FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts • Hacker News Board

Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts

#61

Post by ineptech » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 5:25 PM UTC

Crazy idea: FB should stop trying to lure people back from Tiktok with weird features and just lean in to its one remaining strength, which is that among social media sites, it's the most generic and boring and ubiquitous. Being the default place for non-influencers to do quotidian stuff like hearing about school closings, joining the PTA or HOA, coordinating family gatherings, see your nephew's school photos, etc would be a pretty good little business. And they already have all of that functionality built, so they could run significantly leaner, and hence not have to drive their remaining users away with excessive ads.

This seems like a good idea to me. But I also think it's about as likely to happen as President Stallman.

Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts

#62

Post by scarmig » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 5:25 PM UTC

voisin wrote: post #50

darth_avocado wrote: post #37

Yes it’s a negative feedback loop created by the very bad product decisions they made to optimize for local maxima of getting more ads revenue. You inject more and more ads followed by more and more suggested content, thereby reducing the in network content. The in network content doesn’t get as much of traction, therefore people stop posting. This in turn forces the feed to have more and more suggestions and a few s…

Sounds a lot like Google Search results. It’s almost as if advertising dollars are an addictive drug that ultimately kills the company.

It actively makes the product worse. E.g. from yesterday, if I search for "high tc record," I'm not looking for the set of bedsheets with the greatest number of threads.

Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts

#63

Post by 1121redblackgo » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 5:25 PM UTC

heliodor wrote: post #19

The current FB is great for productivity! No need to mourn the former FB. It's gone. I've given up on FB as a social network a long time ago. I unfollowed all my friends and started following things that interest me. Followed the astronomical society so I can be informed when they have a public night. I get ads for everything I need for renovating my house: roof sealing services, AC repair, contractors, new windows,…

That is really clever, a swimming with the stream kind of strategy. Thanks for the tip.

Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts

#64

Post by phantom_of_cato » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 5:27 PM UTC

This is a good opportunity to reflect on how irrelevant and vacuous is the omnipresent "It's a private company, they can do whatever they want." We also have a right to criticize them for whatever reason.

Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts

#65

Post by cpsns » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

antegamisou wrote: post #25

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #13

I mean Facebook is a dying platform. All the fake numbers won't make a difference.

Mind you, communities/groups, obviously imitating subreddits, as well as the marketplace are saving it quite well from ending up like MySpace/Hi5. It's also evident that there has been a significant boomer infestation to the userbase the past 10 years.

The communities/groups are significantly higher quality than the average subreddit, especially for niche subjects.

Frankly they're the only thing I use Facebook for, because the people on hobby groups are way more knowledgeable than those on reddit and they largely don't tolerate meme posts.

Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts

#66

Post by dvtrn » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

pfortuny wrote: post #39

YouWhy wrote: post #14

Knowing the beast firsthand, there's no trace of doubt in my mind that the convergence to a junk product outcome involved a monotonous increase in ad revenue and likely, engagement metrics. There's a tragic dimension that a system which connected so much of humanity to itself so well would be rendered so toxic as a product and as a community in just a few years.

Ordinary people put up with a lot of inconvenience just to stay connected (in some way). This is why fb has not collapsed yet. I left it years ago when I realized it was just annoying me.

I made the conscious effort before leaving Facebook to trade phone numbers, addresses and birthday dates from the people I wanted to really wanted stay in touch with, and put them in my phone. This was all within the last three years.

I’ve sent birthday gifts in the mail, and I’ve gotten gifts in mail from these very people.

Sometimes, when I wonder where the convenience that gets talked about in the context of Facebook and “staying in touch” ends and a more delicate form of “you’re probably not as close to some of the people on your friends list as you think” (which was absolutely the case for me) begins.

It took really minimal effort on my part to find other ways of staying in touch, but I think maybe the key is you have to WANT to stay in touch with people?

Just a shower thought.

Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts

#67

Post by 60secs » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 5:29 PM UTC

And FB default notification settings are cancer.

Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts

#68

Post by specialist » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 5:30 PM UTC

My extended family has been the major reason I've held onto my facebook account. Nieces, nephews, cousins. Baby & puppy pics. Weddings, funerals, milestones, well wishes.

Apple's Messages now largely serves that role.

Feature Req: Make Messages savvy about Contact groups.

Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts

#69

Post by jonnycomputer » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 5:30 PM UTC

Agree, FB is trashing the place. But will say that, currently, putting feed in chronological order (https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr) reduces the number of suggesteds considerably; usually there is some (non-obvious) way to organize the feed in one of the menus too.

Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts

#70

Post by indigochill » Tue, Sep 13, 2022, 5:30 PM UTC

YouWhy wrote: post #14

Knowing the beast firsthand, there's no trace of doubt in my mind that the convergence to a junk product outcome involved a monotonous increase in ad revenue and likely, engagement metrics. There's a tragic dimension that a system which connected so much of humanity to itself so well would be rendered so toxic as a product and as a community in just a few years.

> There's a tragic dimension that a system which connected so much of humanity to itself

How would you say Facebook connected humanity differently from what MySpace was doing before Facebook ate their lunch with a more consistent UI?

I also am increasingly of the opinion that humanity is not wired to connect globally. Our local social networks give us a buffer against centralized bad actors. When everyone was connected directly to everyone else, what we used to call "chain letters" before social media took off won the information war because they could bypass fact checkers that would refuse to pass them to their network back when social networks were more separated.