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How Facebook makes us dumber

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Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#61

Post by TeMPOraL »

randycupertino wrote: post #59
TeMPOraL wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: Facebook is quite inconspicuous about displaying fanpage likes; i.e. your friends will probably miss the information that you've liked some fanpage. Each of your friends most likely has hundreds of books, movies and commercial venues liked (you can check that in their profile), and you probably haven't seen a single one of them popping up on your timeline.

Really? Interesting, because I get spammed pretty constantly that my friends "liked" Barkbox or whatever stupid MLM pyramid scheme is the current fad in my newsfeed pretty constantly. In fact, the Barkbox one shows up almost every few days. Is that just because Barkbox is advertising on facebook? I always thought if I liked anything it would reciprocatively show up in their newsfeeds.

It depends on number of friends and your general feed load. What I've noticed is that articles you've liked tend to show more often on others' feeds than fanpages you liked. Also, the latter used to be a smaller notification. I think recently it's more visible because they started to show summaries of selected posts under the fanpage name.

Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#62

Post by pferde »

tim333 wrote: post #12
dest wrote: post #2

As a search provider, DuckDuckGo tries to prevent the "gated community" syndrom: http://dontbubble.us/

I tried their test of googling for "guns" as usual, in incognito mode and using another browser. Identical results. Dunno if I'm doing it wrong?

It just might mean that they saw through your "It's not me, it's someone else" charade.

Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#63

Post by yoz-y »

inthewoods wrote: post #42
yoz-y wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one point people estimated that a Facebook like was worth quite a lot of money. I am quite sure that now the value has greatly diminished, nevertheless I do think that it is better than having an e-mail. There are several reasons for that: - First (at least for me), an unsolicited e-mail goes directly into trash and I seek the unsubscribe button. Under no circumstances I am interested in additional stuff somebody…

"At one point people estimated that a Facebook like was worth quite a lot of money. I am quite sure that now the value has greatly diminished" Have you looked at a stock chart of Facebook recently? All time high basically and worth $220b. Or did you mean the value the company brings to the user?

Value for the user. One Facebook "like" has various estimations of a price and some of them were quite hight (even going to thousands of dollars). A quickly found link from 2013 resumes some estimates: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-a-facebook-like-actua...

Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#64

Post by [deleted] »

sly_foxx wrote: post #29

What I don't get is dumb companies who post a link to their FB(or some other social media) page on their site: 1. You're advertising another company for free. Is Facebook paying you to put their logo on your site? No. 2. When people like/follow your page, they are trapped by FB(or some other social media) and you can only reach them there. If you're banned or they pull bait-and-switch on you, like Facebook did, you'v…

[deleted]

Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#65

Post by return0 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #39
sly_foxx wrote: post #29

What I don't get is dumb companies who post a link to their FB(or some other social media) page on their site: 1. You're advertising another company for free. Is Facebook paying you to put their logo on your site? No. 2. When people like/follow your page, they are trapped by FB(or some other social media) and you can only reach them there. If you're banned or they pull bait-and-switch on you, like Facebook did, you'v…

> 1. You're advertising another company for free. Is Facebook paying you to put their logo on your site? No. First of all, it doesn't matter. Facebook is not your competitor, so you're not harming yourself. Secondly, Facebook is an immensely popular communications platform . Even if for some reason you dislike them because they're privately owned, it doesn't change the fact that that's where people are . If you want…

> That is totally by design and again, very much a feature.

No, it wasnt like that when most of the Pages acquired the bulk of their followers, they could reach all their audience freely. It was a shitty idea solely to make money, it didn't "add value" to users. There were other, more meaningful ways to implement this, e.g. show Page posts on a separate tab, have limits of posts/day etc. Paying for views is a bad strategy to improve quality; imagine if HN worked like that.

Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#67

Post by TeMPOraL »

return0 wrote: post #65
TeMPOraL wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. You're advertising another company for free. Is Facebook paying you to put their logo on your site? No. First of all, it doesn't matter. Facebook is not your competitor, so you're not harming yourself. Secondly, Facebook is an immensely popular communications platform . Even if for some reason you dislike them because they're privately owned, it doesn't change the fact that that's where people are . If you want…

> That is totally by design and again, very much a feature. No, it wasnt like that when most of the Pages acquired the bulk of their followers, they could reach all their audience freely. It was a shitty idea solely to make money, it didn't "add value" to users. There were other, more meaningful ways to implement this, e.g. show Page posts on a separate tab, have limits of posts/day etc. Paying for views is a bad str…

You can still reach some of your audience freely. You can argue that Facebook is rent-seeking, but consider the problem that it solves: if every fanpage could reach all their audience for free, every user's timeline would turn into a product catalog.

Just go and count how many things you've liked so far. I have 821 "items" liked, most of them fanpages. If every one of them would be able to reach me with all their posts, I'd quit Facebook on the spot. The users are not there for the fanpages. That's why Facebook won't let companies hit everyone. Now whether or not they should allow people to pay for wider reach, that's questionable, but then again - it at least makes people prioritize. If you have a limited marketing budget, you will tend to pay for and thus prioritize more important communication.

Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#68

Post by warkid »

danieltillett wrote: post #21
zappo2938 wrote: post #9

Reddit too. I just wrote 500 words without using any logical fallacies backing up my assertions with scientific studies from trusted sources, why does my comment have -12 points without a single person taking the time to refute my position in a comment? I believe managed, licenced hunting in Africa supports conservation efforts, there is no reason ever to spank or hit a child, all children should be vaccinated, and p…

Just out of curiosity why do you think children should never be spanked? Do you have children?

Imagine there are giant creatures(like 5-6 meter tall) and they are proportionally stronger than you. They follow you everywhere and(though they wash and feed you) they also sometimes hit you with their huge palms?

Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#69

Post by kaybe »

ajuc wrote: post #23
tomp wrote: post #7

Hm... the alternative explanation is, people were always dumb, Facebook (and internet in general) just makes it more apparent by giving us more oportunities to display our stupidity.

> Before I used internet for the first time I had no idea how many stupid people there are [Stanisław Lem]

That was supposed to be up, not down..

Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#70

Post by eggie »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #39
sly_foxx wrote: post #29

What I don't get is dumb companies who post a link to their FB(or some other social media) page on their site: 1. You're advertising another company for free. Is Facebook paying you to put their logo on your site? No. 2. When people like/follow your page, they are trapped by FB(or some other social media) and you can only reach them there. If you're banned or they pull bait-and-switch on you, like Facebook did, you'v…

> 1. You're advertising another company for free. Is Facebook paying you to put their logo on your site? No. First of all, it doesn't matter. Facebook is not your competitor, so you're not harming yourself. Secondly, Facebook is an immensely popular communications platform . Even if for some reason you dislike them because they're privately owned, it doesn't change the fact that that's where people are . If you want…

> First of all, it doesn't matter. Facebook is not your competitor, so you're not harming yourself.

You start by saying that Facebook is not a competitor, but in taking over part of your core business--- keeping track of potential customers--- it could be seen as that.

> Secondly, Facebook is an immensely popular communications platform. Even if for some reason you dislike them because they're privately owned, it doesn't change the fact that that's where people are. If you want to reach people, you want to be where they are.

Facebook's objective is total control of all communication and it will stubbornly refuse to allow the migration of its data off platform. It will fight tooth and nail to prevent any other competing alternatives for social communication (such as open ones like email) from being seen as viable. Frankly, that's a business risk for us all, because it moves control of communication into the hands of a third party. By coming down hard in support of them you are doing an important part of their marketing dirty work.

The net benefit for consumers is unclear. They may like it now but we are still in the honeymoon phase of this monopolistic process.

> I mean, I get it. There are some exchanges we both agree that we want to have. You can't make a reliable newsletter via Facebook, nor I would like to get my account info through Messenger. But please move your ad communications to Facebook, where they will be unobtrusive for us and properly curtailed by the platform.

Your support for them is so superlative that I have to ask: Do you have a stake in Facebook?

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