Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy • Hacker News Board

Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy

#141

Post by aquova » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 8:01 PM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #97

All of social media is broken right now. Instagram actively hides pics from my step kids, nephew and niece to show me "reels" from people I don't follow. Last night a photo from my step daughter flickered briefly and then was lost. I couldn't find it again until this morning. I literally can't find their content anymore without scrolling and dodging videos that keep popping up. Youtube broke entirely a few months ago…

Using Twitter as an example, it ran into the problem around 2010 or so where it, in my opinion, had found the perfect set of features. All of the tweets from the people you follow would be shown in chronological order for you. Liking a tweet simply showed support for that tweet, while retweeting it would repost it for all of your own followers. It was simple and clean. However they then ran into the problem where they felt the need to do something to maximize user retention on the site. Algorithms dictate what order things are seen in, new users and tags and trendy things are being shown to you, your likes are now also shown to the people who follow you but only sometimes, anything they could do to try and get people to consume more. It's not just Twitter; these long running social media networks are so afraid of becoming stagnant that they are chasing every trend they come across, and at some point it's going to catch up to them.

Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy

#142

Post by sorry_outta_gas » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 8:01 PM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #18

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #9

Theory on facebook failure/Google failure to innovate: They have the highest leetcode standards out of FAANG. As does Snap. They hire people that basically memorized computer science algorithms. And so their employees are bookish, not innovative people. Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon do not have the same issues with creating new products. Keith Rabois (top VC), mentioned that FB has always prioritized optimization over…

How much leetcoding do their PMs do? I understand your overall point, but I don't think having a high algorithmic/data structures whiteboarding bar for their engineers correlates to Facebook's weakening product abilities. Ditto for Google.

TBH this not scientific at all but judging from my linkedin feed the worst 'product people' I've worked with have ended up at facebook/meta, amazon and google -- apple and a bunch of smaller companies ended up with the best

it's a mixed bag when it comes to engineers though, most of my highest performing coworkers are pretty evenly distributed between the batch with the exception of amazon which seems like a catch-all

Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy

#143

Post by mpalmer » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 8:01 PM UTC

> But users are notoriously fickle, and complaints often don’t align with their behavior. While some Instagram users claim that they want to see more photo-based posts in their feed, Mosseri said users are posting less of this content, _choosing instead to share pictures to their Stories or through direct messages_

Maybe they use DMs because they hate your ad delivery. Maybe they use stories because you make every effort to push users to it, so that's where the eyeballs are.

Pretty tiresome to position your company as a victim of its users when you have a shocking level of influence over their behavior.

Not to mention how credulous this passage is from a journalistic standpoint.

Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy

#144

Post by shortstuffsushi » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 8:02 PM UTC

matsemann wrote: post #11

If at least the algorithm was any good, people might not have complained as much. Like, I only follow sport stuff. Some triathletes, professional bicyclists, skiers etc. What does Instagram then decide to show me? A female cyclist with her zipper down and lots of cleavage, a skier in bikini, ass pics of swimmers etc.. Probably that's the most trending stuff related to my interests, but I follow no accounts related to…

Yeah, this is frustrating. My content isn't just my tastes, it's my taste + sex because . So, I don't really feel good even opening the explore tab anywhere that isn't private, because there's a good chance there will be questionable content.

Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy

#145

Post by MikusR » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 8:02 PM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #97

All of social media is broken right now. Instagram actively hides pics from my step kids, nephew and niece to show me "reels" from people I don't follow. Last night a photo from my step daughter flickered briefly and then was lost. I couldn't find it again until this morning. I literally can't find their content anymore without scrolling and dodging videos that keep popping up. Youtube broke entirely a few months ago…

Youtube has a whole section with all the people you follow. https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions all the videos are in reverse chronological order.

Twitter has a button with stars where you can select to show only the tweets of people you follow in reverse chronological order. Called Latest Tweets.

Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy

#146

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 8:02 PM UTC

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #9

Theory on facebook failure/Google failure to innovate: They have the highest leetcode standards out of FAANG. As does Snap. They hire people that basically memorized computer science algorithms. And so their employees are bookish, not innovative people. Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon do not have the same issues with creating new products. Keith Rabois (top VC), mentioned that FB has always prioritized optimization over…

> basically memorized computer science algorithms

The path I see in profession after profession is:

1. copy something

2. make variations on the copied stuff

3. make your own

> And so their employees are bookish, not innovative people.

Why would bookish people not be innovative?

Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy

#147

Post by closewith » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 8:03 PM UTC

chowells wrote: post #94

FrenchDevRemote wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there's some code out there that is a work of art and can inspire awe in everyone. and the people who wrote it didn't spend thousands of hours memorizing the same stupid leetcode exercises to pass lame interviews for 6 figures job, they worked on real projects tell me the fast inverse square root from Carmack would have been praised in an interview...

Perhaps if you spent more time with books, you'd know that John Carmack didn't invent the fast inverse square root algorithm associated with his name.

Would that improve the products the GP worked on?

Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy

#148

Post by leviathant » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 8:04 PM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #97

All of social media is broken right now. Instagram actively hides pics from my step kids, nephew and niece to show me "reels" from people I don't follow. Last night a photo from my step daughter flickered briefly and then was lost. I couldn't find it again until this morning. I literally can't find their content anymore without scrolling and dodging videos that keep popping up. Youtube broke entirely a few months ago…

When in the Instagram app, click on the word Instagram. A select menu appears, and you can choose "Following" - you have to do this every time you open the app, and who knows when it will get the axe, but it's made this terrible platform a little more usable for me.

Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy

#149

Post by joe_the_user » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 8:04 PM UTC

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #9

Theory on facebook failure/Google failure to innovate: They have the highest leetcode standards out of FAANG. As does Snap. They hire people that basically memorized computer science algorithms. And so their employees are bookish, not innovative people. Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon do not have the same issues with creating new products. Keith Rabois (top VC), mentioned that FB has always prioritized optimization over…

This may be true about what Google employees have become ...

But the changes at Facebook and Google have a clear cost-benefit equation. When a company is in an expanding market, improving it's offering to capture more of the market is very worthwhile. When a company is in a static market where they aren't likely to lose too much market share, the company has incentive to squeeze as much profits out of their market share. Usually that's by raising prices but in this instance it's by stuffing in as much ads and behavior-control shenanigans as possible.

You can say this is because of monopoly but similar dynamics happen with "oligopolies" - cellphone providers or pre-foreign competition US automakers.

Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy

#150

Post by pessimizer » Wed, Jul 27, 2022, 8:04 PM UTC

Snapchat knew the same thing. A Kardashian even told them. Not working out so well now.

Instagram is a slightly different story, because they've probably got official guarantees that government is going to finally ban TikTok in their endless campaign of aggression towards China. So Insta replaces their pissed-off old users with young TikTok users, and the government can tell angry TikTok that there's a red-blooded Jesus equivalent to the evil Chinese internet drug.