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Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy

washingtonpost.com

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

#221

Post by dont__panic »

solarmist wrote: post #203
system16 wrote: post #14

It's fascinating how reactionary and directionless Instagram and Facebook have become. Instagram in particular has become Frankenstein's monster over the last few years, pathetically trying to reproduce functionality from other apps. The latest cloning of TikTok's feed is almost embarrassing. It's a testament to how deep the lack of a creative culture at Meta runs.

This was exactly my experience in a dev productivity team that had fulfilled its purpose well enough. It’s not a lack of creativity, but a lack of mission/vision/true north. Basically they’re flailing about trying to find something that sticks. If they can’t they’ll go the way of yahoo.

It's sad that they keep trying to bolt this functionality onto existing apps. Why not leave Instagram and Facebook alone as functional tools with purposes -- posting statuses, photos, keeping in touch with friends and family -- and then create a separate TikTok competitor? And a separate Snap competitor? Is it just because FB's awful awful Snap clone crashed and burned and nobody used it, so they're afraid to launch a new app these days?

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

#222

Post by anyfoo »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #208
anyfoo wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> here we have Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple all creating new products that people like And you think that those companies don't test proficiency of working with algorithms when hiring? What? Two of them (arguably all three) make operating systems . That's just one of many parts of what they do where proficiency in algorithms and data structures is a strong prerequisite.

Im not saying they dont test, but not anywhere near to the same degree. You absolutely need to be able to solve some of these problems, but FB takes it to another level. Its almost not even comparable in terms of the rigor.

This does not make sense just in the light that every division, every team probably, tests differently according to their needs. I have a suspicion that you are trying to extrapolate some small anecdotical experiences to whole massive companies.

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

#223

Post by loudandskittish »

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…

> Instagram actively hides pics from my step kids, nephew and niece to show me "reels" from people I don't follow.

I find it all that for all the data these companies have, they don't seem to be using it well...or stopped using it.

Facebook has suddenly started flooding me with posts from political meme groups I never joined and have never even looked at.

Twitch's recommended section used to be spot-on. Now they're trying to push me to watch women in hot tubs for some reason.

For me, YouTube is the only one that still manages to surface things I actually want to watch.

I don't know what changed (I've really only noticed this in the past two months), but this is starting to feel like the old broadcast TV model of executives deciding we should all watch the same thing.

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

#224

Post by jmyeet »

One reason I'm skeptical on the government bringing down the antitrust hammer on Big Tech is because of things like this. Antitrust is a slow process and a crude (but powerful) instrument.

Facebook originally bought Instagram because IG represented an existential threat to FB's business. Remember it was only a few years old and had 13 employees at the time of acquisition. How can you be a monopoly when 13 people can threaten your business?

So here we are some years later and Facebook is getting killed by Tiktok. IG, in particular, is no longer "sexy". it is not where influencers aspire to be anymore. Facebook proper has billions of DAU/MAU but many younger people don't even have acounts anymore. It's facing it's own myspace moment. FB (now Meta) is betting its future on something that (IMHO) will never happen: the Metaverse, much like how Uber (and even Tesla to a certain extent) were betting their futures on self-driving cars (both of which, much like AGI, are perennially 5-10 years away).

The market will sort out FAcebook one way or the other. It requires no heavyhanded intervention.

The MBA eventually turn every social media platform into an ecommerce platform because how else do you make money? When that happens that platform eventually dies.

If you've been following IG redesigns, it's been moving further and further away from being creator-focused (eg the "create" button moved from the bottom bar to the top). IG has been pushing shopping, IGTV and other efforts to monetize the platform and/or tie it to commerce.

Trying to clone Tiktok with Reels just isn't going to save it.

