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Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

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Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#151

Post by trhway »

Invictus0 wrote: post #42
zelphirkalt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is supposed to make you feel that way. That is on FB's agenda to achieve, in order to bind you to their (dis-)services. Real friends will not require you to use FB and sacrifice your privacy to communicate with them. You might feel a loss, but there are alternative ways of communicating. Get as many friends as possible over to messengers, which are not owned by FB. Give people a call every now and then. Write them…

People still use FB marketplace and events. If you can't be reached on events, many times you simply won't be invited.

many years ago you would similarly be excluded from some social stuff if you didn't smoke. That is one of the best business models around - tying, or better even locking in, people's socializing to your product. Humans, being a social animal, have very hard time getting out of such a trap.

Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#152

Post by benoror »

standardUser wrote: post #148

I always feel like people never discuss the elephant in the room, which is that whoever you are, your feed is dictated by the people and pages you have chosen to follow. It doesn't matter what the platform is. If you give people the flexibility to craft their own feed, and they want to craft a feed full of hate and lies and nonsense, how can we ever stop them? Meanwhile, my feed has zero politics and is comprised alm…

FB should probably make it easier to identify and unsubscribe from those feedback loop silos

Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#153

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

OneEyedRobot wrote: post #49
strict9 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are in agreement. "engagement" is a plague that brings out the worst of all sides of the political spectrum. But worse than political rhetoric is the proliferation and promotion of medical misinformation. It's resulting in the deaths of thousands of people who were duped into believing the vaccines are part of some sort of conspiracy and that bogus treatments are the only thing that work.

>the proliferation and promotion of medical misinformation. I can see that working both ways. The anti-vax folks are never going to believe the 'get vaccinated or you'll die' sort of rhetoric. Better to use real numbers. There's been enough time and cases to make good estimates. Do masks work very well? What kinds of masks? Where do people actually get COVID (home? bars? schools? hiking in the forest?). What are the…

> Do masks work very well? What kinds of masks? Where do people actually get COVID (home? bars? schools? hiking in the forest?). What are the actual results from non-vax drugs or treatments? How long are the vaccinations likely to be useful? Did early large-scale vaccination simply cause forced evolution of variants?

These questions are always asked in bad faith, if they're even asked at all rather than just taking the word of right-wing talking heads at face value. Anti-vaxxers and COVID deniers don't care what the science says and willfully ignore peer-reviewed studies.

Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#154

Post by moate »

Falling3 wrote: post #125
moate wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't know people that still use Facebook with any regularity. I understand selection bias is at play (I'm inclined to hang out with people like myself, and I think Facebook is a flaming trash-pit). I made friends on Facebook years ago. I felt fundamental changes in both the user-base and use-cases that I don't find enjoyable. I assume most people under the age of 40 feel similarly, and those that don't aren't…

I completely understand avoiding Facebook; I haven't deleted my account yet, but I've been off it for the past year and a half. I also understand it not being your choice for a people meeting platform. But there is such a variety of users there - I think it's a bit silly for you to think that there's no one there you'd be willing to befriend on Facebook.

I specifically said "less likely". Less is not always "none". I may be willing to befriend .00001% of their userbase today compared to .0001% 10 years ago.

Let's bring this back: Of course there are interesting, worthwhile people on Facebook (presumably you are, and I"m taking time to talk to you). But who cares?

If they're in communities that I'm actively engaging, then I'll find them through those channels. If they're not...I don't care. There are billions of people I will never interact with. And that's fine.

I don't want Facebook. The cons outweigh the pros. This doesn't mean there aren't any pros. I realize now that other people still like Facebook for purposes I don't have.

Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#155

Post by gotostatement »

kmeisthax wrote: post #56
badRNG wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't the constant flamewars push people away from Facebook, thereby reducing engagement in the long run? I quit Facebook several years ago because I honestly just didn't like the experience. It was miserable and I didn't enjoy going to it any longer. I have the phone numbers of my closest friends and family, why wouldn't I just call or text when I want to talk to them?

