
| is this reddit's not-so-subtle way to stop people from using
| old.reddit?
| misiti3780 wrote:
| FB is dinosaur, it's where yahoo was 15 years ago. Taking into
| account how horrible the product is, and all the studies that
| show how unhappy and polarized it makes you, it's surprising to
| me people are not leaving in mass at this point.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Few are deleting there account but most are limiting their
| presence. I never left myspace but never went back either.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I got back on FB after having given up on it for years and now my
| feed is nearly all leftist memes (not exaggerating - super left-
| wing pro-marxist/pro-communist stuff), no matter how many times I
| try to "hide post", they just keep coming. I'm starting to
| remember why I left Facebook in the first place.
| legitster wrote:
| My FB feed absolutely sucks. All I get anymore are Disney memes
| and low effort socialist propaganda - content I have no interest
| in no matter how much I try to hide it.
|
| I used to keep a fairly curated feed of news and groups and
| businesses I followed, for some reason FB has decided to throw
| out all of that out to feed me this garbage.
| senko wrote:
| Same here.
|
| Not only that, but the random suggested pages are completely
| irrelevant to me. Facebook knows where I live and at least a few
| details of what I'm into, and the suggested pages have no
| connection to any of those whatsoever.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| It's ok. Having used facebook, everybody knows where you live,
| and what you're into.
| timbit42 wrote:
| FBPurity is a web browser plugin that will hide whatever you
| don't want to see in your FB feed. If a sponsored post shows up
| you can click the 3 dots menu to flag it.
|
| I have it set to not show Likes or Comments my friends make on
| other people's posts or shares. All I see is what my friends
| post.
| standardUser wrote:
| I did this on purpose. I muted almost every actual person from my
| feed and all that remained were a handful of pages I chose to
| follow. Mostly tv/media related pages and retro video game
| groups, plus some local groups. Now, instead of looking at the
| random crap people I barely know decide to post, including their
| ample complaints about anything and everything, I mostly just see
| relevant content I'm actually happy to see! This change got me
| checking FB again regularly for the first time in years.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| My feed is practically spam.
| kelsolaar wrote:
| I just spent 20 mins hiding all the Ad, Sponsored and Sugges
| content and now my feed is clean upon refresh. I do that from
| time to time and it stays fine for a bit but that type of content
| starts creeping up again. Lately it has been insane though, for
| example this morning after seeing this post my feed was
| everything but content I follow.
| dwringer wrote:
| I expect they algorithmically tailor this sort of thing so when
| they detect a spike in "hide" activity they temporarily scale
| it back so you think it had an effect, making you more likely
| to methodically spend 20 minutes poring over all their Ad,
| Sponsored, and Suggested content again in the future.
| null-shell wrote:
| Yeah I'm seeing this happen on Instagram also, which I used to
| actually use but every 3rd post is an ad followed by a sponsored
| post and some account I don't follow.
| luckydata wrote:
| Everyone knows FB is dying (including FB). Doesn't mean a dying
| product can't make money. They'll squeeze it until it bleeds,
| then do the same with Instagram while they figure out the next
| big thing.
|
| It's a very similar business as malls and amusement parks, you
| can't just keep doing the same stuff cause people's taste change.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| "Facebook is dying, TikTok will take over"
|
| "Why is Facebook trying to be like TikTok?"
| floatinglotus wrote:
| Ugh, I detest that I have to use Facebook for anything at all.
| SunghoYahng wrote:
| What will happen to React or PyTorch if this trend continues?
| donatj wrote:
| I don't post often on Facebook these days, but I find my posts
| either get zero likes or in the 30-40 like range with almost
| nothing in between.
|
| This leads me to believe that no one is being shown roughly half
| my posts, though it's arguably possible half of what I post is
| total garbage.
| martin_a wrote:
| Another anecdotal data point: I loved Facebook around 2010-2015.
|
| I was in university, had lots of "friends" that I had met in
| person, was a user of the groups, events, everything. It was
| great to stay in touch with old and new people I knew.
|
| As people finished university, they had less time for FB, posted
| less and so FB probably decided to fill up the blanks they had
| left with "XY liked this", ads, and "you could like this" posts.
|
| As all our lives moved on, FB became worse and worse because we
| didn't feed it with our own content anymore.
