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The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever

12challenges.substack.com

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Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever

#21

Post by Nevermark »

MyFedora wrote: post #10

So... the recommendation system works like it's supposed to? Giving you content you want to see. I'm not sure what the complaint is here, besides that platforms strong arm their creators into creating more engaging content to retain their viewers. Everyone's taste shifts from time to time, so I think it's reasonable to expect platforms to show you what content you're likely in the mood for watching at the moment. It'…

Yes the 100% natural candy they gave you, surreptitiously laced with addictive substances, did what it was supposed to!

By the time you are addicted, they don't care that you know.

(The line between addiction, and highly reinforced habit, is a continuum. But it is all insidious. Your choice and will was hacked by deception, before you had an informed choice to not even start.)

Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever

#22

Post by donatj »

My Facebook these days is almost entirely posts from groups I don't follow.

Once in a while I'll forget and try to comment on something and it pops dialog trying to get me to agree to whatever stupid rules said group has and I decline.

It's a really obnoxious pattern.

Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever

#23

Post by the__alchemist »

pixodaros wrote: post #4

There is a comic by The Oatmeal about this https://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people_2021 It came up when Facebook convinced news organizations to "pivot to video" then throttled their traffic.

Tangent, related to the recent PBF Facebook hack: https://pbfcomics.com/comics/hacked/

Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever

#24

Post by Nevermark »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #17

Tiktok will actively tell you "all new posts viewed" on your following page, but it's a blatant lie, there will absolutely be videos posted by people I'm following it hasn't shown me. And it's definitely not just "maybe you saw it but skipped past it". I'm starting to view social media more and more negatively over time. Maybe I'm just getting old. Maybe getting old is good?

> I'm starting to view social media more and more negatively over time. Maybe I'm just getting old.

Not appreciating deception and manipulation have nothing to do with age. Engagement goes up, but quality of experience goes down.

The problem is these sites do deliver some value, and are the major hubs for that value.

But having achieved that, they are now carefully increasing the amount of value they can extract from each of us, using every psychological hook to increase people's tolerance for crap. While using the healthy content from contributors hostage to avoid defections.

People shouldn't just be able to opt out of being tracked and targeted ads. But also opt out of any content they didn't requiest.

Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever

#25

Post by oefrha »

> I’ve recently heard of TikTok stars with millions of followers struggling to get even 5,000 views on their videos — a conversion of just 0.5% to people who explicitly opted in to following you!

That’s not a bad thing. Many social media “stars” are fads, I’ve seen many a highly followed account gone to shit because they can’t or can’t be bothered to come up with original ideas any more, or they have annoying promos in every piece after they got popular, or they have simply sold their account, etc. These accounts tend to bleed followers whenever they actually “convert” — people hit unfollow after they see the boring shit enough times. So, instead of boring you until you unfollow, TikTok simply shows you something else you may actually like.

Following friends and family is different from following content creators you don’t know. While some may want to see everything from their friends and family no matter what (and TikTok does have a friends feed for bidirectional relationships — it shows me everything, but I don’t have many friends so I’m not sure what happens if you have hundreds of them), content creators are interchangeable 99% of the time.

Now, if you have an example of a consistently high quality content creator struggling to get 5k views despite millions of followers, we can talk.

Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever

#26

Post by yosito »

I think this would be a good thing to legislate. If a platform has a follow button, then it needs to make a chronological feed of followed content available on 1) a dedicated, bookmarkable page and 2) as an Activity Pub feed.

I miss the brief days when almost everyone I knew was on one platform and I had a chronological feed of all of their updates without any content from sources I didn't follow. Now, I have to switch between at least half a dozen apps with dark patterns to see a few updates from friends while trying to avoid getting sucked into a black hole of content recommended by the algorithms.

If I could see all of the updates from all of my friends in one Activity Pub feed, that would be great!

Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever

#27

Post by spinach »

X/Twitter has the "following" tab which avoids this problem, but I personally only use lists and have my main one bookmarked. I've done this for years and wish other platforms had "lists" like X. It avoids this problem and makes it easy to organize by topic.

Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever

#28

Post by skeledrew »

There's a simple - but likely difficult - solution. I caught myself doom scrolling one too many times on Facebook, and finally decided to do something about it years ago. I put up a farewell message and quit, even though it meant leaving a bunch of contacts who I was primarily in touch with there. Only a couple made the extra effort to keep in touch via alternative means, and barely. But that's life; it was either get away or compromise my mental health.

Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever

#29

Post by nitwit005 »

I'd say this situation has actually improved. Yes, Facebook in particular had had their feed become shockingly bad, but I can pop open Bluesky or Cohost and get a clean feed of follows.

I don't expect everyone to move to those sites, but you have more options if you wish for something better.

Re: The follow lie, and why it's worse than ever

#30

Post by smohare »

anigbrowl wrote: post #15

Good article, but the 'use newsletters' advice at the end is bunk. Email is mostly dead as a way of reaching people, especially anyone under 30. You might as well collect names and addresses and mail out brochures. Nobody likes promotional emails, so even if they don't go to spam they tend to just pile up unread until someone does a purge and unsubscribes. Once again, spammers and oversharers ruin things for everyone…

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