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

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

#91

Post by elcomet »

ok123456 wrote: post #83
ineptech wrote: post #61

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 wo…

Marketplace is the only reason a lot of people still use the site. This is since especially true for people looking for beater cars since Craigslist started charging $5 to post ads for cars. If Apple or someone else with an ax to grind with Facebook really wanted to bust Meta's kneecaps, they could off to subsidize this charge. Maybe also help them out with fraud and spam detection, since that's where most of the ove…

That might be the reason for you, but there are many other reasons why people still use the site. For example, coordinating events with friends, discover local events, discussing on messenger, sharing photos, discussing in groups...

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

#92

Post by jacobolus »

JustLurking2022 wrote: post #74
scarmig wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In fairness, reading your search term, I had no idea what you were talking about so it's not entirely surprising the organic content producers don't match those terms well. Looks like the SEO folks do though.

Works fine in DDG: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22high+tc%22+record

Edit: and also Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22high%20tc%22%20record

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

#93

Post by ericraio »

tootie wrote: post #60
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…

I quit FB a few years ago when I realized the suggested posts were just way more interesting than anything my friends posted. Idk what that says about their algorithm. Or my friends.

Instagram turned into being what Facebook was supposed to be.

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

#95

Post by jqgatsby »

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.

I agree. More generally, any business model where your users and your customers are disjoint sets will cause a misalignment of interests that generates an ever-increasing negative feedback loop. It seems like it can take a long time to play out though.

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

#96

Post by mindcrime »

scarmig wrote: post #62
voisin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

if I search for "high tc record," I'm not looking for the set of bedsheets with the greatest number of threads.

FWIW, I would also have no idea what that search is supposed to return.

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

#97

Post by addicted »

achenatx wrote: post #87
ok123456 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketplace is the only reason a lot of people still use the site. This is since especially true for people looking for beater cars since Craigslist started charging $5 to post ads for cars. If Apple or someone else with an ax to grind with Facebook really wanted to bust Meta's kneecaps, they could off to subsidize this charge. Maybe also help them out with fraud and spam detection, since that's where most of the ove…

I use it for groups. Many of our local clubs do great on facebook

The problem is that FB has changed groups as well. Groups seem to be redesigned to become more like open billboards than private enclaves with a limited membership.

They haven’t gone all the way there, so the groups are still useful, but I’m worried that’s the direction they’re taking.

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

#98

Post by antisthenes »

JustLurking2022 wrote: post #74
scarmig wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In fairness, reading your search term, I had no idea what you were talking about so it's not entirely surprising the organic content producers don't match those terms well. Looks like the SEO folks do though.

> Looks like the SEO folks do though.

Pretty sure at least 80% (probably 95%+) of low-quality SEO content is generated by computers, or at least by very low-skill outsourced labor in a machine-assisted way.

It then makes sense that the mature Internet can probably match any search query in a manner that leads to a site that sells something vaguely matching the query, through sheer quantity of available content.

In other words - there is enough SEO content generated and indexed that most queries will be able to be monetized by a search engine like Google.

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

#100

Post by notacoward »

mikewarot wrote: post #3

Use this URL[1] to open it in a browser with adblock . It gives your feed in reverse chronological order, with a 90%+ ratio of friends posts. (Just verified) [1] https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr [Update] If you click anything it takes you away from that feed... that's why I have it in my Bookmarks toolbar. If I find myself going "wait.. this feels different"... I look up and see the URL is now the generic one, and…

I've been using and recommending this for years. They've broken it twice that I can recall, but both times only briefly. It's the only thing that makes the site tolerable for me. I don't know why other people are reporting that it doesn't work for them. Usually the explanation for such differences would be that they're on the other side of a gatekeeper setting (gatekeeper being the system that FB uses for gradual rollouts) but that doesn't seem likely in this case. Maybe some sort of caching artifact, or something broken about their configs, or HNers just lying because they have an axe to grind, but it does still work at least for some of us.
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