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Instagram Is Facebook Now

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Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#371

Post by k_bx »

grishka wrote: post #358
k_bx wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine is of course no major market for Facebook, but it's a good example that doesn't match what you describe at all. In Ukraine, Facebook is the place where you follow top journalists, anti-corruption people, activists, and other public figures. It's basically an extremely valuable addition to the media, where anyone can be lifted in popularity in a matter of hours if their content is truly important. Facebook has…

Facebook has only become as popular in Ukraine as it is to fill the void created by the government blocking VKontakte. And some Ukrainians I know do still use VKontakte despite that.

Yeah, a wise decision by our government indeed. However, one of the major reasons Vkontakte is popular is due to it being filled with illegal music and video content without bothering to remove it, at least most people I know amongst its still-users keep using it exactly for that.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#372

Post by dls2016 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #235
dls2016 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this kind of the core of Section 230 protection?

> Isn't this kind of the core of Section 230 protection? No, the opposite: § 230 exists to protect platform’s (and user’s, to the extent they have control of these things) ability to pick and choose when to promote, demote, or outright block third-party content—based on their view of what is worthy or objectionable or somewhere in between—and how to present the content they do present, without being exposed to either…

Thanks, I should really look into this more closely.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#373

Post by rmrfslashbin »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #163
rmrfslashbin wrote: post #89

Can we talk about the "personal newsletter" aspect of this post? Feels like the dawn of the blogs back in the 2000s. Everyone had one, then we got twitter, facebook, and instagram. Now we're done with those and going back? Lovely. Hope I still know how to LAMP stack.

No need for LAMP! Just use next.just or gatsby to build your static site and upload to cloudfront.

Well yeah... The occasions I'd /actually/ stand up a LAMP stack nowadays are few. There are far better projects and platforms to make it happen.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#374

Post by grishka »

k_bx wrote: post #371
grishka wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has only become as popular in Ukraine as it is to fill the void created by the government blocking VKontakte. And some Ukrainians I know do still use VKontakte despite that.

Yeah, a wise decision by our government indeed. However, one of the major reasons Vkontakte is popular is due to it being filled with illegal music and video content without bothering to remove it, at least most people I know amongst its still-users keep using it exactly for that.

Oh, no, it's now kinda useless for that too unless you somewhat go out of your way. They've signed contracts with recording companies and "legalized" most of the music several years ago, killing off the public API (audio.* methods), adding ads (which I've never heard thanks to my ad blocker, but still) and imposing ever more nonsensical client-side restrictions in mobile apps (which I use an old version of) that are removed by buying a subscription.

But — despite Mail.Ru Group doing its best to ruin it, it's still way better than Facebook. There's a chronological feed even! And they aren't brave enough to ruin that.

Full disclosure: I worked at VK on the official Android app for 5 years, most of that as the only Android developer in the entire company. I quit in 2016 because of growing disagreement with the management about our goals. VK still has a lot of sentimental value for me because it literally changed my life, multiple times over.

Anyway, if you do want the experience of the OG VK but without FSB and all the other perils that come with centralization, you can follow the development of my ActivityPub project: https://github.com/grishka/Smithereen

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#375

Post by littlestymaar »

duud wrote: post #325
littlestymaar wrote: post #45

So Meta wants to kill their last relevant product? They really do want to become the next Yahoo! right? Facebook has yielded much more profit than Amazon but their user base has remained stagnant and aging for years, and their recent PR stuns (Libra a few years ago, now the “Metaverse”) don't really sound like their perspective will improve. I can understand why a publicly traded company engages in short term profit…

Zuck doesn't own 50+% of the company (just the voting rights) and Oculus, FB Marketplace, FB Groups and WhatsApp are all very relevant market leaders. In terms of the rebrand they committed $10+ billion a year to VR development and promoted the head of VR to CTO so it's a pretty bold PR stunt.

> Zuck doesn't own 50+% of the company (just the voting rights)

You're right to clarify, but it's “Just” the only thing that matters.

> Oculus, FB Marketplace, FB Groups and WhatsApp are all very relevant market leaders.

Oculus is a “market leader” in a really narrow niche. Is FB marketplace really a market leader? I didn't even know that was the thing actually (it may very well depends on your country). FB groups is just Facebook, it's like the only feature to be still significantly used. That's pretty much true for Whatsapp, but they've already started to dynamite it up earlier this year with their monetization attempt: a third of my phones contacts now have signal including one neighbor and my plumber (and also a random lady I had a car crash with last year, I should really tidy my contact list up), they have severely damaged Whatsapp position with this move, and now they are doing the same with instagram.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#376

Post by MarcelOlsz »

vineyardmike wrote: post #83
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 don't think I've ever used the feed before, simply because of seeing ads. This is surprisingly disciplined and extreme. Kudos (i think? Can't quite tell if you're missing out due to ideology or holding good ground). > 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 they do this U…

>This is surprisingly disciplined and extreme. Kudos (i think? Can't quite tell if you're missing out due to ideology or holding good ground).

I don't think it's extreme as it's passive not active (I'm not focusing on NOT using it). I just don't care. I care about the feed as much as you care about mastering Nunchaku: very close to 0.

>Unfortunately, it seems like you're probably in the minority there. Algo feeds are way easier to ensure the user always sees something new (which is somewhat important), and you can still make it only people you follow (so still only your friends).

Time to raise $X billion for "Instagram, but with no algos". What I would like is an orange bar delineating where my feed last updated, like slack and discord. That way I can click a button to scroll me to the bottom of all the new posts, and I can scroll up until theres nothing left. That would be fantastic.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#377

Post by nicce »

mad182 wrote: post #309
dx034 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience (Europe), not that many users actually left it. Sure, many people constantly complain about privacy issues but only a few very tech-savy left for Signal. And even they cannot leave Whatsapp as it's the de-facto standard. I don't know a single person who has a mobile phone and isn't on Whatsapp at least once a month.

Same. I prefer Telegram, and a few of my closest friends also use it, so I use it the most, but even my contact list on WhatsApp is at least 5x longer.

The most of my family and friends have swapped to Telegram. Almost all local uni students as well.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#378

Post by ravenstine »

0x008 wrote: post #242
ravenstine wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basically a porn site. Perhaps there's no nudity, but it's as soul-sucking and a waste of time as erotic pornography. The behavior of the user, the emotional high, and the business model really aren't so different.

In the same sense as reality TV or video games are like porn, yes.

Certanly, though I still argue that apps like Instagram are more closely designed around the model of voyeurism and dopamine-chasing that come to mind with porn.

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#379

Post by [deleted] »

wayoutthere wrote: post #352
_jal wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't fence off metaphors for exclusivity. Good ones get reused. And claiming Lorde was only talking about race is simply incorrect.

Of course she wasn’t; she’s a poet so everything she says has multiple meanings, but context matters. The issue of race and personal marginalization is inextricable from the quote. She would have used a different word than “Master” otherwise. Context crushing it this way diminishes the effectiveness of any argument you may be using it in support of. You can choose to use whatever metaphors you want, but other people…

[deleted]

Re: Instagram Is Facebook Now

#380

Post by [deleted] »

wayoutthere wrote: post #352
_jal wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I don't fence off metaphors for exclusivity. Good ones get reused. And claiming Lorde was only talking about race is simply incorrect.

Of course she wasn’t; she’s a poet so everything she says has multiple meanings, but context matters. The issue of race and personal marginalization is inextricable from the quote. She would have used a different word than “Master” otherwise. Context crushing it this way diminishes the effectiveness of any argument you may be using it in support of. You can choose to use whatever metaphors you want, but other people…

[deleted]
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