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We accidentally recreated old Facebook

amrshawky.com

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Re: We accidentally recreated old Facebook

#31

Post by andrepd »

brenschluss wrote: post #9

Ah, see, you didn’t recreate it just because of the interface; you recreated because it’s currently a high-trust social environment, because your friends and family are using it, because they know who you are. Old Facebook was high-trust because we all were naive and trusting. Perhaps the question is how to continue to create high-trust environments from a social perspective, not an interface perspective.

Oh come on... "Chronological feed of your friend's posts" and "algorithmic mix of your follows, paid content, and shit optimised to keep you engaged" are two VERY different beasts. This is why Facebook of 2008 is different from Facebook/instagram/etc of 2026, not because the people or communities were somehow different.

Re: We accidentally recreated old Facebook

#33

Post by amr_shawky »

bobtheowl2 wrote: post #32

Was does the 'inherited' toggle on the main screen imply?

Its for the photos, in a nutshell the 'chat' will inherit/show you albums from everywhere that the user/group is a subset. For example, if you have a family group with a bunch of family photos, and you open the 'chat' with a sibling, you'll also see the family photos since the sibling is a subset of the family, unless you toggle inherited off, in that case it'll only show you albums with you and your sibling exclusively. Just a filtering mechanism for convenience

Re: We accidentally recreated old Facebook

#34

Post by _carbyau_ »

andrepd wrote: post #31
brenschluss wrote: post #9

Ah, see, you didn’t recreate it just because of the interface; you recreated because it’s currently a high-trust social environment, because your friends and family are using it, because they know who you are. Old Facebook was high-trust because we all were naive and trusting. Perhaps the question is how to continue to create high-trust environments from a social perspective, not an interface perspective.

Oh come on... "Chronological feed of your friend's posts" and "algorithmic mix of your follows, paid content, and shit optimised to keep you engaged" are two VERY different beasts. This is why Facebook of 2008 is different from Facebook/instagram/etc of 2026, not because the people or communities were somehow different.

Once Facebook removed "chronological" as a feed option I was less engaged. I couldn't connect with my people meaningfully anymore.

Re: We accidentally recreated old Facebook

#35

Post by troad »

brenschluss wrote: post #9

Ah, see, you didn’t recreate it just because of the interface; you recreated because it’s currently a high-trust social environment, because your friends and family are using it, because they know who you are. Old Facebook was high-trust because we all were naive and trusting. Perhaps the question is how to continue to create high-trust environments from a social perspective, not an interface perspective.

This is an important observation, but there were specific technological choices that Old FB made that were conducive to becoming and staying high-trust. For so long as your feed was just your friends and family, you'd effectively perceive FB itself as the place where your friends and family are. It was ingenious.

Facebook figured out how to scale this high-trust environment infinitely (mutual friending required, limiting engagement to friends or mutuals, etc), and then threw it all away when your feed stopped being "your dear friend Jenny got married" and became "your dear friend Dua Lipa wants you to buy her new album".

Re: We accidentally recreated old Facebook

#36

Post by ghssds »

danielrhodes wrote: post #28

The reason Facebook is where it is now is that when it was novel there was a lot of engagement. But as the novelty wore off, it became clear that your friends were not going to be able to produce the amount of interesting content you’d need to stay engaged. Most people probably don’t have enough friends on FB making the problem worse. In addition, Facebook’s privacy model requiring a double opt-in friendship makes it…

Old Slashdot had the right ideas. You could mark anyone as friend or foe. If somone marked you as friend, it was your fan. If someone marked you as foe, it was your freak. Then you could make your friends', foes', fans' and freaks' posts more or less visible, as you wished.

There was no "like" for posts but a much more evolved system: you could brand posts as interresting, informative, insightful, funny, underrated, overrated, flamebait or troll.

Slashdot was never a social media, but it sure had a few features that could have been used to turn it into an interresting one.

Re: We accidentally recreated old Facebook

#38

Post by sharts »

danielrhodes wrote: post #28

The reason Facebook is where it is now is that when it was novel there was a lot of engagement. But as the novelty wore off, it became clear that your friends were not going to be able to produce the amount of interesting content you’d need to stay engaged. Most people probably don’t have enough friends on FB making the problem worse. In addition, Facebook’s privacy model requiring a double opt-in friendship makes it…

The problem is when something that has some marginal utility to people becomes something that MBAs see as a tool to extract as much $$ from people. And then the enshitification begins.

Re: We accidentally recreated old Facebook

#39

Post by hawaiianbrah »

mikez302 wrote: post #37
LightBug1 wrote: post #22

Drop the "Pic". Just "Pocket". It's cleaner.

I kind of like "PicPocket". "Pocket" is too easily confused with Mozilla Pocket IMO.

Mozilla Pocket is defunct now, so not necessarily a big problem. Maybe it’s a way to leverage a somewhat known name…

Re: We accidentally recreated old Facebook

#40

Post by everybodyknows »

ghssds wrote: post #36
danielrhodes wrote: post #28

The reason Facebook is where it is now is that when it was novel there was a lot of engagement. But as the novelty wore off, it became clear that your friends were not going to be able to produce the amount of interesting content you’d need to stay engaged. Most people probably don’t have enough friends on FB making the problem worse. In addition, Facebook’s privacy model requiring a double opt-in friendship makes it…

Old Slashdot had the right ideas. You could mark anyone as friend or foe. If somone marked you as friend, it was your fan. If someone marked you as foe, it was your freak. Then you could make your friends', foes', fans' and freaks' posts more or less visible, as you wished. There was no "like" for posts but a much more evolved system: you could brand posts as interresting, informative, insightful, funny, underrated,…

Did Slashdot reveal your identity to those whom you had "foe'd"? That's where the real-life trouble can start.
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