Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

theinformation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 171 posts

Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#71

Post by jiggliemon »

deanclatworthy wrote: post #56
Zak wrote: post #55

I can say what has reduced my Facebook use, if anybody in a relevant position at the company is reading. It's the content Facebook shows me. A decade or so ago, most of the content I saw on Facebook was original content from people I know. Most posts were either text written by someone I knew, or a photo taken by someone I knew. Perhaps not everybody shares this position, but what I most want from Facebook is to keep…

Enjoy insta while it lasts. They are having more and more sponsored posts creep into the feed. I don’t expect this trend to reverse. It’s how they make money.

Confirmed. Last time I checked, every 6th post was an ad. Just checked and it’s now every 5th.

There’s several large magazines that are 50% ad content. I bet that’s the ceiling.

Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#72

Post by burlesona »

This is why, as Ben Thompson points out in his Stratechery emails, we should focus more of our anti-trust efforts on blocking mega-acquisitions than on regulating the giants. If Facebook were currently competing with Instagram and WhatsApp, it would be in a lot more trouble.

Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#73

Post by alkibiades »

burlesona wrote: post #72

This is why, as Ben Thompson points out in his Stratechery emails, we should focus more of our anti-trust efforts on blocking mega-acquisitions than on regulating the giants. If Facebook were currently competing with Instagram and WhatsApp, it would be in a lot more trouble.

just curious, this assumes that companies being in more trouble would be a good thing. why is that the case?

Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#74

Post by 8ytecoder »

Zak wrote: post #55

I can say what has reduced my Facebook use, if anybody in a relevant position at the company is reading. It's the content Facebook shows me. A decade or so ago, most of the content I saw on Facebook was original content from people I know. Most posts were either text written by someone I knew, or a photo taken by someone I knew. Perhaps not everybody shares this position, but what I most want from Facebook is to keep…

This happened a while ago and while that was not the reason I quit Facebook it was the reason I hated visiting the site. I distinctly remember trying to raise this feedback. But at the same time I noticed two things - 1) I had more things to look at and there were fresh content every time I went back 2) People shared a lot more. An indication to me that they are spending more time on Facebook. I read it at the time as a lesson on how data backed decisions can be misleading. I’m sure the PMs at Facebook reading the data would have been elated by the increased engagement.

Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#75

Post by unimpressive »

dgellow wrote: post #44
intsunny wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the problem here is that the UI/UX of Signal (and Telegram) are just not very good. Both are off-putting experiences and in turn do little to motivate people to switch to them.

Seriously, Telegram UI/UX isn't good? That's the best user experience I know for a chat application and the main reason why I use it.

Yeah, hearing TG's UI/UX described as not good made me do a double take. It's the best UI I've ever seen in a chat app, and I've probably used at least a dozen by now.

Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#76

Post by 8ytecoder »

deanclatworthy wrote: post #56
Zak wrote: post #55

I can say what has reduced my Facebook use, if anybody in a relevant position at the company is reading. It's the content Facebook shows me. A decade or so ago, most of the content I saw on Facebook was original content from people I know. Most posts were either text written by someone I knew, or a photo taken by someone I knew. Perhaps not everybody shares this position, but what I most want from Facebook is to keep…

Enjoy insta while it lasts. They are having more and more sponsored posts creep into the feed. I don’t expect this trend to reverse. It’s how they make money.

I have mentioned this before here - instagram ads are a bit too creepy. I have had multiple personal ads that were eerily accurate and I hadn’t even discussed these things over any written form. I’m not paranoid to think they are listening to the microphone but the coincidence is super uncanny. It crossed the line for me twice in the past few months alone.

Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#77

Post by Zak »

athenot wrote: post #70
Zak wrote: post #55

I can say what has reduced my Facebook use, if anybody in a relevant position at the company is reading. It's the content Facebook shows me. A decade or so ago, most of the content I saw on Facebook was original content from people I know. Most posts were either text written by someone I knew, or a photo taken by someone I knew. Perhaps not everybody shares this position, but what I most want from Facebook is to keep…

This has been my experience as well. Equally annoying are the notifications menu (the actual notifications, I disabled a long time ago). I've been relying on them since the feed is useless but now they too have become cluttered with things like "posts you may have missed". I would love a platform that is just original content (text and original media), and where any links are just text WITHOUT previews. Kinda like ho…

My problem with twitter has always been that it tries very hard to discourage content with much depth. There are more ways around the fact that every tweet has to be bite-size than there used to be, and the character limit is higher, but the fundamental model remains the same.

Facebook has taken some steps in the same direction too, hiding any long post or comment behind a "read more" link and offering flashy backgrounds for 130 characters or less (plus enlarged text for 85 characters or less).

This comment doesn't fit in a tweet. It doesn't even fit into two tweets.

Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#78

Post by WhompingWindows »

alkibiades wrote: post #73
burlesona wrote: post #72

This is why, as Ben Thompson points out in his Stratechery emails, we should focus more of our anti-trust efforts on blocking mega-acquisitions than on regulating the giants. If Facebook were currently competing with Instagram and WhatsApp, it would be in a lot more trouble.

just curious, this assumes that companies being in more trouble would be a good thing. why is that the case?

Independent Instagram or WhatsApp could push FB to reduce its reliance on non-original posting, could move into privacy as a competitive advantage, could steal new users, could steal people leaving FB. As it is currently, FB can herd users into using its other apps without improving its core business. They can be dodgy because people "leaving" them are just returning to them, if they go to Insta or WhatsApp.

Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#79

Post by Zak »

8ytecoder wrote: post #76
deanclatworthy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enjoy insta while it lasts. They are having more and more sponsored posts creep into the feed. I don’t expect this trend to reverse. It’s how they make money.

I have mentioned this before here - instagram ads are a bit too creepy. I have had multiple personal ads that were eerily accurate and I hadn’t even discussed these things over any written form. I’m not paranoid to think they are listening to the microphone but the coincidence is super uncanny. It crossed the line for me twice in the past few months alone.

I've had the opposite experience with ads on Instagram. It shows me ads for cat products (I don't have a cat), code bootcamps (I have decades of programming experience), and for a while repeatedly showed the same ad for a job as a flight instructor (I have no qualifications for such a job).

Re: Facebook Research Warned of ‘Tipping Point’ Threat to Core App

#80

Post by DavideNL »

alkibiades wrote: post #73
burlesona wrote: post #72

This is why, as Ben Thompson points out in his Stratechery emails, we should focus more of our anti-trust efforts on blocking mega-acquisitions than on regulating the giants. If Facebook were currently competing with Instagram and WhatsApp, it would be in a lot more trouble.

just curious, this assumes that companies being in more trouble would be a good thing. why is that the case?

To state the obvious, because abuse (of users privacy, etc.) would then have a bigger negative impact on the company (FB) which would be an incentive to improve this behavior?
Post reply on HN