141–150 of 187 posts
Part of the problem is a lot of people enjoy the anger.
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This ^^^!!! People are, or can be, total garbage, especially when they're behind a keyboard and not face-to-face.
I can absolutely confirm this, I fell down an unfortunate rabbit hole of posting about politics on Reddit (fairly mainstream politics, but politics nonetheless). There's nothing quite like the dopamine rush of righteous anger, and mixing that with the disinhibition of just being another pseudonym it's quite easy to understand why "enrangement is engagement" is such a powerful and insideous tool to drive people's use…
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Anecdotally this is what I've been seeing over the years. Most of my friends and acquaintances seem to have left Facebook behind and moved to Insta. The people that stayed on FB are mostly those who like to express strong opinions and engage in pointless discussions.
Sadly, some of my friends now use Insta to propagate the same level of political vitriol as they did on FB. They just leverage text overlays to accomplish their goal.
I gave it up a year or so ago. Lots of pictures from the last ten years of my life were lost. Which is fine. The last decade has been a huge shitstorm for me.
Facebook did leverage my attention seeking and my unhealthy need to be seen as right and smart.
I don’t miss it. I think their platform does a lot of damage in the world. Yet I’m sure that many people get value from it as well.
FB is almost dead for me in terms of interaction with individuals.
A few of my friends post a meme now and then and I look for events.
That's it.
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Yup, which points out the fundamental problem: Facebook is a product of its incentives. Its incentive is to maximize engagement. Why? Because more engagement equates to more ad revenue. The externalities of this behavior do not align with what society seeks. Therefore, if we wish to fundamentally transform Facebook, then we must change the incentives. The incentives are not going to change on their own. Enough time h…
Couldn't a company outside the US just set up a free Facebook competitor then?
Meanwhile, my feed has zero politics and is comprised almost entirely of retro video game stuff, plus a few local NYC groups. I kind of love it!
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Anecdotally this is what I've been seeing over the years. Most of my friends and acquaintances seem to have left Facebook behind and moved to Insta. The people that stayed on FB are mostly those who like to express strong opinions and engage in pointless discussions.
Living in a country of 1.5 million people, it often feels devastating how big a part of political/intellectual discussion in our (tiny) language actually takes place in Facebook. I have worked in journalism, so maybe it's sour grapes in a way, but: most of the great writers are there. All the politicians are there. Our prime minister first announces crucial things on her FB wall, etc. In short, if you want to partici…