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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

#121

Post by hk__2 »

antisthenes wrote: post #102
londons_explore wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Most people have ~300 friends. Most of those friends never post, and the 10% that do probably only post a couple of times a year now. That means whenever you log in, there is no content from your friends to see.

That's an extremely liberal use of the word friend. A more accurate way to state it would be to say 'facebook connections'. If you don't regularly communicate with them, they aren't your friends.

That’s nitpicking. These people are called "friends" on FB, not "connections".

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

#123

Post by timr »

duped wrote: post #116
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.

Which companies were killed by ads?

Yahoo comes to mind.

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

#124

Post by AlexC04 »

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'd also add that the optimizing the timeline for engagement (including negative engagement & arguments) wound up making me quit the platform entirely. There were no positive interactions, just deeply unpleasant arguments with people spewing vitriol.

Like ... why would I stay on a platform that was so deeply unpleasant to interact with all the time?

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

#125

Post by donatj »

I don't post often on Facebook these days, but I find my posts either get zero likes or in the 30-40 like range with almost nothing in between.

This leads me to believe that no one is being shown roughly half my posts, though it's arguably possible half of what I post is total garbage.

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

#126

Post by CuriouslyC »

wincy wrote: post #52
londons_explore wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Most people have ~300 friends. Most of those friends never post, and the 10% that do probably only post a couple of times a year now. That means whenever you log in, there is no content from your friends to see.

I’m not so sure about that. My mom posts on Facebook and gets a few likes with pictures of Jesus with text in them, and my wife posts every day with political hot takes, literally just text posts and gets hundreds of likes on virtually every post she makes with tons of comments and engagement. My high school peers post pictures of their kids all the time. I like their pictures and they like mine. My grandparents all…

I have also noticed a lot more suggested pages recently, I think they pushed a junk algorithm change.

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

#127

Post by ipaddr »

antisthenes wrote: post #102
londons_explore wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Most people have ~300 friends. Most of those friends never post, and the 10% that do probably only post a couple of times a year now. That means whenever you log in, there is no content from your friends to see.

That's an extremely liberal use of the word friend. A more accurate way to state it would be to say 'facebook connections'. If you don't regularly communicate with them, they aren't your friends.

If they are only your friend because you talked to them recently they probably aren't your friend either.

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

#128

Post by reaperducer »

antisthenes wrote: post #102
londons_explore wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Most people have ~300 friends. Most of those friends never post, and the 10% that do probably only post a couple of times a year now. That means whenever you log in, there is no content from your friends to see.

That's an extremely liberal use of the word friend. A more accurate way to state it would be to say 'facebook connections'. If you don't regularly communicate with them, they aren't your friends.

If they won't help you move a couch, they're not a friend.

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

#129

Post by csw-001 »

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'm not sure it's the advertising dollars that are addictive as much as it is "growth". To keep the stock price up you have sustain a PE that reflects revenue growth, and once you are done signing up new users... Well... Something's got to give.

I see the ads as a lot like cutting timber out of a finite forest - it's profitable, but potentially harmful to the ecosystem in a way that can make it unsustainable. As long as you don't cut too much, replant aggressively, then you can make a sustainable business out of it - but it doesn't scale past the point where your harm to the ecosystem causes collapse. Once people exit FB because it's all ads, then the network benefits begin to evaporate, a little bit at first, then all at once...

Then again I don't run a social media company, so what do I know. ;-)

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

#130

Post by llbeansandrice »

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.

> high tc record

I don't know what you are trying to search for. A record for total compensation? Something related to Tesla coils? Turing Complete? Thread Count is a totally valid interpretation.

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