“This Is Serious”: Facebook Begins Its Downward Spiral
vanityfair.com
vanityfair.com
Its reputation, however, is a total disaster. Last week when someone posed the theory that Instagram strategically holds likes from users who they determine as needing to use the site more (apparently untrue), most people took at as fact. Hell I did.
And why wouldn't you. Every time you add a friend on Facebook it gives you a fake notification on Messenger. Everytime you go on your Instagram profile it nudges you to give away your cell number. They've broken the mobile site as much as possible (to drive app installs), and made it so you need messenger as a separate app. Zuckerberg can pretend it's all about "community" and "coming together" but only a fool would take a look at how Facebook works and conclude that's how things are currently set up. When I joined Facebook people were often sharing statuses and updates. But that's not happening anymore (and hasn't for quite some time). Growth hacking might make sense when you're a scrappy startup and desperate for engagement, but it's user-hostile when you hit Facebook's size.
Good riddance.
Not sure I would say Facebook is a 'very good product'. It's okay. The main thing Facebook has going for it is the userbase and in that respect the only company that has a chance is google who really botched things with g+.
No, not really. Messenger is the worst messaging app I am obliged to use daily; perhaps tied with Slack. All of my friends with whom I’ve discussed this agree, but the sheer number of people we would like to chat with that use Messenger, plus Facebook’s refusal to support open standards, means Messenger’s quality is irrelevant.
Yep. Facebook has lost this aspect and is now just a link aggregator.
Although I’m not sure if you brought up the Instagram example to illustrate social media in general having a reputation problem. Which it does. But people still use some sort of social media by and large (less so on sites like this of course).
His ruthlessness, and the change in facebook as it becomes something annoying and self serving, rather than serving the needs of its users who try to connect to each other. Facebook now charges pages to show stuff to users who've liked it - indicating that they ALREADY want to see things from that page.
This sort of extortionist double dipping is the kind of thing which ruins a social network. This, along with numerous privacy violations, ridiculous degrees of data mining, and more... good riddance.
Also i gave up Google search a long time ago. DDG at the time wasn’t good enough so I moved to Bing. I stuck with it through now. I do have to use Google for certain hard searches or roughly 5% of the time.
On Android I had to buy CardDAV and CalDAV sync apps. They're cheap and it is a one off fee.
Works well for me!
I particularly like that Android (like Palm back in the day) has central calendar data. So I can still use aCalendar+ as my calendar app. And Ocado (grocery delivery) app can still add delivery slots, even though I've changed calendar provider.
It's super satisfying to have all Google account syncing turned off on my phone.
Since leaving I actually talk with friends a lot more, and when I wonder how an old friend is doing I reach out or try and meet up. Much better than just stalking their fb profile and offering a like or two.
Now if I could just quit surfing the net on my phone all the damn time...
If facebook wants to be a part of fixing this, which is questionable as the article points out, they need to start exposing people to alternate opinions, rather than enforcing the ones people already have. Facebook is actually in a position to do this. They should of course start slowly with more moderate opinions. But they shouldn't move away from news. They should double down, with more, diverse news.
Twitter and Instagram still exist on my phone, and I have the occasional desire to push content to them, but I haven't in about a year.
I feel about the experience of swimming through other people's political ideas and vacation and/or kids photos the way I imagine an alcoholic feels about drinking: I've tried that and it made me miserable.
The fact that my wife still uses social media means a truly important child photo or life event eventually makes its way to me.
First three paras - Zuck is bad dude for doing what businesses have been doing for centuries if not millenia - stealing ideas and poaching employees. Look hard enough at VF's history and I feel confident you'll find the same behaviors.
Next para - Summary of FB's status.
Next two paras - FB turns out to not be a panacea for social isolation, not a classmates.com on steroids. Like other forms of communication (e.g. TV), it amplifies some human frailties. I am old enough to remember when serial killers would taunt TV stations. People blamed TV for that, maybe with some justification. FB's problem, it seems, stems from its democratization of opinion, especially when it plays a role, however minor, in generating a political outcome that some people dislike.
Next three paras - The bloom is off the rose for FB and other social media sites. Too many stories / rumors about surveillance / psychological manipulation abound, and social media is paying a price for that. The sharks, disguised as regulators and other social paladins, are circling, and giving Zuck et al. a taste of their own medicine. Worded quite speculatively, I might add.
Last two paras - Additional speculation about FB's long-term viability and some whistful karmic comeuppance conjuring.
Also with automatic videos playing on so many sites, mixed with bandwidth limitations set by telcos, some users might opt out of websites that do that to save on bandwidth.
What was the name of the C.E.O, the name of the company and the nature of the product?
It's interesting to note, that when Obama used the platform to get elected, no one minded. But, when the opposing party does it, everyone judges it negatively.
I would say it was their behaving suspiciously that causes people to be suspicious of it.
> when Obama used the platform to get elected, no one minded. But, when the opposing party does it, everyone judges it negatively
At the risk of getting too political, I believe only one of those campaigns has been confirmed by the company to have been operated in part by foreign powers actively attempting to subvert the election. That's a bit beyond "i like the one guy better" as far as reasons for judgement go.
Oh, and Obama won the popular election. Twice.
When history sandwiches you between two world leaders with an apparently combined IQ of 2, people might let some questionable things slip.
We may all dislike Facebook & Uber, but the fact is that they're growing despite negative press. The reason is probably because of being leaders in spaces that are valuable & essential.
This policy, and so many others, come from an attitude. And it's the attitude people are realizing they don't like, never liked, and are less inclined to overlook.