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Facebook Overhauls News Feed to Focus on What Friends and Family Share

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook Overhauls News Feed to Focus on What Friends and Family Share

#141

Post by rainbowmverse »

jcadam wrote: post #40
taurath wrote: post #31

Wait, Facebook cares about engagement between people instead of between people and ad-supported lowest common demoninator content? Could have fooled me over the past several years. I’m really cynical about FB but it really has earned it. I hope it becomes more useful, because for me their original value proposition to users was great but has totally lost its way as they’ve monetized.

Yea, at this point I'd be willing to pay $10/month for a social network that respected my privacy, didn't bombard me with ads, and just generally treated me as a customer , rather than product . The trick of course is convincing anyone who isn't me to pay :) Heck, maybe it should be a non-profit.

Mastodon

Most instance admins have a Patreon and/or Liberapay if you want to send $10/month their way.

Re: Facebook Overhauls News Feed to Focus on What Friends and Family Share

#142

Post by drewmol »

untog wrote: post #35

I very much hope this isn't just words. The core problem, IMO, is that content that makes us angry, anxious or jealous is a much better driver of clicks than content that makes us happy. I'm sure Facebook knows this. If they really mean it, they'll accept that they will make less money as a result of this change. It would be the right decision in the long term, but the short term will hurt.

>It would be the right decision in the long term, but the short term will hurt.

It seems there's quite a bit of incentive to target short term gains for many of the relatively new tech companies. When tons of early employees hold incredibly valuable stock options, which tend to be more valuable than their salary's, this creates an organization wide incentive to drive those stock prices as high as possible during their tenure. Those early employees gain position and influence, then use it to influence company culture and direction.

Is assume this contributes to the reason why it's so hard for behemoth companies to be nimble and quickly change direction.

Re: Facebook Overhauls News Feed to Focus on What Friends and Family Share

#143

Post by jklp »

jrs235 wrote: post #14

I've unfollowed everyone. My feed only shows past memories. I love my feed. I highly recommend it.

I've recently started putting my photos on Apple's iCloud photo library (both on my iPhone and Mac) and every now and again I'll get a notification from the Photos app saying it's create a new Memory (a collection of photos in a "smart album" put together by their AI).

Has a very similar nostalgic feeling to what you're describing, and a welcome surprise - especially after a long day at work.

Re: Facebook Overhauls News Feed to Focus on What Friends and Family Share

#144

Post by rdiddly »

tinymollusk wrote: post #127
rdiddly wrote: post #118

Oh brother... the quote at the end there? "It’s important to me that when Max and August grow up that they feel like what their father built was good for the world." Why does it bother me? Let me analyze. OK 1) There are people out there who live their whole lives according to good values pretty much the whole time, and don't need the shock of parenthood to finally make them care about acting like a decent human bein…

I like to apply a test to myself, which I fail every time. Goes as follows: Can I literally write down a statement that would have changed my perspective on this statement/issue/perspective? Most things that I'm against, I cannot imagine myself not being against. One possible explanation is Zuckerberg is evil incarnate, but I believe the world is much more nuanced than that. If I cannot bring to life (and even metaph…

I hear ya, and obviously I would fail as well, though a few years of statements backed up by actions would definitely change my perspective. We'll just have to wait & see!

Re: Facebook Overhauls News Feed to Focus on What Friends and Family Share

#146

Post by drewmol »

tgragnato wrote: post #55
dTal wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like Facebook, and indeed the internet, is an unneccesary middleman for you.

Internet is an interconnection medium. People use this tool in very different ways. I understand this is an hyperbole, but it sounds really too far fetched. Facebook is not the internet.

True, unless your from a country where "free basics" is you're only offering ;-)

Re: Facebook Overhauls News Feed to Focus on What Friends and Family Share

#147

Post by apatters »

untog wrote: post #35

I very much hope this isn't just words. The core problem, IMO, is that content that makes us angry, anxious or jealous is a much better driver of clicks than content that makes us happy. I'm sure Facebook knows this. If they really mean it, they'll accept that they will make less money as a result of this change. It would be the right decision in the long term, but the short term will hurt.

Anecdotally, the only change I've noticed is that Facebook seems to be showing more ads (almost always for something I'm not interested in) in my news feed.

Re: Facebook Overhauls News Feed to Focus on What Friends and Family Share

#149

Post by Trundle »

freehunter wrote: post #77
roywiggins wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends. Some people use Facebook "likes" as a crappy replacement for RSS, so it's probably not great for them.

As someone who runs a business partly driven by people who use Facebook as a crappy replacement for RSS, I can confirm. Facebook made a change a while back where people who explicitly followed my page to keep up to date on local events and businesses suddenly were not seeing anything I posted. I had to start paying Facebook to keep them showing things to people, but even that is far slower than it had been. Out of ab…

SMS marketing is an option if your userbase isn't in to using the internet enough for email notifications to be an alternative to facebook updates.
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