|
| At some point I just deleted it and didn't really look back.
|
| Now I see the same thing happening with Instagram, where I see
| less and less content of old friends and more and more reels and
| "engaging" content.
|
| Maybe I'm getting old, but I'd just love to see how my former
| classmates are doing with their children and families and jobs
| etc.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| I have a similar experience, but when it comes to:
|
| people posting less --> "XY liked this", ads, and "you could
| like this" posts
|
| I'm pretty sure the cause and effect is reversed. Facebook
| decided to prioritize BS over friend content on the feed, and
| suddenly it became lame because nobody was interacting. A bit
| chicken-and-egg / feedback cycle I suppose, but I really think
| FB started it by adding "sponsored content" and even likes
| (remember when you had to actually type out a response if you
| wanted to reply?).
| warner25 wrote:
| This is an interesting explanation of things. So it's not just
| that Facebook was better in 20XX-20YY, it's the stage of life a
| person was in. I started college in the fall of 2004 (in Boston
| back when "TheFacebook" was limited to college students there
| and at a handful other prestigious schools across the country).
| It was indeed great fun in those days. By 2010, just a couple
| years out of college, I already thought that Facebook had
| turned to garbage, so it's interesting to hear that you had a
| good experience starting in 2010. Your theory makes sense.
|
| Now that I'm a parent in my mid-30s, Facebook is just a utility
| for getting information from local officials (who've all but
| abandoned their legitimate public-facing websites) and buying /
| selling through Marketplace. It has nothing to do with fun.
| daveslash wrote:
| I started using TheFacebook in 2005 ( _A Mark Zuckerberg
| Production. Too Close for Missiles, Switching to Guns_ ).
|
| It had expanded beyond the prestigious colleges, but each
| college still had to be "on boarded" individually. I was on
| the first day TheFacebook was available at my mountain-west
| university, although all my friends were still on MySpace at
| the time. As much as I can't stand Facebook (or Meta) these
| days ( _the products, the company, the impact on society_ ),
| I do look back on 2005-206 Facebook with great fondness. It
| waned on me as we entered the 2010's... But back then, tt was
| novel, new, fun, quirky but polished (unlike MySpace). It was
| a _great_ way to easily share photos and tag people - and I
| was at that stage in life where that sort of thing was also
| really fun. It was a magical time.
| Gud wrote:
| What I'm wondering is why an alternative social network has not
| gained more wide spread adoption, at least in the nerd
| community(looking at you, HN reader).
|
| It seems to me social media is ripe for disruption.
| martin_a wrote:
| > It seems to me social media is ripe for disruption.
|
| I think what we see is that every social media site goes down
| pretty much the same way at some point.
|
| FB was great until they started that whole recommended post
| stuff which fucked up the feed.
|
| Instagram was great until they were bought by Facebook and had
| to get some metrics straight, too.
|
| TikTok will be the next one to go down as influencers and other
| parasitic users tear it down, flood it with low quality content
| etc.
|
| There will be something after TikTok. And TikTok will copy
| their features and FB will (try to) buy them and ruin them that
| way, too. It all goes down eventually.
| Gud wrote:
| I agree! But what I've learnt from being on HN for a fairly
| long time is that online communities can be built to last.
| Maybe not forever, but for a long time. I think _community_
| is the important part, as soon as the site builder tries to
| cater to everyone it eventually just becomes another ad
| platform.
| martin_a wrote:
| I think we might have had something like that community
| when we were all hanging around in bulletin boards
| something like... 15 to 20 years ago.
|
| I remember that I had a very dark time and some moderator
| (I was one, too) managed to find out my phone number (I
| think he dailed every number with my family name in our
| town till he found mine) and called me, after I had posted
| in a moderator-only group that I would take some time off
| and wasn't sure about returning because everything was
| shit.
|
| That really touched me, although we had and have never met.
| It was human and very unexpected and I don't think you'd
| find something like that in modern day communities, build
| on Facebook.
|
| Also: FB Groups probably killed bulletin boards because it
| was just very easy. What a loss.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Facebook has lots of good corners of their products. Marketplace
| is ok-ish. Events is OK. Even Messenger is an ok sub-app of
| Facebook.
