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Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy

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

#231

Post by mrtksn »

fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #216
mrtksn wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have the highest leetcode standards out of FAANG. As does Snap. They hire people that basically memorized computer science algorithms. I find this naive, as if coders have a say on the product. The jobs in big companies tend to be very boring and actually simple since their core product is already there and all these people simply maintain and steer it based on the data. IMHO the difference is simply in their…

Regardless of the limited impact, its hard to argue that there isnt a distinct difference in innovation/releasing good products between Google/FB and Amazon/MSFT/Apple. The latter simply innovate more and create more things that people want. So the question is why

I tried to answer why :) Unlike FB/Google, AMZN/MSFT/AAPL does have strong competition, therefore they can't simply milk the current offerings. They have to innovate.

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

#232

Post by eropple »

benbristow wrote: post #227
giobox wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The heuristic for this, FWIW, is to think about reducing the number of things you're messing with (such as a search set) by a factor (usually 2, not always) on every iteration. A binary search is a logarithmic algorithm because you chop off half of the (sorted) search set on every pass. That's all you really need to know about it to identify one (and thus realize you have a sublinear-time algorithm).

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

#233

Post by jrpt »

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 theory is wrong in many ways, but just one point should suffice: engineers at these companies don’t set the product and business strategy.

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

#234

Post by TillE »

kache_ wrote: post #36

You know what? I love the new instagram changes. And everyone I know has been using it more and more over the years. Interesting that the people who hate it so much are the same ones that are using it. Data doesn't lie. TikTok copied short form videos from.. vine. I mean youtube YLYL videos. I mean... newgrounds. Shit's been around, and both facebook and google are going to lap tik tok. Keep up :)

There are infinite reasons people might continue using something despite liking it less and less. The network effect is a big one.

So pointing at numbers and saying "they've clearly made the right decisions" is...flawed, to say the least.

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

#235

Post by kristopolous »

FrenchDevRemote wrote: post #79
thefz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 don't think this is necessarily true because the people designing products are not the same people creating/implementing them. Even…

>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...

Disagree with the thousands of hours. The tasks are actually pretty easy and take about maybe 5 hours for any competent coder to brush up on.

But that's the problem. If a few hours of exercise can dramatically change someone's results then it's not an acid test and it speaks poorly to the quality of whatever team the candidate would be joining.

All interviews are two way streets and the problem is everyone knows what kind of results pass through the leet code filter and so if it's a bad process, perhaps your best candidates will decline to proceed or accept.

You want people whose time is more valuable than your money. That's kinda the whole point of employee/employer social arrangements.

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

#236

Post by vlunkr »

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…

Maybe the problem is that these companies just need to stop trying to innovate? All successful social media platforms start out as fun places to be. Then they become feature complete, but the laws of SV say they have to continue to grow for eternity, so what do they do? They mess up the timeline, throw increasingly irrelevant content at everyone, add and sunset new features every month, try to copy other platforms, screw around with people brains (oh, I mean increase engagement). Couldn't they just try for profitability instead of infinite growth?

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

#237

Post by jabroni_salad »

loudandskittish wrote: post #223
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 t…

Twitch has a situation where they are trying to improve discoverability of underperforming streamers. The directory used to just be sorted by live concurrent viewers, which I guess does do a lot to ensure that the front page is full of streams that people will watch (by virtue of them already being watched) but it also leads to the site being dominated by a very small group of people.

Youtube does very well but it's a lot easier to categorize and tag 10-minute videos than it is to do so to a currently active livestream... and I will point out that discovering livestreams on youtube is abysmal. I've got one person that I follow pretty closely and if they arent super good about setting up the stream beforehand it is real easy to miss because youtube will make zero effort in informing you.

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

#238

Post by dahdum »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #25

TikTok is banned in my country but friends from UK and US say that the algorithm is much better at recommending videos. True or just plain individual bias?

Very true, but partly due to the broad content variety TikTok has. Their tools to help creators are excellent and they do a lot to promote highly niche content.

Instagram is a clunky mishmash of features rolled out in desperation. TikTok may suffer the same fate eventually, but I think they are years away from that.

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

#239

Post by onychomys »

Ensorceled wrote: post #157
kpierce wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All entertainment seems to be broken. Let me watch something on netflix my recommended list is almost identical to comedy, adventure, etc. Their machine learning must show that people will just watch what is in front of them.

My audible app is full of recommendations for books I ALREADY HAVE I MY LIBRARY. Netflix seems to be actually getting better, for a while, watching a single video could entirely change my recommended list.

Facebook served me an ad a couple of months back urging me to apply for a job at the hospital I've worked for since 2015, WHILE I WAS ACCESSING FACEBOOK FROM MY WORK VPN. I have it listed as my workplace and I was coming from a IP addy owned by it and still the computer thought it should show me the ad. I just don't get it.

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

#240

Post by twiceaday »

anoonmoose wrote: post #184
MikusR wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I got super excited for that YouTube functionality, then I clicked the link and realized that either I follow way too many people for this to be useful, or the people I follow are producing way more content than I can handle. I guess maybe if I "un-ring" the bell for a few of the bigger channels this could be useful...

People harp on social media algorithms but this right here is the actual problem. Your stated preferences, to see and be notified of all those videos, run contrary to your revealed preferences. And services catering to the former will lose to services catering to the latter. By harboring these mismatches we train these systems to ignore what we say we want or risk losing profits and market share.
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