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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

Those “We apologize for fake news” ads on TV and the subway from Facebook seem really weird to me. Like FB thinks that the reason their numbers are down is because people are mad about them and some ads saying “we’re sorry” will fix it. I think Facebook has been supplanted by a variety of better tools, some of which they themselves created, and it’s now going to be a long term stagnation and decline

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The thing that drove me away from Facebook is not fake news, but that there is news (and other viral content) at all, fake or not. 90% of my feed is content about people and events I have no connection to or care for. I thought to whole point of FB was to connect with people you know.

For me it was the fact that the spammy hyperactive friends were prominently featured, whereas knowledgeable silent types that posted once in a while were completely removed from the feed. It should be exactly the other way round.

The feed thing is pretty easy to fix. You just have to tell Facebook you don't want to see posts like that (three dot menu). I did that a while back and don't get any memes or shared links on my feed anymore.

You would think so wouldn't you? But if you tell it you don't want one thing on your feed it is then supplemented by 10 others. It is virtually endless and there is no hiding all content that is not hand written by your friends and family.

I tried that. It builds up quickly again, because you can only disable individual sources. I have no interest in tending a viral garden. If Facebook wants to keep me around they'll instate a binary option to disable all 3rd party content.

Just unfollow everybody. Believe me you won't miss your feed.

That's my strategy also, can't recommend it enough.

I use a stylish plugin which masks the feed entirely. It was useful when I was having to use facebook often to promote a brand. Nowadays though it's eliminated the vast majority of facebook's use for me. 95% of my notifications are random 'so and so invited you to an event' and 'so and so posted in some group'. I realized that the fb feed had become a content aggregator, much like that other website we all know and love(?), but instead your f&f were the contributors. Blacking out the feed of inane content effectively made fb useless for me.

I did same thing. It makes you ignore newsfeed by default because it will only contain ads.

And slowly, I started to check facebook less often. Now I log onto facebook maybe once or twice a week. And that is only if I need to contact someone.

I've been hoping there would be a feature added to FB that would be simply "do not show any posts with links" or "do not show any posts sharing posts from another account." The number of things people post linking politics, news, random crap, memes, etc. is enough to almost drive me up a wall. I've tried putting lots of effort into curating by "hide things like this", etc, but inevitably more like it ends up in the feed. I really, really do not like the inability to disable that kind of content from the news feed showing up.

I would love that!

I go to Facebook for the cat and baby pictures, and knowing what people are actually doing in their lives. I want to see vacation pictures and people just living and enjoying themselves. I don't want to see re-shares from accounts who post polarizing shit that's mean to make everyone angry.

I'm not sure you even want this. Several studies have shown that it correlates with people being depressed about their lifes. Eg http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

Of course correlation is not causality, but one should still be careful

I imagine that's where they get the vast majority of their ad-targeting signals, though. They can't show ads based on how much you like the random thoughts of an acquaintance of unknown proximity, they need us to signal our feelings toward fixed commercial targets and sources that can be analyzed reliably for sentiment.

It's a Faustian bargain.

Instagram has been really horrible about this. The app constantly suggests that I follow the same people even after I “x” their suggestion. I don’t need a random person I went to elementary school with and haven’t talked to since to show up in my feed everyday. I could block them but that seems like overkill.

Those ads seem to indicate to me that things are much worse, traffic wise, than it seems from the outside. Moreover, IMO there is a danger of Streisand effect for users who may be using FB despite everything..

As someone who left Facebook awhile ago mostly because life got busy, those ads seem to solidify an (alternative?) narrative of why I left rather than urge me to come back.

Fake News / Facebook's impact on the 2016 election is only part of why I avoid it now. I also believe the site caused / causes instagrammification of people's lives. Which is sort of like Fake News of personality or false lifestyle chasing meaningless likes.

I believe other institutions have caused people to live out false lives prior to Facebook as well. But I can actually damage facebook by _not_ posting content and not sharing my life there. I don't even have to encourage others not to. I just have to avoid resolving the domain.

I don't think likes are meaningless — they tap into a very primal need for social status and peer approval. It's a stupid game, but like many other stupid games, it's effective!

I grant you that, it is effective at getting page views and ad revenue.

They miss out on the social status a dislike can give. To be against something is easier for many then to be for something.

That too. I saw the ad for the first time yesterday during the Warriors game, as we don’t watch live TV, only stream. Two observations:

1) as you said there was nothing in that ad that would make me come back, rather if I had not already been aware of it I would have searched about it to learn - the Streisand effect.

