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Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

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Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#51
I will never understand why people insist on using Facebook. What is the appeal? If you’re worth talking to, I will give you my phone number and we can text. For longer messages, I will send you an email. I can keep track of my contacts inside the Address book of my phone. What need exactly is Facebook filling?

Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#52
post #32

Facebook has become almost completely useless to me yet I waste so much time on it every day. No one posts anything on it except like 3 guys who post 10 times a day that I barely know yet find their extremist political posts mind numbingly amusing. The news on there is trash, I much prefer the WSJ and if I want sensationalist things I'll go to Reddit and my tastes are more niche now so I have some forums I visit occa…

Private groups. My user experience was similar to yours and I was close to deactivating my account before I got invited into a private group. Topics and discussions get much more interesting when people know coworkers and family members can't see it.

So like old good forums? Preferably with anonymous handler. So your coworker or family may be on the same forum, but wouldn't ever know that.

Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#53
post #32

Facebook has become almost completely useless to me yet I waste so much time on it every day. No one posts anything on it except like 3 guys who post 10 times a day that I barely know yet find their extremist political posts mind numbingly amusing. The news on there is trash, I much prefer the WSJ and if I want sensationalist things I'll go to Reddit and my tastes are more niche now so I have some forums I visit occa…

Leaving Facebook has honestly made me a happier guy. (I left my account active, but I've removed the apps from my phone and I only visit the site about once every three months to message someone my phone number.) Browsing the site always made me a bit angry (at the politics) and a bit sad (because someone else always seems to be on some impressive vacation). Then I'd close the browser be angry at myself for wasting t…

> I've yet to have anyone mention something with a "didn't you see that on Facebook?"

Any chance this is because you don't know what you've missed, and hence you don't talk to people about them?

Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#54
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I experience the same thing and it's really frustrating. I refuse to install Facebook applications on my phone, and they've needlessly crippled their mobile site (disabling messages except mbasic.facebook.com among many other things). If I so much as check a notification then go back to the newsfeed, it's different content and hit/miss as to whether I can find the top post again.

I had to wonder for a second whether I was looking at a post of mine! A year or two ago they made the change to disallow access to messages from m.facebook.com, so I started using mbasic.facebook.com for messages. Recently they blocked the mbasic.facebook.com entirely for iPhones. It's clear that there reason is to force mobile users to install messenger, because messages are still available on m.facebook.com and mba…

>The vagaries of finding content you saw minutes before, and the almost entirely random way posts and everything is organized, is frustrating too.

I've found it nearly impossible to search for anything on Facebook that isn't a person, and even that is difficult.

Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#55
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I experience the same thing and it's really frustrating. I refuse to install Facebook applications on my phone, and they've needlessly crippled their mobile site (disabling messages except mbasic.facebook.com among many other things). If I so much as check a notification then go back to the newsfeed, it's different content and hit/miss as to whether I can find the top post again.

I had to wonder for a second whether I was looking at a post of mine! A year or two ago they made the change to disallow access to messages from m.facebook.com, so I started using mbasic.facebook.com for messages. Recently they blocked the mbasic.facebook.com entirely for iPhones. It's clear that there reason is to force mobile users to install messenger, because messages are still available on m.facebook.com and mba…

I just went to mbasic.facebook.com from my iPhone and it worked? I didn't login because I don't use facebook, does it block you after you login?

Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#56
post #32

Facebook has become almost completely useless to me yet I waste so much time on it every day. No one posts anything on it except like 3 guys who post 10 times a day that I barely know yet find their extremist political posts mind numbingly amusing. The news on there is trash, I much prefer the WSJ and if I want sensationalist things I'll go to Reddit and my tastes are more niche now so I have some forums I visit occa…

The greatest thing I did was delete Facebook off my phone. Here are the benefits I discovered:

- I didn't miss anything. Turns out there wasn't any real quality content on there anyway.

- My battery lasts 2x longer.

- I seem to be happier. No joke. With all the rage articles and click bait headlines gone, I am far more happier.

- I am way more informed now. I visit allsides.com and get the news there. I quickly get up to speed and find well written articles that inform me about what is really going on.

- I am more productive. Without all the garbage Facebook puts out, I have more time to get actual work done.

- I feel accomplished. I go home feeling more accomplished. I am happier, more productive, and more informed. It is a win-win-win all around.

Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#57
post #9

>The company also wants professional creators to post more videos to the site and make the platform a content hub on par with YouTube, a unit of Alphabet Inc.’s Google. That's interesting, because I've never been able to find a second time a video that popped up in my feed. For my experience, videos on Facebook might as well be ephemeral. forever vanishing the moment my feed refreshes itself automatically.

This. Facebook is going to have to make efforts to present a better UI/UX if it wants to be a content portal for videos.

Their entire UX is based around the algorithmic feed, which obfuscates the true quantity of actual content on the user's timeline, thereby allowing a higher density of ads and other sponsored content without the user necessarily being able to tell or prove [1]. But the sliding window of the feed still moves forward in time, so content that you don't interact with enough to be recorded in the activity log just falls off, never to be seen again.

In 2014, Facebook Paper was an effort to reimagine how Facebook surfaces content [2][3], but despite rave reviews it fizzled and was killed in 2016. It was part of a wider effort to pivot into being a publisher of original content and not merely a social aggregator, and although Paper was discontinued prematurely, the effort faced several hindrances, including news publishers' pushback against Facebook's content framing [4] and Facebook's role in the dissemination of fictitious clickbait.

Facebook is so multifaceted that its current way of presenting content is woefully inadequate, and doesn't fit their ambitions.

[1] Reusing an old line: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=niftich+true+quantity+of+actua... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2014/1/30/5360358/facebook-paper-ip... [3] https://www.wired.com/2014/02/inside-look-at-the-creation-of... [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14126073

Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#58
For anyone using Facebook as a messaging/group/event service, I cannot recommend the Facebook News Feed Eridactor more. It literally just blocks it all. Not perfect for all users, but it has really helped me spend less time wasting away scrolling out of habit.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat...

PS: The daily quote feature can be toggled off.

Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving Facebook has honestly made me a happier guy. (I left my account active, but I've removed the apps from my phone and I only visit the site about once every three months to message someone my phone number.) Browsing the site always made me a bit angry (at the politics) and a bit sad (because someone else always seems to be on some impressive vacation). Then I'd close the browser be angry at myself for wasting t…

> I've yet to have anyone mention something with a "didn't you see that on Facebook?" Any chance this is because you don't know what you've missed, and hence you don't talk to people about them?

Anecdotal, but the only time I've ever hear that phrase in the past 3 years is for my college meme group (one of the few reasons I am still on Facebook). As far as I know, nothing happens on Facebook for anyone under 25. As you get older, life event announcements are about the only thing I can imagine would be useful.

Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#60
They're dying, it may be a very slow death but the process has begun. They will become like Yahoo, Myspace, Aol, etc. They are not a Google that can pivot and do a number of different things. Also I've come to realize that Google has a much different relationship with it's users, Google doesn't try to suck up all your time it just tries to give you what you want when you want it, Facebook tries to gamify everything so that you're constantly checking it's useless drivel.
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