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

#225

Post by cwkoss »

rvz wrote: post #118
winternett wrote: post #2

It's interesting that they don't care, it's a Marie Antoinette-esque attitude to their lifeblood, and ultimately what will end their dominance. The truth is they converted a free service into a pay service (the gas-lights creators and businesses into paying for visibility). The visibility, even when paid for is not very fruitful for many as well... If you run a small business like a restaurant in the US, but get 40,0…

> I really don't think TikTok is much better now either, these apps all use the technique of phasing adds and slowly reducing (external) visibility for creators, and just judging from comments I see on Twitter, the economy is imploding as a result. Exactly. Every single social media company with VC capital has thrown their small users and creators under the bus in favour of the ad driven corporations, mainstream medi…

99+% of ads are unethical thought manipulation. Until citizens recognize this and take a stand with their wallets against the businesses who profit from unethical ad tactics, we're going to keep slipping deeper into the abyss.

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

#226

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

mnd999 wrote: post #22

“I guarantee that every single person who liked and shared that post about bringing Instagram back to what it was, would spend way less time on Instagram if it reverted back to how it used to be” Sure, because they could get the information they want without having to wade through the mountains of crap you’re pumping out of the septic tank into your users faces. You’re optimising the wrong metric you fucking clown.

Interestingly, I remember when Facebook made a similar change to their feed, it was about 12-15 years ago, where they essentially made it much more like Twitter. I absolutely despised it, I still despise it to this day, and I think it was the point where I realized how social networks are all actively out to basically destroy you (I'm being hyperbolic, but only slightly).

That is, if they really wanted to make it easy for you to connect and share with friends, or maybe meet some new ones (remember Facebook's "poke" feature?), they could easily do that. But they've found they are much better at the endless scroll of mindless WALL-E human crap, having optimized the right brain chemicals to make you feel like you can keep boredom at bay with one more upward swipe.

The only winning move is not to play.

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

#227

Post by benbristow »

giobox wrote: post #190
benbristow wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely can't be helping. I saw an ad on LinkedIn a few months ago for Coinbase and applied out of curiosity. Was very intimidating as a British 'commoner' who went to a very average university to be being grilled on Leetcode/Hackerrank questions by fresh male-Asian Stanford/MIT/top-US-university graduates (not being stereotypical - this was true!). Didn't stand a chance really as I don't do well with algorithmic…

> One answer I was expected to answer the complexity of my code to which the answer was something involving logarithms which I genuinely don't have a clue. Being asked the logarithmic time complexity of some code you just wrote is literally one of the most common interview questions in Software Engineering, no? I'm assuming at least this is what you are referring to. All the well known interview help books in the ind…

Yes, it was about the time complexity. I have a very primitive understanding of big-O notation from back in sixth form but I never did logarithms in maths (never did maths to a high enough level really).

My fault for not dedicating a bunch of time to read loads of books to pass an interview and instead spending my time making a living at a full time software engineering job.

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

#228

Post by eropple »

giobox wrote: post #190
benbristow wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely can't be helping. I saw an ad on LinkedIn a few months ago for Coinbase and applied out of curiosity. Was very intimidating as a British 'commoner' who went to a very average university to be being grilled on Leetcode/Hackerrank questions by fresh male-Asian Stanford/MIT/top-US-university graduates (not being stereotypical - this was true!). Didn't stand a chance really as I don't do well with algorithmic…

> One answer I was expected to answer the complexity of my code to which the answer was something involving logarithms which I genuinely don't have a clue. Being asked the logarithmic time complexity of some code you just wrote is literally one of the most common interview questions in Software Engineering, no? I'm assuming at least this is what you are referring to. All the well known interview help books in the ind…

I'm comfortable enough with time complexity, and I like to think I'll sniff out a logarithmic-class solution when I've written one, but I don't think I've ever had a problem with a candidate bucketing a problem into sublinear/linear/superlinear.

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

#229

Post by rajup »

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…

> 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.

I call bs on this. All of these companies have pretty similar interview processes.

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

#230

Post by colinmhayes »

mnd999 wrote: post #22

“I guarantee that every single person who liked and shared that post about bringing Instagram back to what it was, would spend way less time on Instagram if it reverted back to how it used to be” Sure, because they could get the information they want without having to wade through the mountains of crap you’re pumping out of the septic tank into your users faces. You’re optimising the wrong metric you fucking clown.

Except time spent on instagram is exactly the metric they care about. More time spent scrolling = more ads served.
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