241–250 of 262 posts
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Facebook cheated the numbers, so to speak. In every poor SEA country is a Facebook plan, or plan with x data + free Facebook. Stop acting like it was organic growth, it really wasn't and we both know that.
Where can I read more about this?
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I love how many people are acting like their own personal experiences and gripes are highly representative of some large segment of the userbase. Frankly, I don't think disgruntled HN users are their core demographic. I'm also 30 and registered in 2005. Lots of my friends post frequently. Curating by hiding people I don't want to see takes a negligible amount of time and effort. I've barely even noticed the marketpla…
Do you have wife and kids? or maybe you are single? I think you are not representative for your demographic. I agree with OP here, it matches my experience and experience of most of my friends and their friends.
Even adding the experience of a dozen HN users (and discounting the ones that disagree) still represents a small and very biased sample. And have you honestly gathered that much information about the experience and usage of your friends' friends? Or is it possible you are applying a combination of projection and confirmation bias? Also, the news cycle is currently mostly negative about FB, so it's popular to be bashing it, but many of those people continue to use it daily anyway.
I just think there is a very common pattern here on HN of people acting like "this product/service doesn't really work for me, therefore it is shit/out of touch/etc," when there are likely many people who do actually get value out of using it.
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If you do enough binary switching, you eventually will get a Tesla. Assuming a Tesla is optimal. Let’s test to find out. How do you think the eyeball arose from unicellular eukaryotes?
I don't think so. A/B testing is like gradient descent which is a greedy algorithm. You move in the direction that locally looks best. Evolution on the other hand allows for suboptimal species to persist for enough time to let them develop their advantage. (In the language of optimization evolution allows you to go past the local optimal and reach global optima by allowing you to move in non-optimal direction -- as l…
You’re not going to get to a global optimum driven by human choice of what to test (only local optima at best) unless the human setting up the tests is some sort of sage.
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Counterpoint: I'd rather see Ads about things I'm interested in than things I'm not interested in. So by that metric, Facebook is far better than generic Ads I see on TV.
> I'd rather see Ads about things I'm interested in than things I'm not interested in. You're not going to see more ads about the things you're interested in, you're going to see ads that have a higher potential to manipulate you into commercially profitable behavior . There's a big but subtle difference between those things. You are definitely not going to see ads for your interests that bring you more joy but aren'…
I'm telling you right now that I don't mind seeing Ads on Instagram. They're great and I've found out about niche products that I otherwise would not have. If this means that small brands are able to rise up against the mega corps (Dollar Shave Club vs Gillette, as a classic example), then all the better for the market.
The other reason I don't mind is that they're visually appealing and seem to fit the Instagram ethos. Compare that to shitty banner Ads that disrupt the flow of content by being so different and so jarring in comparison.
Now, my opinion isn't meant to be generalized. Others may have a far different experience on Instagram (just because of how the product is designed to work). I'm sure there is someone who will chime in and say they hate Instagram Ads because they are completely ineffective. We could both be right in opposite directions since our feeds are probably very different.
It seems like nobody at Facebook is allowed to play the long game. In the long game, quality wins. In the long game, an organization that puts quality of information at top priority persists and becomes a long-lived resource for civilization. Like Google has become a persistent Web search resource, setting aside its short-lived ancillary forays into more clickable, trivial services. So long as Facebook prioritizes vi…
Identifying "quality" content algorithmically seems like a hard problem to me. If Facebook wanted to play the long game by promoting high quality content in the feed, how would you propose they identify it in order to promote it?
if content.is_quality():
content.promote()
else:
content.demote()
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> I'd rather see Ads about things I'm interested in than things I'm not interested in. You're not going to see more ads about the things you're interested in, you're going to see ads that have a higher potential to manipulate you into commercially profitable behavior . There's a big but subtle difference between those things. You are definitely not going to see ads for your interests that bring you more joy but aren'…
Is your argument that if an ad works I am being manipulated, and if it doesn't work then I am not being manipulated? I'm telling you right now that I don't mind seeing Ads on Instagram. They're great and I've found out about niche products that I otherwise would not have. If this means that small brands are able to rise up against the mega corps (Dollar Shave Club vs Gillette, as a classic example), then all the bett…
For people using uBlock Origin who want to hide all of the noise on their Facebook and truly see what their friends are posting, here are some useful filters: facebook.com##div._3ccb:has-text(/ commented on this./) facebook.com##div._3ccb:has-text(/ replied to a /) facebook.com##div._3ccb:has-text(/ liked this post from /) facebook.com##div._3ccb:has-text(/ liked this./) facebook.com##div._3ccb:has-text(/ commented o…
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Is your argument that if an ad works I am being manipulated, and if it doesn't work then I am not being manipulated? I'm telling you right now that I don't mind seeing Ads on Instagram. They're great and I've found out about niche products that I otherwise would not have. If this means that small brands are able to rise up against the mega corps (Dollar Shave Club vs Gillette, as a classic example), then all the bett…
If your opinion isn’t generalizable, it’s probably not useful in a discussion about civilization-wide issues, right? Moreover you’re only sharing your perception of how ads affect you, while others are pointing to known effects on whole populations. In essence you’re arguing against a system worth many billions with your own personal anecdote.
So when people come into this discussion with strong opinions and try to impose their experience on everyone else, that's not useful nor reflective of reality.
What you're arguing is something very primal and not isolated to Facebook. You can make that argument about literally anything in this world and that's why I'm saying it's not useful. Cars have known effects on whole populations. Tax regulation has known effects on the behaviors of whole populations. I mean potato chips and similar snacks are engineered from the ground up to be addictive and have known effects on mass populations. Where do you draw the line for your argument? I chose to draw it at the bounds of my own personal experience with the product we're discussing.
It's OK to not like Facebook. It's also OK to like Facebook. But for me to impose my opinion on you would be misinformed because I don't know how you use it. It's an incredibly complex product with incredibly complex effects.
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Worse yet, do you know how frustrating it is to be told that there are no more updates available while you know that you a missing life events from friends that actually posted them. After a while you realize that there is no point in posting your own because they will similarly not show up for friends. Cutting back on FB has become ever easier over time.
> Worse yet, do you know how frustrating it is to be told that there are no more updates available while you know that you a missing life events from friends that actually posted them. Or trying to find something you saw in your feed, which then disappeared for no obvious reason. I can't decide whether I'm a pigeon in a Skinner box run by humans, or a human in one run by pigeons, but either way, the experience is unp…
I haven't logged into facebook a while, and it's not because of recent changes, it's because of existing frustrations, all of which are captured in these comments.
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Geeze, I had the EXACT same issue. I almost NEVER see stuff from my wife (even after I marked her stuff as something I want to see). I always see friends that I never interact with and their events that they're going to or all of the meme pages my friends like. But my wife's stuff? Not very much. I hate using Facebook. The only reason I haven't removed my account is because it's the only way to keep up with certain f…
That's what the follow feature is for. You can get notified on ALL activity of a friend of you are willing to click two.