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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

#151
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

and now it's moving away from that and pushing more suggested content.

The death spiral is:

1. Show friends content to attract users

2. Realize that friends don't product enough content to increase engagement.

3. Start introducing suggested content to increase engagement

4. Friend stop producing content since their content is deprioritized and not getting engagement

5. Now your feed is full of suggested content and isn't interesting any more

6. You leave and find another platform

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

#152
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…

I don't understand your hesitation to share your photos (or at least, not based on that criteria). "[wouldn't] be welcome"? By whom? Facebook? Or your friends? Would that imply they'd rather see ads and shared crap content than original content?

IMO Facebook needs an "original content only" setting. I block every single page that some idiot shares, but I'm not sure how much it helps. I will literally never want to see something shared from another page.

It seems like this would be a good thing for FB too. Keep engagement up, keep inserting ads. Hell, they could insert MORE ads if the content I saw from my friends had a greater signal:noise ratio.

Anyway, I recently shared some vacation pictures and quite enjoyed it. So much better than a bullshit "story" that lasts 24h and nobody can engage with except via DM. Such a weird impulse for an app. (okay, I get that they want you to use it constantly so you have FOMO about missing content that disappears after 24h, but I don't get why they don't want any real user engagement on the content).

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

#153
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.

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…

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

Maybe not a little as you think. Just because the social media companies are "runing", running into the ground is still running. They just have so much momentum that the ship is going to keep moving along.

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

#154

FB is dinosaur, it's where yahoo was 15 years ago. Taking into account how horrible the product is, and all the studies that show how unhappy and polarized it makes you, it's surprising to me people are not leaving in mass at this point.

Few are deleting there account but most are limiting their presence. I never left myspace but never went back either.

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

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users of FB have migrated to Instagram and WhatsApp (all owned by Meta) ... FB is now for old people / those who don't like new tech.

Instagram and Facebook don't have the functionality that Facebook has, that's the problem. Instagram is for photo sharing. Hell, it's not even for that... it's a dating app for women, that doesn't advertise itself as a dating app for women. WhatsApp is just another telephone and messaging app, there's not much special about it as far as I can tell. It's ICQ on a smartphone and I guess, maybe, a better interface. I wa…

[deleted]

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

#156
I did this on purpose. I muted almost every actual person from my feed and all that remained were a handful of pages I chose to follow. Mostly tv/media related pages and retro video game groups, plus some local groups. Now, instead of looking at the random crap people I barely know decide to post, including their ample complaints about anything and everything, I mostly just see relevant content I'm actually happy to see! This change got me checking FB again regularly for the first time in years.

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

#157
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Can we all agree to call them FB friends, not friends.

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

#158
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What are we looking for here? The results seem equally as confusing as the query

The other commenter was obviously interested in the record for high-temperature superconductors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconducti...

Or perhaps more generally for materials with a high Curie temperature, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie_temperature

Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about this field.

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

#159
post #116
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?

Tumblr - banned 18+ content in 2018(?) in an attempt to make their site more advertiser-friendly and lost most of their userbase within a couple of months. Site was thriving before that.

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

#160
post #66

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 do send postcards and people like it so much they ask me not to stop.
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