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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

#381

Post by technion »

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…

The difference of course is that TikTok's suggested content is generally relevant.

My entire suggested feed relates to US politics. I keep getting suggestions for Second Amendment groups, "Stand your Ground" groups, pro life groups, "Isn't she beautiful" (a gun lobby group), "Texans for God" and so on. I'm Australian. I guess this is what I get for doing an occasional checkin at a place named Texas BBQ.

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

#382

Post by pavel_lishin »

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.

If you can get our town's PTA, or city hall, or childcare to use email more than they use Facebook, I will give you one thousand fucking dollars.

I can barely get my D&D group to reliably use emails to communicate, instead of group texts that usually include the entire group, but not always.

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

#383

Post by robocat »

edgyquant wrote: post #181
umeshunni wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Almost like building a business around “engagement” is a model that leads to a death spiral. Social media sites are basically giant MLM schemes that sell the idea that become real companies before the scheme runs out.

> “engagement” is a model that leads to a death spiral

Good article on that point: https://rosie.land/posts/stop-measuring-community-engagement...

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

#384

Post by mullingitover »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #137
mullingitover wrote: post #75

Facebook 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…

The thing about "X is a fantastic tool as long as you use it in a way the developers never intended", is that sooner or later, some interaction you rely on will break because the devs either don't care about or actively want to remove your use-case. Which is a problem if you've invested a lot into it at that point.

I'm willing to roll the dice for a while. Chat and events planning are pretty basic features, if Facebook screw those up then it probably means that someone else has come along and does them better.

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

#385

Post by mullingitover »

munchler wrote: post #132
mullingitover wrote: post #75

Facebook 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…

Why would you want to unfollow your own friends? To me, that's always been the one useful feature of Facebook.

If I'm interacting with my friends on facebook, it means I'm spending irreplaceable moments of my life looking at a screen and not spending it with them in the real world.

Even worse, I'm helping Facebook make money that they'll use to further harm society. It's a lose-lose.

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

#386

Post by NCC1701DEngage »

cphoover wrote: post #148

and it's all crap. Very low quality content... especially on video. Terrible recommendations. YouTube has the same problem. Whoever is leading recs is doing a terrible job.

>Terrible recommendations. YouTube has the same problem. Whoever is leading recs is doing a terrible job.

This is exactly why I am working on a team to build alternative YouTube recommendations.

Search a channel to get a list of smaller channels making content focused on similar interests. Our algorithm is designed to surface more obscure, but relevant, content that YouTube generally doesn't recommend.

Here is our list of relevant similar channels for SpaceX's channel:

https://channelgalaxy.com/id%3DUCtI0Hodo5o5dUb67FeUjDeA/

Navigate by clicking on the channel icons in the list or by searching a channel in the top search-bar.

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

#387

Post by monocasa »

edgyquant wrote: post #176
ycta2334209 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a dishonest answer. Tumblr died because it’s niche was adult content. Banning your niche is choosing to fail.

It doesn't seem dishonest to me; chasing those ad dollars are what led to the supremely stupid decision of banning one of their core niches.

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

#388

Post by Tao3300 »

rconti wrote: post #152
kevstev wrote: post #136

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…

No I get it. Today it feels less like posting them on a microblog and more like hanging them in the middle of a mall and telling your friends they can look there. It also fits a little too close to the toxic "just the good parts" narrative of social media.

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

#389

Post by Tao3300 »

wincy wrote: post #52
londons_explore wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Most people have ~300 friends. Most of those friends never post, and the 10% that do probably only post a couple of times a year now. That means whenever you log in, there is no content from your friends to see.

I’m not so sure about that. My mom posts on Facebook and gets a few likes with pictures of Jesus with text in them, and my wife posts every day with political hot takes, literally just text posts and gets hundreds of likes on virtually every post she makes with tons of comments and engagement. My high school peers post pictures of their kids all the time. I like their pictures and they like mine. My grandparents all…

> My mom posts on Facebook and gets a few likes with pictures of Jesus with text in them, and my wife posts every day with political hot takes

I'm so sorry. I hope you can get help.

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

#390

Post by nicbou »

Vrondi wrote: post #164
Tao3300 wrote: 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.

Nah. People are posting, and then it doesn't show up in their friends' feeds, sometimes not for days. You can see this easily if you talk to people IRL. "I posted those photos two days ago, didn't you see?" and then the photos show up in your feed a few days later. Or never.

Only 3-5 people I knew posted on Facebook, and it still hid those posts from me. If I can't see my own mother's content, that website is worthless to me.
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