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Comment by system16 | Hacker News Reader

I guess they need to do something to increase engagement because - anecdotally, yes - the amount of sharing and engagement in my feed has dropped dramatically in recent years. A rough guess would be ~3/4 of the content I see now are just likes/reactions and comments my friends made on other content (usually articles or memes). I'm sure most of my friends have no idea I'm seeing this, and if they did they would probably interact with FB even less. I'm very hesitant to interact with FB at all now, and just do a quick scroll through every other day.

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Yeah. When you are "friends" with your grandmother, boss, Mary from elementary school and your ex's mother you won't share that much. And those who will share anything in that kind of environment are the people you don't want to hear from ...

Yes, you can group your friends and just share with some of them, but who has time for that?

I'm even hesitant to write anything in semi-open groups as I'm not sure if what I write will show up on my friends wall. It's not like what I'm writing is extreme or private, I just don't need it to be actively shared with all my "friends.

This seems to be very much down to disposition

This^100.

It's interesting that facebook got it initially right, and NEVER implemented 'who's viewed your profile/picture' - as they know that this (possibility of others seeing our actions) would greatly reduce our actions/viewing (us fearing it being visible).

WHILE now, they're not getting it right and publish our actions (likes/comments) like a mad spammer.

It looks like they crossed the border while playing with our curiosity what-others-do, but forgotten that this means, that our actions need to be revealed to others also which will make us reluctant the moment we understand implications.

Snow ball effect to come?

I find that the terminology used also matters in how people know about managing the audience for what they write. In Facebook, you have to create "lists", which nobody knows about and most people don't care to create. In Google+, from the beginning you're told about "circles" (like "friends circle"), which is so easy to understand and also choose the cirles you want to address when publishing posts.

In this regard, Facebook has always seemed like it wanted people to overshare with everybody (it's been proven with its blunders on the privacy front). Now the same overload is causing fatigue among its users (at least to some extent).

I'm frustrated that Google+ has been stagnant like a beta service without new features or even addressing usability issues to make it better for years now (vanity URLs for groups/users - still no; changing group privacy after creation - still no; and many other annoyances).

> I'm sure most of my friends have no idea I'm seeing this, and if they did they would probably interact with FB even less. I'm very hesitant to interact with FB at all now, and just do a quick scroll through every other day.

That's exactly how I feel. Facebook shows to me, to the right side of the screen, a feed of all the comments and likes my friends make everywhere on the site, even on pages I don't like or on walls of people who are not my friends. It's like some kind of "spy mode" which makes me reluctant to comment anywhere (what if my friends will read it?).

same here. It used to be on the right side of the screen only, but now some of them appear on people's timeline as well. If you like someone's recent posts you will start seeing more of what they comment on other random posts. It makes me reluctant to comment anywhere as well because of this.

Psychology says most people get more addicted when ~3/4 of the games played end up with no reward.

Gotta love addiction optimization, one of the many wonderful sciences the modern age has brought us. See also: drop rate optimization in games.

I found I get a much more interesting "news feed" in the iOS app by searching for "Posts by my friends". Gives you a long scroll view with none of the Pages fluff.

That should be an option on the website as well. I don't care about people comment, shared or re-shared stuff. I just want to see the things my friends post directly. I guess it not really something that Facebook can turn a profit on.

Yeah, at some point my FB feed became dominated by links to other sites, essentially not much different than Upworthy.

Like you, I found myself doing the "quick scroll through" until I finally deactivated my account.

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