Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 271 posts

Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#241

Post by amelius »

toddmorey wrote: post #38
propman wrote: post #32

Facebook has become almost completely useless to me yet I waste so much time on it every day. No one posts anything on it except like 3 guys who post 10 times a day that I barely know yet find their extremist political posts mind numbingly amusing. The news on there is trash, I much prefer the WSJ and if I want sensationalist things I'll go to Reddit and my tastes are more niche now so I have some forums I visit occa…

Leaving Facebook has honestly made me a happier guy. (I left my account active, but I've removed the apps from my phone and I only visit the site about once every three months to message someone my phone number.) Browsing the site always made me a bit angry (at the politics) and a bit sad (because someone else always seems to be on some impressive vacation). Then I'd close the browser be angry at myself for wasting t…

I sympathize, but there are two problems:

1. Events. For discovering events, there really is no good substitute to seeing where other people are going. I often get good event suggestions from Facebook through distant friends who would never invite me in real life.

2. Groups. For discussing stuff related to hobbies, people often use Facebook groups. E.g. a painting class, where people post their work, and post things like "let's visit this gallery tomorrow morning" or "there's a masterclass this weekend, who joins?".

Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#242

Post by Vinnl »

froindt wrote: post #14
nkrisc wrote: post #9

>The company also wants professional creators to post more videos to the site and make the platform a content hub on par with YouTube, a unit of Alphabet Inc.’s Google. That's interesting, because I've never been able to find a second time a video that popped up in my feed. For my experience, videos on Facebook might as well be ephemeral. forever vanishing the moment my feed refreshes itself automatically.

I experience the same thing and it's really frustrating. I refuse to install Facebook applications on my phone, and they've needlessly crippled their mobile site (disabling messages except mbasic.facebook.com among many other things). If I so much as check a notification then go back to the newsfeed, it's different content and hit/miss as to whether I can find the top post again.

People have been saying that Facebook has removed messaging from their mobile site for quite a while now, and all that time I've been fearing the moment that would happen for me. But it hasn't yet - I wonder why? The main difference I can think of is never having had the app installed, and using Firefox for Android with an ad blocker. You might give that a try and see if it comes back for you.

Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#243

Post by KozmoNau7 »

rypskar wrote: post #238
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a damn good incentive to uninstall the app. By going to mbasic.facebook.com in your browser instead, you use much less bandwidth and you get to use an adblocker (in Firefox, at least), to help weed out most of the nonsense FB throws at you.

I don't see how the 2MB of mobile data the FB app have used so far this month would be any less if I had used the mobile page instead. Going to the web-page is a much worse user experience when you mostly use the app to get notifications you have filtered out to actually get instead of using it to look at stuff you are not interested in. You don't see all the stuff you don't want to see if you don't keep opening the…

By going there in a browser (and specifically to the mbasic version), you weed out the javascript tracking and bloat, and your adblocker gets to weed out the ads and sponsored content nonsense. As a bonus, there are no auto-playing videos or any of that other junk. That is the problem with using the app (and apps in general): They try very hard to prevent you from blocking ads and sponsored content.

That frees you up to use Facebook for its actual useful function: Handling events and possibly the most genuinely important updates from your friends, without the bloat.

The pared-down user experience in the mbasic version is the entire point. I already filter out everything I don't consider important, and using the mbasic version is another step in the direction of reducing distractions. It also doesn't do the weird re-arranging of discussions and broken infinite scroll that the app does.

It's simply a much easier and less annoying experience.

Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#244

Post by loriverkutya »

skc wrote: post #219
fpisfun wrote: post #60

They're dying, it may be a very slow death but the process has begun. They will become like Yahoo, Myspace, Aol, etc. They are not a Google that can pivot and do a number of different things. Also I've come to realize that Google has a much different relationship with it's users, Google doesn't try to suck up all your time it just tries to give you what you want when you want it, Facebook tries to gamify everything s…

Really? Every SV think piece I read has Facebook, Apple, Google and Amazon as the unassailable leaders of the industry. HN comments would have one believe that everybody hates Facebook when the reality is that most regular people find it very useful. And on top of that, there is a certain amount of hypocrisy here. How many HN commenters who hate Facebook, still work for startups that have (and profit off of) a Facebo…

I'm not sure you are aware, but you are not the startup you work for. (or at least most people are not)

And in reality maybe Facebook is useful, it is still designed and built for one purpose (as every company in world), to maximize profit. And they are doing it by turning their users into dopamine addicts. So it does not matter if it has useful functions when it turns you into an addict.

Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#245

Post by madmulita »

exelius wrote: post #189
kelnos wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little OT, but I think public perception really muddies this a lot. To expand on the siblings' example of Uber, the public seems to mostly think Uber=unethical & Lyft=ethical, but really, they engage in many of the same business practices. Uber has a worse reputation because of their sexual harassment scandals and outspoken douchebag former CEO. Lyft tries to brand themselves as the hippie-dippy summer-of-love shar…

It’s not corruption if you call it disruptive!

Or social!

Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#246

Post by Liquidor »

adjkant wrote: post #58

For anyone using Facebook as a messaging/group/event service, I cannot recommend the Facebook News Feed Eridactor more. It literally just blocks it all. Not perfect for all users, but it has really helped me spend less time wasting away scrolling out of habit. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat... PS: The daily quote feature can be toggled off.

You can just unfollow your entire friends list except for the few people you actually want to see content from and your feed is basically not changing at all except for those VERY few updates from your select friends.

And don't forget to use Messenger Lite.

Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#248

Post by sprash »

fpisfun wrote: post #60

They're dying, it may be a very slow death but the process has begun. They will become like Yahoo, Myspace, Aol, etc. They are not a Google that can pivot and do a number of different things. Also I've come to realize that Google has a much different relationship with it's users, Google doesn't try to suck up all your time it just tries to give you what you want when you want it, Facebook tries to gamify everything s…

If you look at the Facebook chart you see a classic runaway gap in July 2013. Historically those gaps always get closed. This means it will eventually fall back to 20/30 USD (currently 175 USD). The question is just when.

Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#249

Post by [deleted] »

propman wrote: post #32

Facebook has become almost completely useless to me yet I waste so much time on it every day. No one posts anything on it except like 3 guys who post 10 times a day that I barely know yet find their extremist political posts mind numbingly amusing. The news on there is trash, I much prefer the WSJ and if I want sensationalist things I'll go to Reddit and my tastes are more niche now so I have some forums I visit occa…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook Will Introduce Ads as Videos Start, a Move Long Resisted

#250

Post by nkrisc »

hrktb wrote: post #223
nkrisc wrote: post #9

>The company also wants professional creators to post more videos to the site and make the platform a content hub on par with YouTube, a unit of Alphabet Inc.’s Google. That's interesting, because I've never been able to find a second time a video that popped up in my feed. For my experience, videos on Facebook might as well be ephemeral. forever vanishing the moment my feed refreshes itself automatically.

That should not be far off with the current viral video market though. I follow CGPGrey who does 3~7 min videos, and the main use case is a user looking at it when it pops up, and let it fade into the void after that. Do that for 3M people in roughly 24h, and it’s done. The rest of the life of the video will have minimal financial returns from that point, and the creator can focus on the next viral topic.

That makes sense, considering YouTube videos probably follow a similar pattern even though it's pretty easy to search for them at any time.

Though maybe it's just me but I don't go to Facebook looking for video content because I can't actively seek anything I'm interested in or find that cool video my friend told me about. If someone says they saw a cool video in Facebook I go look for it on YouTube first.

Post reply on HN