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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

#291

Post by thehappypm »

ok123456 wrote: post #225
max51 wrote: post #204

Earlier 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.

Source? This sounds like conjecture at its finest.

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

#292

Post by tofflos »

kolbe wrote: post #274
bazeblackwood wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad strategy, imo. Sounds like they should have tried to answer why people used their product in the first place. “A competitor does it” isn’t a valid excuse—its like suggesting The French Laundry switch to fast food because McDonald’s is a competitor.

They also need to be honest with themselves about whether TikTok is a competitor, or if TT has simply won a completely different business that happens to take customers' finite resources (time) from Facebook.

I think it's pretty cleat cut. They're competing attention farms. How we the product perceive them doesn't matter.

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

#293

Post by Arnt »

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.

Google says it spends about 0.3Wh per search, of which roughly one third is for scraping and two thirds for the search. I think you may be overestimating how much processing they could do with that budget (assuming they want to do that significant user-based tweaking, which is IMO not a given).

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

#294

Post by wnevets »

fairity wrote: post #258
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…

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 mor…

> This is a consequence of Facebook making a purposeful strategic shift away from in-network content to suggested content.

In an ironic twist these changes has made it much easier for me to stop using Facebook and Instagram. My usage was never high to begin with but some people in my life only used those apps and I wanted to stay connected. Now every single time I visit either of those apps and I see suggested content I close the app and move on with my day.

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

#295

Post by fullsend »

in3d wrote: post #195
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.

Exactly. By adding more and more ads, their own widgets, and pushing down smaller sites in the search results to favor brands, Google made it very hard for smaller sites with user-generated content to grow and profit organically. And then fewer people searched for them or expected to find them. I’m kind of enjoying the fact that newer sites and apps like Discord don’t let Google index them after Google killed off a l…

Users click more on big brands. The average internet user doesn’t want to browse hobby websites, they use the top 10 sites and never leave them. Accept it. Some of them never leave only Reddit or TikTok.

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

#296

Post by ajsnigrutin »

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…

This is easily solved by having 'suggested content' (ads) once every (eg.) 10 posts from friends. 28 ads in a row is a total overkill

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

#297

Post by birdyrooster »

alistairSH wrote: post #283
yamrzou wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, here is a chronology of key events: 2020 — Facebook launches its TikTok rival, Instagram Reels: https://www.axios.com/2020/08/05/facebook-launches-its-tikto... 2021 — TikTok overtakes Facebook as world's most downloaded app: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/TikTok-overtakes... Feb. 2022 — Facebook loses users for the first time in its history — https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/02/02/face…

Mid-2021, I stop using FB for anything beyond Marketplace. Mid-2022, I find Instagram to be just as useless as FB. I find I'm spending far less time on big social platforms. And a little more time in niche web forums. And I mostly feel better (sanity-wise) for it.

Discord has completely displaced the need for other social media in my experience. And they get hundreds of dollars per year from me. If this isn’t a winning model, I don’t know what is.

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

#298

Post by _dain_ »

umeshunni wrote: post #151
ericraio wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Reminds me of Gresham's Law[1]: "Bad Money Drives Out Good".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham%27s_law

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

#300

Post by sshine »

birdyrooster wrote: post #297
alistairSH wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mid-2021, I stop using FB for anything beyond Marketplace. Mid-2022, I find Instagram to be just as useless as FB. I find I'm spending far less time on big social platforms. And a little more time in niche web forums. And I mostly feel better (sanity-wise) for it.

Discord has completely displaced the need for other social media in my experience. And they get hundreds of dollars per year from me. If this isn’t a winning model, I don’t know what is.

It's a winning model.

Who would have thought that paying for something is correlated with positive expectation of outcome?

Someone should formalise this business model.

I'm just spitballing, but I might call it: Doing business.

I'm not sure what's going on with internet ads.

I've blocked them everywhere I can.

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