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Instagram Is Facebook Now

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Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#121

Post by rightbyte »

rgbrgb wrote: post #68
andrew_eit wrote: post #35

Facebook aside you really see this across the board on almost any platform, that once the product reaches it's 1.0 stage, (where it is good, does what the users want it to do, and has realised its vision) it begins a process of gradual decay, as the focus of the product managers (now panicking to find some statistics to improve to show their bosses) shifts from "building functionality" to "increasing engagement/reten…

Netflix seems good at not destroying their product... though inherently the vision is kind of a scaled distraction machine. I agree with the thrust of your comment and wonder how we might get there. Software companies did look more like you describe in the past, and a few like (some parts of) Apple and some game companies still do. Mostly these are companies that ship a chunk of finished software rather than a "servi…

Netflix has started to hide away "continue watching" for their algo feed crap for me.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#122

Post by armchairhacker »

andrew_eit wrote: post #35

Facebook aside you really see this across the board on almost any platform, that once the product reaches it's 1.0 stage, (where it is good, does what the users want it to do, and has realised its vision) it begins a process of gradual decay, as the focus of the product managers (now panicking to find some statistics to improve to show their bosses) shifts from "building functionality" to "increasing engagement/reten…

Note though, the goal isn't quite to keep you interacting with the app as possible. The goal is to get the most people interacting with the app to get the most revenue.

Probably why a lot of these changes make apps less engaging for people like the author and commenters here. That random boomer photo is probably popular among the average person even though it doesn't fit into your feed. Facebook/Instagram don't care about your interaction and revenue in particular, they care about getting the most interaction and revenue in general.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#123

Post by russellbeattie »

Personalization and algorithmic sorting/filtering needs to be outlawed. This is the only way that our country can finally stop dividing and come together.

For the last century or so, we all had a consistent sense of shared ideals because traditional media presented all the same news and ads to everyone. This, it turns out, is a good thing for society - especially one with hundreds of millions of people.

Social media, however, manipulates everything that you see. I understand why - following just a few dozen accounts which post multiple times a day - on any service - and soon you will literally need to be doing nothing but scrolling all day to see all the posts. And most people are following hundreds of people. The math doesn't add up, so the algorithms try to increase engagement by bubbling interesting content to the top.

It turns out that the most engaging content is hatred and demagoguery - both in recommendations and advertising ("Let's Go Brandon t-shirts! Just $9.99!). Obviously not good, but what can we do since, for the most part, all that hatred is legal free speech.

The only way we can solve this is not by trying to limit free speech, but by limiting who doesn't see/hear it. Ads and suggested content need to be the exact same for everyone on an information service, and all sorting and filtering needs to be explicit.

Facebook KNOWS they are killing civil discourse and they KNOW the cause. They are too greedy to care. Which is why we need a law.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#124

Post by dboreham »

ethbr0 wrote: post #18
MarcelOlsz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I just use instagram to msg people who aren't on Telegram and other services as I don't have FB. I don't think I've ever used the feed before, simply because of seeing ads. I never watch stories either. It's a dumpster fire, and any algorithm to show me stuff is a mistake, full stop. I only want to see my friends stuff chronologically, nothing else on the app matters for me. I genuinely don't understand why…

> I genuinely don't understand why they do this. $

s/$/$$$/

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#125

Post by motoxpro »

andrew_eit wrote: post #35

Facebook aside you really see this across the board on almost any platform, that once the product reaches it's 1.0 stage, (where it is good, does what the users want it to do, and has realised its vision) it begins a process of gradual decay, as the focus of the product managers (now panicking to find some statistics to improve to show their bosses) shifts from "building functionality" to "increasing engagement/reten…

I'm glad we didn't declare the phone "done" at the Razor flip phone or that we didn't declare personal websites "done" with Yahoo Geocities.

Progress has to happen. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it wrong, but you have to try.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#126

Post by lelandfe »

airstrike wrote: post #109
axlee wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That is because "best" is not just about being feature complete, it's about what is "cool", and "cool" will aways be a moving target. Exactly. Look at the fashion industry: pants are pants, shirts are shirts, and there hasn't been a major step forward since decades. Still, brands birth and die continuously, without the underlying product being any better or worse, or cheaper, than the one that comes to replace it. P…

> shirts are shirts, and there hasn't been a major step forward since decades. I'm not so sure about that... https://www.esquire.com/style/mens-fashion/a20962322/balenci...

Balenciaga and Vetements seem to produce around "what will make bloggers confused"

See: $4k sleeping bag coat https://modesens.com/product/vetements-black-and-green-vagab...

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#127

Post by twodai »

yosito wrote: post #44
beansu wrote: post #30

If all you care about is messaging and viewing stories of people that you have messaged lately, I would suggest you to look into Threads. It's basically messenger but for instagram and there are no ads when viewing stories.

This is the first time I ever heard of Threads. Just downloaded it, and the first thing I see is a message that says "Threads will no longer be available, starting December 2021", as in, today.

Yeah but for that one day it will be pretty good.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#128

Post by tqi »

mattcwilson wrote: post #116
axlee wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That is because "best" is not just about being feature complete, it's about what is "cool", and "cool" will aways be a moving target. Exactly. Look at the fashion industry: pants are pants, shirts are shirts, and there hasn't been a major step forward since decades. Still, brands birth and die continuously, without the underlying product being any better or worse, or cheaper, than the one that comes to replace it. P…

I think you’re making the GP’s point. No one cares about how much engagement with their pants they are getting. They care that the whole experience delivers them what they value: fit, trendiness, status, consistency of the experience and the product, etc. They care about innovation only when it reliability delivers an obvious gain on any of those stats, or when the market has moved to the point where keeping up with…

But what is shipping seemingly random features (stories, igtv, shopping, reels, etc) if not trying to increase/maintain trendiness?

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#129

Post by jaequery »

In what seems like a blink of an eye, Facebook, is now considered the old people platform, according to kids these days. It took me a while to grasp it but it looks like FB has a huge problem in there hands and it's interesting to see how they tackle their image.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#130

Post by freeflight »

jaequery wrote: post #129

In what seems like a blink of an eye, Facebook, is now considered the old people platform, according to kids these days. It took me a while to grasp it but it looks like FB has a huge problem in there hands and it's interesting to see how they tackle their image.

I wouldn't really describe it as "blink of an eye", Facebook hasn't been popular with the younger crowd for many years.

That was one of the reasons FB acquired Instagram, as most younger users started flocking there instead of FB.

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