|
| The one app that's unusably bad is the "feed" (or whatever it's
| called these days). I use Facebook almost daily but can't
| understand why anyone would use the feed bit. Even back when it
| was friends' posts it was bad. Now that it's half commercial half
| TikTok rabbit hole why does anyone even use it?
| JacobSeated wrote:
| What is worse, I have seen quite a few suggested pages spreading
| hardcore conspiracy theories.
| seydor wrote:
| Facebook is a machine learning system in which there s only
| positive reinforcement. Reality is the opposite, people learn
| by their mistakes mostly. Biological netwokrs with continuous
| positive reinforcement end up epileptic. So does facebook
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's what happens when you ban short-sellers (or downvotes.)
| linguae wrote:
| I've witnessed the same. In addition, I've recently seen
| Facebook recommend posts that were outright racist and anti-
| Semitic. I tried reporting them to Facebook, but they weren't
| removed since they didn't call for violence.
|
| One would think that a company that's been under heavy scrutiny
| regarding its role in the growing political polarization of
| America with its negative social effects would make a better
| effort with its News Feed. It's one thing to have a lenient
| policy regarding what people can post, but it's another thing
| when I'm being recommended posts that encourage hatred and wild
| conspiracy theories that flirt with sedition.
| vkou wrote:
| > but it's another thing when I'm being recommended posts
| that encourage hatred and wild conspiracy theories that flirt
| with sedition.
|
| What you're describing is literally one of the two mainstream
| political viewpoints of 2022. Imagine the backlash if those
| viewpoints get banned on Facebook.
|
| (This is, by the way, not a good thing.)
| briandoesdev wrote:
| I wish FB had a way for me to disable posts from companies,
| pages, "shared" content etc.. I only want to see photos and
| status updates from friends. That is all. I don't want memes or
| reels. It's sad that in the first 10 items on my FB Home, only 1
| is from a friend and its just a shared meme.
| binarynate wrote:
| I absolutely hate the unwanted recommendations and Reels, but I
| currently still find FB useful for staying in contact with
| extended family and friends, so I use this "Facebook Hide
| Recommendations and Reels" browser extension to keep FB useable:
|
| https://github.com/mrinc/Facebook-Hide-Recommendations-and-R...
|
| Even with recommendations and Reels disabled, other aspects of FB
| have also degraded significantly:
|
| - Friends don't share original content there as much as they used
| to, a sign that FB's relevance is dwindling. I suspect people
| have also grown wary of Facebook's privacy practices like I have.
|
| - FB's features lack taste. For example, its knock-off of Bitmoji
| looks terrible.
|
| - Increasing prevalence of scammers. I tried to sell some things
| on FB Marketplace last week and was contacted by a dozen fake
| profiles trying to scam me with fake emails from Zelle. I also
| frequently get friend requests from profiles where scammers
| created a duplicate of a friend's profile, copying their exact
| name and pictures.
|
| Taken together, my feeling is that facebook.com is (and has been)
| on a downward spiral toward irrelevance.
| legitster wrote:
| Wow! This extension is great! Thanks.
|
| > I suspect people have also grown wary of Facebook's privacy
| practices like I have
|
| I do not think this really tracks for the average user. Most
| people use social media because they a) want to be seen or b)
| want content tailored to their interest.
|
| Ironically, FB now offers neither. So even my wife, who will
| gladly give out her info for any sweepstakes she can doesn't
| really find anything particularly interesting anymore.
| binarynate wrote:
| You're welcome! And I think you're right, the privacy issues
| probably aren't a concern for the average user.
| tmaly wrote:
| I only use FB for the market place. I have not really noticed the
| feed.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Yeah, but the original FB did not even have a "feed". Hence these
| complaints are about an uncontrollable "feature" (a so-called
| "feed") that no one asked for.
|
| The idea that someone starts using some software or website
| because it looks useful (original FB had no advertising) and then
| later the software or website unilaterally decides to morph into
| something else (FB did this very early on with the addition of a
| "feed") reminds me of the phrase "bait and switch".
| justahuman74 wrote:
| If I posted something no one I know these days would see it as
| it's become non-trendy to add people on facebook, it's just
| people from 10 years ago
| foobarbecue wrote:
| I really miss having a way to talk to my friends online.