2) there was another similar ad, from another company, about breaking trust, Wells Fargo bank -> nuff said.

Uber is running the same sort of ads, featuring the new CEO talking about doing right by customers

Of course they are. And we knew engagement dropped significantly last year before the Cambridge Analytica happened. I found it weird how so many people still believed Zuckerberg when he said the scandal hardly affected them. As if Zuckerberg would never try to be misleading with the facts.

I left because I got tired of getting into meaningless spats with my conservative friends. Particularly when the same conversation in person would almost always provide to be terrifically interesting. Pre-election, a lot of what they posted was garbage content. Post-election, everyone appears to be posting garbage.

TL; DR Terrible easy-to-share content on Facebook motivated my friends and I to switch to iMessage groups.

All licensed media have to push government propaganda to not lose their rights. Good example are stories about cannabis or other drugs. Often these contain scaremongering, half truths or outright lies and questionable studies. If you want to see which outlet is trustworthy, just check how they report drug stories. I Facebook wants to get rid of fake news I wonder if they are going to ban most of mainstream media. Otherwise they'll still publish fake news, but tell people they now only show true stuff.

I'd assume ads like that in SF are aimed at developers and general tech talent. Facebook bulkheaded themselves from shifting tastes in social media by buying insta and whatsapp but they've got to be concerned at their brand being toxic for hiring. It's death by a thousand cuts.

Those ads area in Chicago too.

If they were aimed at devs and tech ppl, why is it phrased in grandparent-friendly terms? This isn't just a True Scotsman, it takes money and time to refine their message into something so plain and comprehendable by everybody.

Are there numbers down? Stocks up 20%-ish since the deleteFacebook movement.

Hmm, curious too. Are the numbers down?

I quit facebook because they kept showing peoples links I didnt care about.

It just happened to be around the same time as all of the drama.

I just dont like it anymore. Bring me back to when friends had statuses rather than links.

DAUs can be down while revenue per user is up, user data ingress (eg: users sharing/liking posts) and revenue ingress move in parallel but not in lockstep.

Instagram is likely driving much of their revenue growth.

Yup pretty sure instagram will produce the next president. FB produced Obama (thanks to Obama every politician on the planet got onto social media). Twitter produced Trump. And since attention spans to read text have gone down the tube, the Russians will have to start honing their fake image skills. At the end of the day, all I want to see after Kim K gets elected, is Zuck back at a hearing explaining how fake images on Instagram are a thing nobody paid attention too cause why would we when it's doing so many positive things and keeping the company afloat.

Facebook, Uber, and Wells Fargo are playing "I'm sorry, we're trying to be better now" ads on TV. During one playoff game they all played in the same ad segment! Is this the first big wave of apology ads? I can't recall ever seeing ads like these before.

Domino's had an ad campaign that straight up apologized for having bad pizza. It's not a new idea.

I had not previously seen theses ads you describe, but I found a photo of one here: https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/99893040218522009...

they don’t apologize, the ads say “fake news is not your friend”

Not just there I saw one in the movie theatre when I went to see Deadpool 2. I don't want to see Facebook outside of going through the effort to type it into a browser. No thanks. This will be my last year or 2 on that "platform" anyway.

I went to see Upgrade last night and they played some facebook apology tour ADVERTISEMENT (because that's what it is) before the movie. Just ridiculous... "we care about your privacy"... yea, not really.

I really hated that trailer while waiting to see Deadpool 2. Sad when I recognize his voice and knew where it was headed. The guy is creepy even when we can't see him.

yep. i saw one of these on the subway this morning.

i really do not appreciate corporate apology tours breaching my adblockers and reaching my everyday life. it's creepy. it's annoying as hell.

and it just convinces me that the only company that would go this far to profess their own innocence is guilty as hell.

the fact that the entire campaign focuses on "fake news" is a bit tone deaf.

people aren't even upset with facebook over the fake news so much as their business model of stealing user data then selling it.

best case scenario is they're toast in 10 years due to demographic decline.

What numbers are down? lol.

Their numbers with anyone under 20. Their pipeline is dead, the user base has peaked and will decline.

While I am still technically a user my engagement has drastically gone down due to the excessive "trending" and "suggested" post bullshit

God forbid they manage to get their hands on other apps to capture that market... oh wait. People have been predicting the death of facebook for the past decade. It does tend to get old after a while.

None. They're talking out of their ass. The best argument anyone can come up with is that teens don't use it as much, and yet they're very happily using Instagram...

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