| ▲ | PaulKeeble 3 hours ago |
| "Over time, my timeline contained fewer and fewer posts from friends and more and more content from random strangers. " It still baffles me that Facebook fills up my feed with random garbage I have no interest in. I barely use it now because their generated content gets in the way of the reason why I opened facebook to begin with. These algorithmic feeds clearly work for someone but its not what I am looking for, I want to see what I follow and nothing else unless I explictly go looking for it. |
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| ▲ | steveBK123 an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| Instagram followed a similar trajectory for me.
For a while, as a photography hobbyist, it was a far more "active" social community for photography enthusiasts than whatever came before (Flickr, Smugmug, photo.net, various niche forums). I made photography friends thru it that I met in person even when traveling overseas. This lasted maybe 2 years. Then all the "normies" got on it and my feed started to just be casual snaps by people I knew in real life... which rapidly lead to its final form. It is now fully an influencer economy of people making a full-time job out of posting thirst traps / status envy / travelp*rn / whatever you wanna call it. It is a complete inundation of spend spend spend. |
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| ▲ | keyraycheck 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| While number of active users still grows, one have to ask a question, who is left on facebook aside from dopamine junkies and bots. The only reason why I didn’t delete facebook is messenger, where I chat with old folks. |
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| ▲ | CraigRood 5 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | The growth is across the family of products (inc Instagram and WhatsApp) not Facebook itself. Facebook itself is a zombie, and I don't believe they have a way to innovate out of it. I'm not going to predict the end of Meta, they have more than enough products, but agreed that it's actually quite difficult to understand who's really left. | |
| ▲ | ericmay an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | “Who is left on Facebook besides dopamine junkies and bots?” “I only use it in this limited circumstance” You are on Facebook. That’s who. It’s like saying you’re not a drinker because you have a glass of wine every once in a while. Sure you’re not an addict (probably) but you still drink. | | |
| ▲ | thaumasiotes an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > It’s like saying you’re not a drinker because you have a glass of wine every once in a while. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animals-and-us/20110... > Take a 2002 Times/CNN poll on the eating habits of 10,000 Americans. Six percent of the individuals surveyed said they considered themselves vegetarian. But when asked by the pollsters what they had eaten in the last 24 hours, 60% of the self-described "vegetarians" admitted that that had consumed red meat, poultry, or fish the previous day. | |
| ▲ | theodric an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'm happy they've been able to build a $1,660,000,000,000 company on the back of me logging in once every two months, scrolling 3 posts, getting disgusted with slop, and closing the tab. Gives me hope that my harebrained ventures may also succeed! | | |
| ▲ | airstrike 41 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I love the unabbreviated $1,660,000,000,000 lol It reminded me of Waxahatchee's > You let me take my own damn car > To Brooklyn, New York, USA | |
| ▲ | ericmay an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don't buy it. You use it more than that - otherwise you'd just delete your account. | | |
| ▲ | morissette 44 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I’m down to 3 hours a week of social media woot! | | | |
| ▲ | bluGill an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That is about right for me. I scoll a little longer but as soon as it changes from people I care to follow to slop I'm gone for a couple more months. there is value in following distant friends but it isn't worth hours per day of sorting through slop to find it. When it is only every month or two the non-slop still seems to rise to the top. (But God only knows what non slop they choose not to show me) I wish there was a way to block all 'so-and-so shared' as that is where most of the slop comes from. (Ads at least I can say is how they pay the bills and so I accept a few as non-slop) | |
| ▲ | lanfeust6 25 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I keep mine alive a) to squat on the account for my identity, b) just because I know there are family members that will do posts/messages once in awhile instead of sending me a direct SMS, so I log in every few months | |
| ▲ | carlosjobim 26 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's for messaging with old people. It's like having a telephone doesn't mean you're talking all day. It's for people to be able to contact you and vice versa. |
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| ▲ | ben_w 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > who is left on facebook aside from dopamine junkies and bots. Political activists, like a former partner of mine. … who I mute, because I am a British person living in Berlin, I don't need or want "Demexit Memes" and similar groups, which is 90% of what they post … … which in turn means that sometimes when I visit Facebook, my feed is actually empty, because nobody else is posting anything … … which is still an improvement on when the algorithm decides to fill it up with junk, as the algorithm shows me people I don't know doing things I don't care abut interspersed with adverts for stuff I can't use (for all they talk about the "value" of the ads, I get ads both for dick pills and boob surgery, and tax advisors for a country I don't live in who specialise in helping people renounce I nationality I never had in the first place, and sometimes ads I not only can't read but can't even pronounce because they're in cyrillic). | | |
| ▲ | naravara 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I take poorly directed targeting advertisements as a performance indicator for how well my data privacy efforts are working. When the ad targeting has you dead to rights is when you need to worry. | | |
| ▲ | ben_w 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | To an extent, sure, but I think also a sign their analytics were never as good as they claimed. For example, so far as I know my name is strongly gendered male, so why the boob surgery ads? | | |
| ▲ | thaumasiotes an hour ago | parent [-] | | > my name is strongly gendered male, so why the boob surgery ads? Probably so you can suggest it to your partner. |
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| ▲ | grvdrm 25 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Around me I see this usage: - Older folks. - People using marketplace - People exchanging inter-personal tips and info: best stroller, contractor, etc. Not saying FB is best for those things but it doesn’t seem dead at all. | |
| ▲ | loloquwowndueo 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Plot twist: all old folks were also on Facebook only to chat with other old folks. Once this fact was spotted, they all just moved to Discord. |
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| ▲ | hippo22 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Your friends don’t produce much content yet people had a need for frequent entertainment. Also, people realized that posting things to social media meant that it was there forever. This led to a bifurcation: friends / family updates are mostly relegated to temporary formats like stories while “feed” content is professional produced. |
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| ▲ | bad_username 43 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > These algorithmic feeds clearly work for someone They clearly work for advertisers, and that's all that matters. |
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| ▲ | dyauspitr 24 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| For many people, the alternative would be that their feeds are completely empty since a lot of folks don’t post any updates on Facebook really. |
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| ▲ | BorisMelnik 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| hey you know there is a feed on mobile, built into the app that only shows you your friends feed? not a fb employee or defending them just relaying info. |
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| ▲ | magicmicah85 29 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | The funny thing about the friends feed is that it highlights for me who is extremely active on the platform. People resharing stuff all the time. And, it's one of the few feeds you can't endlessly scroll through. It will tell you to "check back later" once you get to 3-4 days of updates. No money in showing people their friends feeds, so why let them endlessly scroll. | |
| ▲ | JKCalhoun an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Too late. (And I don't do mobile anyway.) I don't wish to sound like I am shooting the messenger here, but Meta just has way, way too much baggage for me to ever consider returning. |
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| ▲ | cyanydeez an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| People seek novelty. Real social networks do not change as fast as that. |
