Spam Sushi's First Law: all Internet forums eventually reach a point where they focus primarily on driving users away.
FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts
251–260 of 458 posts
Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
Enough people don't have or won't use facebook in 2022. Email is still the lowest common denominator.
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Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts
#253Facebook 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…
I'm glad to find a like-minded person.
I unfollowed all my friends years ago. If I want to see them, I peek into events we have in common, groups or I go to their feed directly.
My feed is mostly content from pages I enjoy along groups and communities that cover topics which interest me. I have a handful of friends who post about technology or hobbies that are not blocked from my feed.
I have an older account that has a lot of friends in common with my main one but without the blocks. I find its feed to be very painful to use. Photos of people's food, people's pets, people sharing "inspirational" quotes on stock photos, a lot of selfies and people's children. It takes forever to find information about topics I actually enjoy reading about.
I would unfriend those people if it did not come with the social problem of them coming back disappointed asking why I am no longer friend with them. As if social network contacts were actually friends and as if unfriending someone on a social network meant you are no longer friend with them. I also enjoy being able to check up on them every now and them, which I could not do if I were not connected with them due the their privacy settings.
Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts
#254Earlier 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.
Never thought I’d see the day, but I actually use Yandex for image search now because they basically deliver the google image search experience of a decade ago. While Google Images has had no one with Vision in charge and been tweaked, buffed and downgraded to the point of uselessness. And you can tell no one on the team actually uses it. Google Search could honestly be dethroned if someone really wanted to. The usag…
I've noticed recently Google image search has gotten surprisingly terrible for some things. I use Bing image search when the Google image search lets me down. Haven't tried Yandex.
Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts
#255I recall discussions of this problem years ago. I did a measure of what percentage of my feed was actual content with friends and it was roughly the same as this current measure. I'll have to go through my comments and find it.
Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts
#256Knowing the beast firsthand, there's no trace of doubt in my mind that the convergence to a junk product outcome involved a monotonous increase in ad revenue and likely, engagement metrics. There's a tragic dimension that a system which connected so much of humanity to itself so well would be rendered so toxic as a product and as a community in just a few years.
> There's a tragic dimension that a system which connected so much of humanity to itself How would you say Facebook connected humanity differently from what MySpace was doing before Facebook ate their lunch with a more consistent UI? I also am increasingly of the opinion that humanity is not wired to connect globally. Our local social networks give us a buffer against centralized bad actors. When everyone was connect…
> I also am increasingly of the opinion that humanity is not wired to connect globally
I view it as similar to the health hazards of widespread cheap calories – it’s not a new problem but we’ve cranked it up to 11 and put a large fraction people on the planet at risk, and approaches which tell people to exercise willpower are basically pointless.
I think the fixes have to be regulatory but seriously question the political will. Facebook was able to avoid any real consequences for their role supporting the Rohingya genocide and if that’s not enough, what will be?
Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts
#257Well, yes. Your friends are not paying for placement. If they are, they are "influencers" and you need better friends.
Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts
#258Yes 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…
No, this isn't a consequence of the status quo newsfeed algorithm. This is a consequence of Facebook making a purposeful strategic shift away from in-network content to suggested content. This strategic shift was highlighted in their last earnings call as a way to compete with TikTok, whose success is partly explained by their focus on suggested content. On the earnings call, they signaled that they were shifting more to a mix of the two content styles in the coming quarters, but the OP is likely enrolled in some sort of test that is giving them 98%.
See the below excerpt from Meta's Q2 earnings call:
"One of the main transformations in our business right now is that social feeds are going from being driven primarily by the people and accounts you follow to increasingly also being driven by AI recommending content that you'll find interesting from across Facebook or Instagram, even if you don't follow those creators. Social content from people you know is going to remain an important part of the experience and some of our most differentiated content. But increasingly, we'll also be able to supplement that with other interesting content from across our networks. Reels is one part of this trend that focuses on the growth of short-form video as a content format."
Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's funny how much projection people do when speaking of FB, as if their personal experience offers some deep insight into a platform of 3.5 billion users whose usage varies by user, demography and geography.
It's funny how people try to deny the simple truth that the site hasn't been fun to use in 15 years.
Whether or not it's fun doesn't isn't the primary driving factor in its continued popularity. People use it because other people use it. It got big and now has a network effect of inertia holding it in place until something else takes off and replaces it.
Re: FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's funny how people try to deny the simple truth that the site hasn't been fun to use in 15 years.
Whether or not it's fun doesn't isn't the primary driving factor in its continued popularity. People use it because other people use it. It got big and now has a network effect of inertia holding it in place until something else takes off and replaces it.
Then, why does my original post have +30? It must have struck a nerve with more than just myself.