Facebook is following the same playbook that a lot of mobile games are doing. They don't really care about user attrition because most users are low-value. If you're just checking Facebook once or twice a day, you're probably not worth the server time cost to Facebook. What they really are trying to do is target high-engagement users ("whales" in mobile game developer slang) and make the service more addictive for th…

the problem with this analogy is that when you lose a lot of users, you lose the network effect. so even if a user is low-value in terms of their actual engagement, they bring value by luring others in

Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#156

Post by gjvc »

elliekelly wrote: post #70
mrweasel wrote: post #10

One reason why Facebook keeps failing in increasing "meaningful social interaction" could be because they at the same time tries to sell ads. It seems like it would be easy to simply exclude "reshares" from users news feed. They could try to: "Sort by date" and "only posts posted/shared by my friend directly". Personally I think that would remove much of the toxicity. Secondly, simply ban news sites from the platform…

I think another factor is that they’re trying to quickly turn a massive ship that has, for years, self-selected users intent on heading in the direction of outrage and toxicity. The people who are the most “engaged” with the platform are the people who get a dopamine rush from arguing and baiting and instigating. The nice people who just want to see what their friends are up to have either left or significantly scale…

Right on. I've seen the posts/posters in many local fora in the UK have two defining characteristics. They are judgemental, and they are nosy in equal measure. [1]

I put the recent increase in this down to people's familiarity with the technology, having grown up with it -- those people only 10/15 years older have seen life before and after the revolution, and behave differently. Specifically, when local fora started to make an appearance, they were a bit more diffident in their postings.

[1] (I don't want to start splitting hairs on which might be greater. :-))

Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#157

Post by OneEyedRobot »

moate wrote: post #71
fortuna86 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook is actually an incredible tool to connect with other people. I guess you have to be a certain age, being < 40 you aren't going to meet anyone on FB anymore.

As someone in that cohort who was also there for the "glory" days of early FB (when you had to have a college email to sign up), I have to agree that at this point the idea of making friends on FB weirds me out. How? Why? FB is what my racist parents use to circle jerk conspiracy theories with their friends in Cabo. Who in their right mind wants that anymore? (This is a rhetorical question, I understand there are sti…

>FB is what my racist parents use

It looks to me like you've got bigger fish to fry than Facebook. It's probably time to give your parents a break.

Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#158

Post by OneEyedRobot »

fortuna86 wrote: post #72
OneEyedRobot wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Which is another argument for scrapping the opinion section of every newspaper, it confuses people. At this point, I'd say that that's the entire newspaper. They operate in the same ad space as Facebook.

Respectfully I disagree. The opinion section is fundamentally different (and damaging) to the news reporting, and shouldn't exist. But opinion content is many times more popular than straight news, it seems people like being told what to think.

I think that news has extended quite far into op-ed space. There's a combination of just what news is reported and just how a thing is worded.

Modern newspapers and news magazines (they still exist?) don't read at all like the ones from 50 years ago.

Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#159

Post by OneEyedRobot »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #153
OneEyedRobot wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the proliferation and promotion of medical misinformation. I can see that working both ways. The anti-vax folks are never going to believe the 'get vaccinated or you'll die' sort of rhetoric. Better to use real numbers. There's been enough time and cases to make good estimates. Do masks work very well? What kinds of masks? Where do people actually get COVID (home? bars? schools? hiking in the forest?). What are the…

> Do masks work very well? What kinds of masks? Where do people actually get COVID (home? bars? schools? hiking in the forest?). What are the actual results from non-vax drugs or treatments? How long are the vaccinations likely to be useful? Did early large-scale vaccination simply cause forced evolution of variants? These questions are always asked in bad faith, if they're even asked at all rather than just taking t…

>These questions are always asked in bad faith,

I'd say not. I'd genuinely like to know if a cloth bandana has any value, if grocery stores are dangerous, is the mass of people actually better off for an early and hard vaccine regime. It's partly intellectual interest and partly an attempt to guide my own behavior.

Having said that, everyone is too invested in their theories to be skeptical.

Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier

#160

Post by [deleted] »

standardUser wrote: post #148

I always feel like people never discuss the elephant in the room, which is that whoever you are, your feed is dictated by the people and pages you have chosen to follow. It doesn't matter what the platform is. If you give people the flexibility to craft their own feed, and they want to craft a feed full of hate and lies and nonsense, how can we ever stop them? Meanwhile, my feed has zero politics and is comprised alm…

[deleted]
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