|
| It was possible in the early 2000s with multi-network instant
| messaging clients, and then in the late 2000s to a few years ago
| with Facebook.
|
| And then Facebook destroyed itself (as described in this thread)
| and now I honestly can't find a frictionless way to get in touch
| with people.
|
| My most common use case was posting "hey I'm going climbing /
| surfing / caving, anyone want to join"? or "I'm in town X, anyone
| want to hang out" or "BBQ at mine." Facebook is useless for that
| now and there isn't a replacement. Hopefully, something with
| critical mass will rise from the ashes.
| JohnFen wrote:
| But there are a ton of replacements for the use case you
| describe. Telegram and the like (even WhatsApp), or just plain
| old email are useful for what you're describing.
| oh_my_goodness wrote:
| Spam Sushi's First Law: all Internet forums eventually reach a
| point where they focus primarily on driving users away.
| Eleison23 wrote:
| I first created a FB account in 2008. I amassed a huge number of
| so-called "friends", I posted a lot, I was active, and it was
| detrimental to my mental health, so I destroyed that account.
|
| I crept back on last year or so with a blank slate. My "friends"
| list now consists of an eclectic mix of 100% people I will never
| meet in person. It's small and selective, so my actual feed is
| likewise small and runs out quickly. As a consequence, it's not
| possible for me to waste much time there. I like it that way.
|
| I post very little and don't get too personal or dramatic. I had
| a good series of photos and blurbs about my home cooking projects
| for awhile, but it's always been sporadic output from here.
| yardstick wrote:
| From the Reddit thread: In the app, click on the Feeds icon (top
| for Android, bottom for iOS) then select Friends. I'm now seeing
| a lot more relevant stuff.
| kojvec wrote:
| Hi
| tpmx wrote:
| My feeling/understanding: Because of the culture wars and privacy
| concerns, many regular people who used to be quite active on FB
| stopped posting things altogether on Facebook. The risk
| outweighed the benefit. So most people were left with a handful
| of people in their network who would crank out generally quite
| uninteresting posts.
|
| This combined with FB's agenda to monetize the service... here we
| are.
|
| I now only use FB to check in to a few very local groups
| (population of 7k) once in a while. The signal-to-noise ratio is
| really bad, even there.
| kderbyma wrote:
| I deleted my 15 year old account because of that.....it was
| tough, but it was so far gone from what it was that it wasn't
| really a loss to say goodbye.....
| gnicholas wrote:
| I don't see quite this many ads/suggested pages, but I often see
| two ads in a row on mobile. Every time it happens I close the
| tab.
| duxup wrote:
| Long ago when I felt like I couldn't just find all my friends
| posts I gave up on Facebook and logged off forever.
|
| That was the value to me and Facebook seemed to not want me to
| see it...
| avgDev wrote:
| FB is complete trash and a joke.
|
| I have issues seeing older FB comments. The UI doesn't work
| properly on my safari browser. Fb freezes, images fail to load.
| It is an extremely frustrating experience on safari on my phone.
|
| The platform is dying and it cannot come soon enough.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| It's called signal-to-noise ratio and it affects everything these
| days. We stopped reading newspapers and magazines when it became
| harder to find articles in-between all the ads. We stop watching
| broadcast TV when a typical 30 minute show has 18 minutes of
| commercials. We stop visiting websites when pop-up and flashing
| ads overwhelm the site.
|
| Social media sites are no different. The question is will they
| wake up before all their users flee.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > We stopped reading newspapers
|
| I didn't stop reading newspapers because of ads. I stopped
| reading newspapers because a handful of large companies bought
| them all and turned them into crap.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| Well, there was that too...
| SunghoYahng wrote:
| New social media appeared -> people flock -> monetization ->
| people leave
|
| The implication of this is that social media is expected to make
| a lot of money from the number of users, but in the end it
| doesn't?
| ravenstine wrote:
| I almost never log in to Facebook anymore, but the feed was
| hilariously bad the last time I checked it out. Almost entirely
| ads for random crap, eyecandy videos, exotic Asian street food
| videos, etc. Nothing even remotely related to my interests.
