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

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

#111
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you just invent webrings and RSS?

Hahah! Well, modern tech is all about re-inventing what we already had in the 90s isn't it? But seriously what I have in mind is a lot more interactive than that. Roughly, your blog becomes your "account". You can follow other "accounts" (blogs), and you give other "accounts" permission to post on your blog in the form of comments, etc. When you change details on your account, like a profile image or whatever, it wil…

Look into the Indieweb[1] and Webmentions[2]. Still really early days, but they're what you're after, I think. Well, if you're talking about commenting on others' posts. I'd think to follow, you'd use RSS or ActivityPub.

[1]: https://indieweb.org/ [2]: https://indieweb.org/Webmention

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

#112
post #85

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 don't know how anyone still uses Instagram. It was an amazing app pre-aquisition, and Facebook managed to completely destroy everything that was good about it

You may believe that, and I'm sure it's true to a certain degree, but Instagram has seen absurd growth since the Facebook acquisition. Without Instagram, Facebook would likely be in a crisis right now over its aging userbase and decelerating growth. The Instagram app is probably nearly as valuable as the Facebook app at this point.

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

#113
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…

Exactly this -- it's gotten to the point for me that anytime I see a post that isn't original, I click the little drop-down arrow (in the upper right-hand corner of the post) and click 'Hide all Posts from [Spammer Name]'.

There's a few friends that I've considered un-following completely because of how many times I've had to do this on their posts. One of them is my brother-in-law -- I called him out on it the last time I saw him, he admitted it's gotten out of hand.

It's baffling how many dumb meme pages there are. But even more baffling, is how many people actually have the motivation to maintain those meme pages. The people that are willingly following them, well, I've lost hope for them.

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

#114
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…

Concerns like these and others people have with FB are surely what repel people away. Although its also something that FB can't fix, even when they are ware of it, due to stakeholders/market that constantly want's a company to make more and more profit. Its the markets infatuations with growth that convert companies into evil, a sad truth for non-community owned companies.

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

#115
I was talking to my 15yo niece, and I already suspected that Facebook is losing young people. So I asked on which platforms she spends her time. "No Facebook, mainly WhatsApp groups, and also private Instagram".

Facebook is dead, long live Facebook.

I must say that their aquisition strategy is impressive.

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

#116
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how anyone still uses Instagram. It was an amazing app pre-aquisition, and Facebook managed to completely destroy everything that was good about it

You may believe that, and I'm sure it's true to a certain degree, but Instagram has seen absurd growth since the Facebook acquisition. Without Instagram, Facebook would likely be in a crisis right now over its aging userbase and decelerating growth. The Instagram app is probably nearly as valuable as the Facebook app at this point.

I'm not arguing that it isn't successful, but Facebook still managed to modify it the point that it lost 100% of its usefulness to me.

It was at its best when you could follow accounts, all of the posts of the people you follow would be displayed chronologically, and clicking on a hashtag would also display all posts under that tag chronologically.

Facebook removed the chronological order of the timeline, made it so you will not see all posts from the people you follow, started injecting posts and ads from accounts I do not follow, and did the same with hashtags where you will only see posts facebook decides you should see via their algorithm. Also, engagement with my page decreased 100-500% across the board and my consistent growth stopped entirely as I was not an "influencer" so people that followed me and checked my hashtags would rarely even see my posts

Facebook changed Instagram from an extremely functional social app that allowed you to easily interact with and become parts of niche communities, to a useless ad platform that limits your interactivity and connectivity to anything that you actually want to see to push you to whoever pays Facebook or whatever the algorithm decides what should be popular which ends up being the same garbage content that has plagued Facebook for years

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

#117
post #70
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…

That's how platform would eventually make money. First hook the users on original content then serve the ads until everyone gets tired of that and stops using the app.

I believe that non-comercial social networks like Mastodon are then only places that can consistently show original content without eventually turning bad.

Unfortunately there is not a lot of people hanging out there, personally it's been hard for me to pull my friends away from twitter.

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

#118

I was talking to my 15yo niece, and I already suspected that Facebook is losing young people. So I asked on which platforms she spends her time. "No Facebook, mainly WhatsApp groups, and also private Instagram". Facebook is dead, long live Facebook. I must say that their aquisition strategy is impressive.

Isn’t it fairly well known at this point that FB isn’t used by young people?

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

#119
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the UI/UX of Signal to be good enough that I used it as my default messaging app, even though I only have a few contacts who use(d) Signal. It took until Oreo/Pie for the stock messaging app to become equally good or better, and by then none of my contacts bothered with using Signal anymore. It's now 0% Signal, 0.1% text messages, 0.1% WhatsApp, 99.8% FB Messenger, which is really depressing.

You can't export chats on Signal iOS, which sucks.

What does it mean to "export chats" and why would you want to do it?

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

#120

Is this really surprising? The strength of a network is n^2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law It makes sense that the more people leaving a network then the utility of said network will decline. What seems odd is why they care if people move to Insta or WhatsApp, since FB owna both.

This, I removed FB a few years ago and never even tried Instagram, but my gf has both, and we speak everyday on Whatsapp, and I have a picture on Whatsapp, so they still know pretty much everything about me if they scrap the conversations for keywords or something more advanced. Tried removing Whatsapp for something like Telegram but couldn't since I need to convince my parents and sisters and gf and friends to move…

Have you tried to tell them that they are constantly being watched? How receptive were they about recent articles on data breaches in facebook? What would happen if you only reply to them over SMS or Telegram?

I'm also struggling with this issue and I've been contemplating about either moving all of my interactions on a mailing list or a mastodon instance. I don't know how to move the network of my friends into that space.

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