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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

#201

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…

in what respect is Instagram a dating app for women or anyone? Because it's a social media site primarily used by younger-ish people? by that metric any site that features young people is just an over-glorified dating platform. (not to say that this is a negative implication, dating websites are great to some extent)

Do you believe that young people are capable of using social media platforms for things other than base urges or is that something only middle aged people are able to accomplish?

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

#202

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…

Their current market cap can’t be sustained by going back to their roots. They need addictive attention

Yes, but it's still a dumb idea to make instagram into tiktok rather than catering to their existing audience.

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

#203
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…

This was what led me to quit Facebook as well. I just got a real sketchy feeling sharing photos of my family knowing that other people would see them intermingled with all sorts of awful content.

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

#204
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The people using Marketplace are the people who wouldn't be using the site otherwise, and who are there for the express purpose of doing commerce. No one over 40 would be caught dead of facebook otherwise.

>No one over 40 would be caught dead of facebook otherwise.

Until their HOA or their sports club start using Facebook as their official platform for announcements and communication.

I know there are other free platform that could fill the same role, but you will never find one where literally more than half the adult population already has an account and is familiar with the interface/features. Lots of groups use it because it's the path of least resistance.

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

in what respect is Instagram a dating app for women or anyone? Because it's a social media site primarily used by younger-ish people? by that metric any site that features young people is just an over-glorified dating platform. (not to say that this is a negative implication, dating websites are great to some extent) Do you believe that young people are capable of using social media platforms for things other than ba…

This wasn't meant for you, but the other guy deleted his question, so here we go.

Instagram is a photo-sharing application at it's core.

So when you share photos, you're sharing your lifestyle. You're advertising. This is especially prevalent down here in Miami. So much so that people oftentimes at clubs don't exchange phone numbers; they exchange Instagrams. The women can see by your Instagram posts what kind of life you live and whether or not they're interested. You can see by their Instagram who and what they are. If you go to it and you're inundated with a ton of booty pics in string bikinis and a little string barely covering her titties, hanging on for dear life, you know she's advertising, "I am a hoe and I do hoe things." If you go to her Instagram and you see a lot of landscape photos, ancient monuments, etc., you know she's advertising, "I like to travel and have a genuine interest in culture."

If you go to a man's Instagram and he's got photos of himself stepping off a private jet, photos of him on a sailboat or a yacht smoking a cigar with a label that clearly reads Arturo Fuente Opus X and holding a glass of amber liquid with a bottle that says Louis XIII on it, photos of himself in a sharp suit leaned up against his Aston Martin DB11, he's advertising, "I am a successful, wealthy man who lives a life of luxury." If you go a man's Instagram and there's pictures of his woodshop, some photos of a new chest of drawers he crafted, a picture of him sitting by the lake with his trusty Labrador retriever lovingly sitting by his side, he's advertising, "I'm a down-to-Earth craftsman who enjoys the serenity of nature."

And then all these people go sliding into one another's DMs, as the cool kids say...

If you don't believe that, start listening to the podcast Blocked and Reported with Katie Herzog and Jesse Singal. I've been listening since episode 29. They're on episode 131. They report on Internet ridiculousness and culture-at-large. A shocking amount of stories eventually have the phrase "slid into the DMs" in them.

It's clear to me that Instagram is being used as a dating platform as much as it is a storytelling or photo-sharing platform. And I don't think Meta should do anything about that at all. It's a dating platform on the down-low. I think that might be a good thing.

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

#207
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

I totally get what he says. If your feed no longer feels like it's your feed, more like some bazar on your phone, than why post anything private?

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

#208
In my experience, what happened is that young people eventually stopped posting personal updates (this was a multi-year process), either because the novelty of it declined or because they entered a life phase change (e.g. leaving college) that made social updates less frequent or less shareable.

In my friend group, this happened around 2018, about a year after we left college and entered the working world. I'd guess something similar happened with many cohorts.

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

#209
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…

Amazon seems to have taken a different route.

Keep margins low and don’t make too much money in order to starve any potential competitors of capital.

Of course - you still need to grow revenue for this to work - just not profits.

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