|
| At least Facebook seems to have figured out that I'm not a Star
| Wars fan. For years, their algorithm somehow decided that I liked
| Star Wars and that I wanted my feed to be full of lame ass Star
| Wars memes. I haven't been even remotely interested in Star Wars
| since I was a boy, and as an adult I hardly even watch Star Trek
| or have an interest in any other sci-fi. Perhaps Disnay was
| paying Facebook to just blast their product at random people.
|
| I suspect the even greater amount of suggested content in the FB
| feed is another symptom of the TikTokification of the internet.
| Facebook was already kind of doing this, but the feed becoming
| almost entirely suggested content definitely seems like a
| response to the fact that the 68th percentile of the public seems
| to have no problem scrolling through random eye-catching
| bullshit.
| mmmpop wrote:
| What do you mean you don't like Star Wars, everyone likes Star
| Wars, May the Forth and lol anjklsdnajkdsnfkasfasd
|
| Star Wars!!!! i'm so unique
| Bakary wrote:
| I actually really enjoyed the second movie of the new trilogy
| because it seemed to be a shockingly self-aware
| deconstruction of some of the Star Wars tropes and its place
| in culture in general. How it ever got greenlit by Disney of
| all entities is an enduring mystery.
| cbozeman wrote:
| > I actually really enjoyed the second movie of the new
| trilogy because it seemed to be a shockingly self-aware
| deconstruction of some of the Star Wars tropes and its
| place in culture in general.
|
| Congratulations, you also figured out why it was so
| polarizing and why more than half the audience hated it...
| assuming you believe Rotten Tomatoes. It's _Star Wars_.
| People don 't want a goddamned political deconstruction of
| all the _objectively bullshit and overblown worries_ of the
| current culture. They want an escapist fantasy about
| another galaxy thousands of years ago.
|
| > How it ever got greenlit by Disney of all entities is an
| enduring mystery.
|
| Is it? Really? You legitimately can't figure out how that
| meeting went?
|
| "Ohmigod, feeemale protagonist... _so_ hot right now... "
|
| "I know, right?? And she's a BOSS BITCH so she can use all
| the Force powers better than experienced Jedi from _day
| one_ , hashtag grrlpwr!"
|
| "Angsty Luke... fab idea, fam!"
|
| There's not enough evidence _on Planet Earth_ to make me
| believe they sat around in meetings thoroughly discussing
| what would be a logical story arc for the original cast,
| whilst simultaneously passing the baton over to a new
| generation to start exploring their own stories.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| The second one's the only one of the new trilogy worth
| saving from a fire. Though I also can't really recommend it
| to anyone because it doesn't stand very well on its own,
| and I sure wouldn't want to recommend either of the others
| to most people (IX has some "so bad it's good" qualities
| that make it fun for a certain kind of viewer, but I
| wouldn't say it's any kind of _major hit_ even in that
| respect)
|
| Man. That trilogy. Good actors, excellent in some cases,
| and they sure did _try_. But it wasn 't enough.
| dleslie wrote:
| For years Facebook fed me interesting local pages and national
| news from (usually) reputable sources. About six months ago
| Facebook decided that what I really need to see is an endless
| stream of lingerie and female-focused sex toys; I've never
| clicked on these things, or lingered long over them, as far as
| I am aware.
|
| Coincidentally, it was around six months ago that I disabled
| the browser from my phone; so perhaps they no longer have
| location information to lean on?
|
| And, of course, I haven't seen a post from a friend or family
| member in recent memory.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Some product manager misunderstood the concept of 'generating
| buzz'. /s
| coffeefirst wrote:
| It happened right as they started deprioritizing news, which
| included every legitimate media outlet that adults tend to read
| --including non-political publications.
|
| Also my friends basically all stopped posting anything in 2020.
|
| So what's left is nothing but dumb memes. Half are about dogs
| (okay, I do like dogs, but these are just stupid). The other
| half are Lord of the Rings, which I have _never_ expressed
| interest in, but must be in a lookalike audience for people who
| do.
| zelman_gina wrote:
| It is simple. Most of the feed is going to stories. I have so
| many stories that I can't finish.
| Havoc wrote:
| It can't show you content that doesn't exist.
|
| My FB feed is pretty much a ghost town aside from a few people
| that somehow didn't get the memo
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Not if you unfollow everything other than your friends :) and use
| "most recent". Still got ads though.
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