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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

#311

Post by martin_a »

mrweasel wrote: post #118
hankdoupe wrote: post #104

The stickiest feature for me is Facebook groups. I go to Facebook to see what the people who share my interests are up to, where the next group bike ride is, etc. The recommended content (read: auto-playing reels) just distracts from that and literally any other content / media I'd rather be consuming. I'm really bummed that the platform is trending towards being a Tik-tok clone. I remember at some point there were a…

> where the next group bike ride is, etc Didn't things like that become a problem once they switched the feed to not be chronological? LinkedIn has this problem. Top posts: Some meet up from two weeks ago that I am interested in... but it was two weeks ago, so, MEH.

Yeah, I was bored and spend too much time on LinkedIn. Now all they can show me is events and promotions from three weeks ago. Not sure I should interact with that content anymore.

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

#312

Post by VancouverMan »

nradov wrote: post #266
ok123456 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone wanted to watch and share video clips on their computer directly on the web without and without having to care about codecs, file formats, and hosting. No one wants to have business meetings wearing VR headsets or give NFTs to virtual panhandlers or any of the other silly usecases for a modernized version of Lawnmower Man.

At one point no one wanted to have business meetings on Zoom, but the technology improved and the culture changed such that it's now ubiquitous. Metaverse technology is still really clunky today and used only by a few early adopters, but it's entirely possible that the experience will improve a lot in 10 years. Who knows?

A significant factor to consider with that situation is that the recent widespread use of teleconferencing software wasn't organic.

Many people and organizations that started using it frequently during the last three years only did so because they were forced to, mainly due to absurd and unjustifiable government-imposed lockdowns and other restrictions. Otherwise, the remaining adoption was mainly driven by paranoia, and only occasionally by convenience.

We've seen a tendency for such people and organizations to return to in-person interactions as soon as they can, which usually starts the moment that government stops interfering.

While the adoption may have been rapid and widespread, we also see the reverse happening as soon as it's possible to.

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

#313

Post by JKCalhoun »

csw-001 wrote: post #129
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.

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…

> 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.

Facebook need to just settle back and offer dividends. It's over.

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

#314

Post by Gud »

martin_a wrote: post #303
Gud wrote: post #299

What I'm wondering is why an alternative social network has not gained more wide spread adoption, at least in the nerd community(looking at you, HN reader). It seems to me social media is ripe for disruption.

> It seems to me social media is ripe for disruption. I think what we see is that every social media site goes down pretty much the same way at some point. FB was great until they started that whole recommended post stuff which fucked up the feed. Instagram was great until they were bought by Facebook and had to get some metrics straight, too. TikTok will be the next one to go down as influencers and other parasitic…

I agree! But what I've learnt from being on HN for a fairly long time is that online communities can be built to last. Maybe not forever, but for a long time. I think _community_ is the important part, as soon as the site builder tries to cater to everyone it eventually just becomes another ad platform.

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

#315

Post by wolpoli »

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…

Has anyone kept track of the number of times they shifted the Facebook newsfeed algorithm?

At different point in time, the feed prioritized: posts from friends, posts from games from your friends, friends' sharing of links to compete with Twitter, videos to compete with Youtube, moments to compete with Snapchat, comments that friends made, posts from friends again as growth slows down

I wonder what percentage of users drift off every time they shifted the algorithm.

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

#316

Post by JohnFen »

GartzenDeHaes wrote: post #249
nostromo wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems to me that Amazon has the same problem, but with their physical products instead of ads. Cheap junk, fakes, and scams pushed up sales for a while, but then people give up on the site and go to other sources that are perceived to be more reputable.

This is most of why I stopped using Amazon entirely.

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

#317

Post by wing-_-nuts »

didgetmaster wrote: post #145
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>before social media took off won the information war because they could bypass fact checkers that would refuse to pass them to their network Lmao, my mother used to forward me these political chain letters. I'd reply all with sources debunking them. I quickly got removed from the list :^)

You probably got removed from the list because it cost someone a stamp to mail you the letter. These days if you respond to anything, that just puts you on the 'real person' list that gets distributed to all the spammers. Email and robocalls are essentially free so there is no incentive to take dead ends off the lists anymore.

Oh no, I thought we were talking about chain emails. I used to reply all

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

#318

Post by drumttocs8 »

ok123456 wrote: post #190
elcomet wrote: 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.

Huh? In my experience, no one under 40 uses the site much anymore for its original purposes. The only status updates and memes being posted are from the older crowd.

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

#319

Post by JohnFen »

jpalomaki wrote: post #234
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.

For those annyoyed with ads on Google search, Kagi [1] is worth trying. It's not free, but does not show ads and uses the Google index behind the scenes. I've been using it on desktop for few months and have no complaints. [1] https://kagi.com/

> uses the Google index behind the scenes

Does it give better results than Google? I find Google's results to be pretty horrible, and worry that if Kagi is using Google's index, then I wouldn't get better results with them.

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

#320

Post by martin_a »

Another anecdotal data point: I loved Facebook around 2010-2015.

I was in university, had lots of "friends" that I had met in person, was a user of the groups, events, everything. It was great to stay in touch with old and new people I knew.

As people finished university, they had less time for FB, posted less and so FB probably decided to fill up the blanks they had left with "XY liked this", ads, and "you could like this" posts.

As all our lives moved on, FB became worse and worse because we didn't feed it with our own content anymore.

At some point I just deleted it and didn't really look back.

Now I see the same thing happening with Instagram, where I see less and less content of old friends and more and more reels and "engaging" content.

Maybe I'm getting old, but I'd just love to see how my former classmates are doing with their children and families and jobs etc.

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