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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

#141

Post by goldcd »

I miss why this considered bad news.

Facebook spent billions pickup up Whats-app and Instagram (and probably a fair chunk developing and maintaining messenger).

This wasn't solely to pick up untold millions of new users who'd never used "original blue facebook" - if it had been, you'd need a facebook account to use Whats-app. Point was to ensure you didn't stray from the blue-app, onto something Facebook didn't own/control.

In my humble view, the keeping of messenger and whats-app separate by Facebook is smart - as they have two offerings that appeal to different people (and to many people that happily use both).

You know from all the rumours of "ads on Whatsapp" that internally in facebook they're trying to work out how to leverage all our eyeballs on all those different apps - but the reason they haven't merged them all, is they've worked out they keep more people if they keep the apps separate.

To take my favourite anecdotal example, I used to use latitude on google maps to work out where my friends were (I'm in the pub, when are you turning up?). Then google killed that functionality to try to make us all move to google+.... We didn't, it died.

Now, if a few of us are trying to co-ordinate say a drink after work, we'll use whatsapp. Google lost that feature I use to Facebook.

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

#142

Post by damnyou »

marssaxman wrote: post #119
dannyw wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's about when you get a new phone. You can't move your Signal conversations to the new phone.

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

#143

Post by pixelrevision »

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.

You may not have put in anything directly but they have stuff about a lot of the people you follow, recommendations to you and ML that analyzes your habits to better find info about you. Who knows what computers can infer based on all these inputs? At this point they own so much data based on all these connections they likely do not need to listen. It would be good if these companies had to be a little more transparent about how they connect all the dots.

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

#144

Post by tbabb »

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 resonates with me, but what caused me to definitively stop using the app was the spam notifications which literally cannot be turned off. That was the last straw of user-hostility that made the app too unpleasant to use. I switched off every last email notification in order to keep that stuff out of my email inbox (nothing less was sufficient to stop it), which made it very easy to permanently ignore the app.

I'm sure the spam notifications A/B tested well for engagement though, /eyeroll.

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

#145

Post by mrweasel »

gwm83 wrote: post #96
salsadip wrote: post #8

I am happy that we have Snapchat and iMessage as competitors to the Facebook Apps. I very much dislike their business practices of sucking up all the data they can get their hands on e.g. during the acquisition of WhatsApp where they had to promise to European [1] regulators to not combine the user data with facebook‘s and then did it anyway. Also sad that they were so successful in copying Snapchat’s story feature -…

I don't think I've ever used an app that was less intuitive and less user friendly than snap. That's probably why.

The Snapchat UI is exceedingly weird. The navigation make no sense, and you can easily get lost in a feature you didn't know existed. Why don't they fix it?

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

#146

Post by dang »

mic47 wrote: post #2

Is it just me, or do "secret" have negative connotation? Because for me it does, and I am really sad from journalist when they use "secret" or "secretly" in headlines, when it just mean internal, or just not disclosed. What is interesting that the article does not contain word secret, and they always use the word internal.

Ok, we've taken secrecy out of the title above.

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

#147

Post by dsr_ »

spc476 wrote: post #130
jiggliemon wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Back in the late 80s and 90s, there was the magazine Computer Shopper that was easily 90%+ advertising. It was incredibly popular.

That was because it was the only way people could buy computers that weren't pre-selected by Compaq, Dell or IBM. It was a 100% paid-placement catalog.

Pretty quickly I figured out that articles by Steven J Vaughan-Nichols were worth reading and the rest were generally not. But the ads were what we were looking for.

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

#148

Post by Kiro »

about_help wrote: post #107
8ytecoder wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You should be, the Facebook app explicitly does listen to the mic unless you opt out. It has also come out that Google and Amazon are storing people's personal voice requests, and aside from that the mics are always on waiting to hear the trigger words. This means by default that the apps are listening and analyzing everything, though how much of the non word-triggered speech gets recorded is unknown. Facebook's init…

Give me one reliable source for any of your claims.

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

#149

Post by godelski »

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.

Honest question. Would you actually rather have them send false hits and hide how much they're tracking?

I ask this because in that infamous Forbes article about Target and the pregnant girl they mention how they now add ads for things they don't think you are interested in, in an effort to creep people out less. (To me this feels a little worse) Plenty of groups do purposefully send false hits to make it less creepy to the target.

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

#150

Post by skyyler »

rubber_duck wrote: post #12
salsadip wrote: post #8

I am happy that we have Snapchat and iMessage as competitors to the Facebook Apps. I very much dislike their business practices of sucking up all the data they can get their hands on e.g. during the acquisition of WhatsApp where they had to promise to European [1] regulators to not combine the user data with facebook‘s and then did it anyway. Also sad that they were so successful in copying Snapchat’s story feature -…

Also Telegram (unless I missed the type of apps you're comparing ? I really only use messaging aspect of all of these)

Telegram is really, really, really, really popular with furries.

I haven't encountered another group of people who so ardently use Telegram.

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