Personally I don't care they're just copying a rival. I do not have/use Tiktok and do easily spend a good chunk of time looking at the "reels" in IG. Even if most of these turn out to be direct lifts out of Tiktok, I'm not about to "switch" or even open an account over there, I already have the content over here. I assume that's part of the strategy to not hemorrhage users, in my case it works.
Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy
361–370 of 484 posts
Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
>there's some code out there that is a work of art and can inspire awe in everyone. and the people who wrote it didn't spend thousands of hours memorizing the same stupid leetcode exercises to pass lame interviews for 6 figures job, they worked on real projects tell me the fast inverse square root from Carmack would have been praised in an interview...
Leetcode isn't an alternative to real world projects, it's an alternative to textbooks and lectures for beginners. Zuckerberg was able to build Facebook because he got a good education and understood graph theory enough to apply it to social networks. In the past, the only people who really understood concepts like graphs were people who endured rigorous four-year computer science curriculums. And only top students a…
Zuckerburg stole the idea of the product and knew php. I don’t think he needed graph theory to build it and his education was really only Exeter at that point.
Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy
#363If at least the algorithm was any good, people might not have complained as much. Like, I only follow sport stuff. Some triathletes, professional bicyclists, skiers etc. What does Instagram then decide to show me? A female cyclist with her zipper down and lots of cleavage, a skier in bikini, ass pics of swimmers etc.. Probably that's the most trending stuff related to my interests, but I follow no accounts related to…
I'm not open to discovering new content in social media, that's it. If I want to see someone's posts, there's a handy "follow" button for that. If I don't want to see someone's posts, I don't follow them. Force-feeding me content from people I don't follow in an attempt to manipulate me simply annoys me. The best algorithm is "ORDER BY `created_at` DESC".
If I want to see content from people I don't know, I use YouTube, Reddit or HN — simple as that. I don't use TikTok out of principle.
Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy
#364All of social media is broken right now. Instagram actively hides pics from my step kids, nephew and niece to show me "reels" from people I don't follow. Last night a photo from my step daughter flickered briefly and then was lost. I couldn't find it again until this morning. I literally can't find their content anymore without scrolling and dodging videos that keep popping up. Youtube broke entirely a few months ago…
> Instagram actively hides pics from my step kids, nephew and niece to show me "reels" from people I don't follow. I find it all that for all the data these companies have, they don't seem to be using it well...or stopped using it. Facebook has suddenly started flooding me with posts from political meme groups I never joined and have never even looked at. Twitch's recommended section used to be spot-on. Now they're t…
these changes are all driven by a/b testing and watching user average watchtime increase.
this stuff is appealing to most people. they measured it. it's how they make money
Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy
#365Instagram's biggest failing in trying to copy Tiktok is their feed algorithm. Tiktok has nailed the delightful "stumble upon" effect of getting users of all ages to keep going to the next and the next video. I don't mind how each new piece of content is paged because the content is better for the format and it doesn't feel clunky when I do want to skip to the next one. Instagram couldn't switch their algorithm becaus…
> Tiktok has nailed the delightful "stumble upon" I didn't understand the appeal of Tiktok until just now when I read your comment. I was a StumbleUpon.com addict in 2006-07. I spent hours a day on it, saw really interesting content and even made some IRL friends. I have no idea why they killed that site. I'll give Tiktok another try.
They killed the site, because they ran out of money.
Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy
#366This is what happens when you manage to metrics. "Engagement" is the metric and the incredibly obviously stupid problem with it as your optimisation goal that is apparently ungraspable by the leadership of every single social network. It infects everything down even to Google search rankings. If you can quickly and easily find the info you want then that reduces "engagement" and that is bad, apparently.
It's totally graspable.
Users are unable/unwilling to spend a penny on social networks, hence ads it is, hence engagement it is.
If users would pay a monthly fee at scale, it wouldn't be needed. They'd in fact be happy if you'd keep your engagement brief.
Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy
#367It's fascinating how reactionary and directionless Instagram and Facebook have become. Instagram in particular has become Frankenstein's monster over the last few years, pathetically trying to reproduce functionality from other apps. The latest cloning of TikTok's feed is almost embarrassing. It's a testament to how deep the lack of a creative culture at Meta runs.
> It's a testament to how deep the lack of a creative culture at Meta runs.
This seems to be it. Meta only "innovates" to copy competitors. WhatsApp was a threat and was bought. Same for Instagram. Snapchat couldn't be bought, so it became stories and is now part of every product Meta owns.
TikTok is the latest threat, and history repeats itself. Instead of creating a superior product that people want to use, Meta is sacrificing Instagram to replicate TikTok's every feature (including finally paying creators).
Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually it's pretty smart to reward the inventive ones and punish the freeloaders, or else there'd be a rush to become a freeloader and stop the hard work of inventing - leading to species-wide collapse.
The reward of a novel invention is enough to keep it going. Look at science. All ideas are published and shared and you don't have this freeloader issue, because the rewards follow innovation even when those innovations are pubically shared. Also take a look at your own work. Chances are you are freeloading on someone else's ideas with everything you do, and there are huge chunks of process that you are only able to…
But science has a big system of distributing money up front to people to do the work of innovating. There is no such system in place to fund people developing innovative products that require significant up front investment.
Also the "product" of science innovation is the actual innovation and being first to publish. An equivalent freeloader problem would not be someone copying the idea/papers after they are released. It would be spying inside the laboratory, copying the ideas and releasing competing papers before the actual researcher releases their own. If that was happening, I am sure you would object.
Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy
#369All of social media is broken right now. Instagram actively hides pics from my step kids, nephew and niece to show me "reels" from people I don't follow. Last night a photo from my step daughter flickered briefly and then was lost. I couldn't find it again until this morning. I literally can't find their content anymore without scrolling and dodging videos that keep popping up. Youtube broke entirely a few months ago…
> All of social media is broken right now.
Not all, at least for me.
VKontakte is the least broken of them all. There's still chronological feed and 95% of it is posts from people and pages you follow. But I imagine it's not very popular, or even known, outside of Russian-speaking countries. Don't get me wrong, there are product managers now and they do keep on relentlessly pushing their agenda (the TikTok clone aka "clips" no one asked for), but compared to what Facebook/Instagram routinely pulls off, VK feels extremely conservative.
Twitter has an algorithmic feed at all? I tend to forget that. There's a small button at the top right that I never click. One thing that DOES annoy the crap out of me though, is their insistence on exposing me to people I don't follow. Those "%user% liked" and "%user% follows" things. If only there was a dedicated button for showing someone else's tweet to your followers!
Re: Instagram is shifting to videos – users aren't happy
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are Chinese companies doing metaverse wise?
Likely waiting on stolen metaverse R&D from American companies given to them from the Chinese government. That's the entire Chinese nation-state backed hackers MO. Steal R&D from Fortune 500 companies to then give it to private Chinese businesses to further the Chinese economy. Why waste your own time/money/resources on R&D when you can just steal it. Same with IP and IP laws. - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinese-h…
Tbh I find this comment hilarious given the story we are commenting on. In this case, it is Meta/Instagram that is trying to copy TikTok, and yet still can't pull off as good a recommendation algorithm.