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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

#131

Post by coffeefirst »

ravenstine wrote: post #7

I almost never log in to Facebook anymore, but the feed was hilariously bad the last time I checked it out. Almost entirely ads for random crap, eyecandy videos, exotic Asian street food videos, etc. Nothing even remotely related to my interests. At least Facebook seems to have figured out that I'm not a Star Wars fan. For years, their algorithm somehow decided that I liked Star Wars and that I wanted my feed to be f…

It happened right as they started deprioritizing news, which included every legitimate media outlet that adults tend to read—including non-political publications.

Also my friends basically all stopped posting anything in 2020.

So what's left is nothing but dumb memes. Half are about dogs (okay, I do like dogs, but these are just stupid). The other half are Lord of the Rings, which I have never expressed interest in, but must be in a lookalike audience for people who do.

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

#132

Post by munchler »

mullingitover wrote: post #75

Facebook is a fantastic product, as long as you use it properly and not remotely as Facebook wants you to. - Most important step: Unfollow every single person and page - Follow entertaining groups like 'This cat is c h o n k y' - Keep facebook messenger - Use FB events for party planning That's it, and it's easy: you get all the social graph functionality, all the event planning and chat stuff. The feed (if you even…

Why would you want to unfollow your own friends? To me, that's always been the one useful feature of Facebook.

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

#133

Post by pen2l »

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…

It's an interesting exercise to think about:

suppose you're in the meeting room and you're the product guy and you'll make this case. Indeed let us not optimize for the presently advantageous local maxima lest it come back to swallow and end us. How is this communicated? And what does it take to convincingly persuade people, or investors of this -- to even bear through a temporary downward period with the understanding that fundamentals must be respected?

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

#134

Post by didgetmaster »

It's called signal-to-noise ratio and it affects everything these days. We stopped reading newspapers and magazines when it became harder to find articles in-between all the ads. We stop watching broadcast TV when a typical 30 minute show has 18 minutes of commercials. We stop visiting websites when pop-up and flashing ads overwhelm the site.

Social media sites are no different. The question is will they wake up before all their users flee.

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

#135

Post by nomat »

reaperducer wrote: post #115
mindcrime wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But you don't have a 20-year dossier of almost every web site he's visited; a list of 90% of his credit card purchases; an AI scrutinizing every photo he's ever been in that's been in, or in the background of, on the internet; a list of his previous searches; and a list of the places he's brought his cell phone. To improve user experience.

Ken Liu's "The Perfect Match" is a sci-fi short story about this topic.

https://gizmodo.com/lightspeed-presents-the-perfect-match-by...

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

#136

Post by kevstev »

Tao3300 wrote: post #23

I suspect part of it is that Real People are posting less. Since the feed doesn't have a bottom anymore it makes up the difference with sponsored and suggested junk rather than going empty.

I was actually going to post vacation photos a few months ago, after my first real trip post Covid. But... it just felt really awkard to do so all of a sudden. My feed is just stuffed with shared content and other crap, it no longer felt like something I would be welcome doing.

Its been making me wonder if its time to sell my shares, which I have held since the IPO. It just feels like FB errr "Meta" is really losing its way, and this Metaverse stuff just seems like its going to be a furnace into which billions of dollars are going to be thrown into. My gut says its time, but I just can't quite pull the trigger yet.

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

#137

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

mullingitover wrote: post #75

Facebook is a fantastic product, as long as you use it properly and not remotely as Facebook wants you to. - Most important step: Unfollow every single person and page - Follow entertaining groups like 'This cat is c h o n k y' - Keep facebook messenger - Use FB events for party planning That's it, and it's easy: you get all the social graph functionality, all the event planning and chat stuff. The feed (if you even…

The thing about "X is a fantastic tool as long as you use it in a way the developers never intended", is that sooner or later, some interaction you rely on will break because the devs either don't care about or actively want to remove your use-case. Which is a problem if you've invested a lot into it at that point.

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

#138

Post by cbozeman »

Bakary wrote: post #59
mmmpop wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean you don't like Star Wars, everyone likes Star Wars, May the Forth and lol anjklsdnajkdsnfkasfasd Star Wars!!!! i'm so unique

I actually really enjoyed the second movie of the new trilogy because it seemed to be a shockingly self-aware deconstruction of some of the Star Wars tropes and its place in culture in general. How it ever got greenlit by Disney of all entities is an enduring mystery.

> I actually really enjoyed the second movie of the new trilogy because it seemed to be a shockingly self-aware deconstruction of some of the Star Wars tropes and its place in culture in general.

Congratulations, you also figured out why it was so polarizing and why more than half the audience hated it... assuming you believe Rotten Tomatoes. It's Star Wars. People don't want a goddamned political deconstruction of all the objectively bullshit and overblown worries of the current culture. They want an escapist fantasy about another galaxy thousands of years ago.

> How it ever got greenlit by Disney of all entities is an enduring mystery.

Is it? Really? You legitimately can't figure out how that meeting went?

"Ohmigod, feeemale protagonist... so hot right now..."

"I know, right?? And she's a BOSS BITCH so she can use all the Force powers better than experienced Jedi from day one, hashtag grrlpwr!"

"Angsty Luke... fab idea, fam!"

There's not enough evidence on Planet Earth to make me believe they sat around in meetings thoroughly discussing what would be a logical story arc for the original cast, whilst simultaneously passing the baton over to a new generation to start exploring their own stories.

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

#139

Post by kidme5 »

lizknope wrote: post #82
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.

I have no idea what you are expecting from "high tc record" I'm getting links about the highest temperature on earth and it is listing it in Fahrenheit so if the "tc" means "temperature celsius" it is failing for me. All the other links are about high temperature superconductors.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie_temperature

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

#140

Post by avgDev »

dvtrn wrote: post #66
pfortuny wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Faceb…

I'm doing this too and it has been great for me in general.

I looked at my fb friends and thought to myself which people I really liked and would like to reconnect with. I messaged "facebook friends" I have not talked to in a while and told them it may seem weird but I really would like to reconnect. I have never done anything like this, as I am extremely prone to losing touch with people.

I ended up reconnecting with a few people in real life and it has been great. I also plan on sending cards and stuff.

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