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> Instagram, on the other side, is a different beast. Even with the strong push by FB in order to monetize the network, I think that fact that people can't easily share other people's post, and are kind of forced to post their own material still makes it an interesting place.

>As long as instagram does not allow reposting, I think it'll maintain a certain degree of quality.

This is a fascinating insight I never considered. Disabling reposting results in higher quality, higher-effort discourse. Trashy memes and fake news can’t spread as rapidly or at all without the ability to easily, mindlessly repost them millions of times. It’s like a circuit breaker to our lizard brain, forcing us to actually think about what we’re doing instead of thoughtlessly queuing up another dopamine hit with a quick repost.

I agree with you.

Even if there might be some people willing to make the effort of re-sharing certain posts, the chain is incredible weaker.

I think reposting with a comment is the worst. Mastodon has "boosting" which allows you to repost, but you can't add your own commentary to it.

This seems to work pretty well in preventing the spread of bad messages, as a boost of such message will imply that you agree with it. That way you're not getting the typical "look at what this horrible person said" messages.

Also, if you try to follow any type of discussion in the comments its surprisingly difficult. Hard to find the parents of a comment, hard to scroll up to the original comments. And to be honest... I think this is for the best of the platform.

I haven't used FB regularly in about 3 years now (after being an early adopter and heavy user), and honestly the times I logged in to see all the "happy birthday!" notifications, I couldn't believe how far the platform had devolved since I last logged in. It's one of the biggest disappointments of modern technology for me. Such amazing unity of entire communities and families, worldwide, being turned into such an exploitative and IMO harmful platform. There's a bit of signal in the noise (in the form of actual worthwhile friend/family/community posts), but unfortunately for me it's simply not worth the effort of wading through an endless supply of ragebait, propaganda and straight-up misinformation.

The way the social media hivemind works these days, it seems halfway to China's "social credit" system, where people can be fired for liking the "wrong" kind of tweet. For now it's safe to just ignore the noise, but I wonder how long before people will be fired for not liking the "right" kind of tweet.

Already happening, received two angry messages from people I know for not reposting BLM/SJW posts on my instagram story, even though I had already donated to ACLU & signed petitions I agree with in private.

What worries me is this is just the start. Wonder how social interactions will be in 50 years...

I don't think that people will be leaving their houses much in 50 years, assuming we still have "people" and "houses". The singularity is on the horizon and we are running full-speed toward it.

A measure that could significantly improve your Facebook experience (as it did mine) is to curate the content that you want to see.

A few years ago I started actively clicking "not interested" on every type of content that I didn't want to see, and slowly but surely I managed to get rid of all memes, news, and uninteresting bits.

Now I'm left with discussions about AI papers, local events that friends are attending, and updates from friends in other countries. And even then, my feed is so uninteresting that I'm not tempted to scroll through it every day. Of course, this doesn't remove the million other issues with Facebook but at least it doesn't mess with my happiness

I went a step further and used a script to unfollow everything - all friends, pages, and groups. Once you do that the news feed is completely gone and Facebook becomes a much better experience. I left it this way for about six months and then re-followed my family and ten or so close friends.

Yeah, I manually unfollow all my “friends” that I don’t really know that well/care about the first time they post something annoying. Done!

The best feature that improved my use of Facebook is the "snooze" button.

Whenever someone posts something annoying, like a string of recycled memes or bad political arguments, I hit that snooze button and they disappear from my feed for 30 days.

In 30 days they've usually calmed down.

I have to do a “not interested” purge on my Instagram about once every 4 weeks. That’s how long it takes the Instagram Explore algorithm to devolve into degenerate memes and echo chambers regardless of my interests.

Yes, I think this is the sad thing with a lot of modern tech. They aim to make 0.5% more ad revenue quarter after quarter and by the time they realise it, it's a big mess.

Your experience mirrors my own. I was never a big Facebook user, but it was a nice service to have and then, as you say maybe 5 or 6 years ago, it all went to hell.

People basically stopped posting to Facebook and it became an endless stream of mindless videos, cutesy images with quotes and supermarkets trying to push offers directly to users (successfully though).

Facebook lost the thing that made it interesting, news about long lost friends and insights into the everyday of the people you know. I'm not sure if it's something Facebook did, or if people just stopped posting.

> "I think that fact that people can't easily share other people's post, and are kind of forced to post their own material still makes it an interesting place."

That's an interesting observation, this is one of the reasons I don't enjoy Twitter, everything is retweeted (maybe I just don't get it).

I find Instagram to be a bit too addictive though. It feels like an endless magazine of glossy images, which learns what you want to see, to keep you engaged... forever

I used a tool (Blindfold) to disable retweets on all accounts, and it has made Twitter infinitely more enjoyable to use. Link: https://blindfold.social/

The code is opensource as well: https://github.com/matthewmorek/blindfold

I think you hit the nail on the head with both how Facebook and Instagram has an effect in my mind. If I may add to that, WhatsApp is going strong due to a similar pattern. It strictly controls your circles. Your experience is only affected by the people and groups you're in. They did not go crazy with feature creep and even more importantly, the design and ux has largely been the same without needless rewrites to justify a paycheck. This consistency is how they managed to get both the younger demographic and the elderly in a single app.

Your mileage might vary, but where I live WhatsApp is the de-facto messaging medium. Nobody does not use it. That made it somewhat possible that eventually the whole population got to use it - because there were a lot of people available to help elder people learn to use it. I agree with you 100% as to what has happened to it. Except a few changes (Voice messages back then, groups and broadcast messages closer in time).

The features are kept in place, and that's a good thing.

Insular US and Canada does not get Whatsapp, if they aren't interacting with people outside of those countries.

But the other Americas, Europe and Africa are so heavy on it. It really is becoming the platform that you see in Asian countries for business, which Zuck had hoped he could have. Clout and reputation for business is all on whatsapp for many people. Compared to websites and public pages from decades past, which are still indicators of legitimacy in the US. Luxury watch dealers just post on their whatsapp story when something new comes in, and its sold in minutes. At the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum, people post sneakers they get in stock right onto their story and its a mad dash to obtain it. Professional group chats highly active for private equity deal making and collaboration, organic group chats created on the fly. Location specific group chats existing in perpetuity.

I spend almost all day on it now, out of necessity. And I like how utilitarian it is, it doesn't need to "wow" anyone with UI bells and whistles and they are completely invisible if you are not part of groups that use whatsapp.

I don't like that it forces you to share your phone number, but the etiquette seems self-enforcing. The chat size limit is a blessing and a curse, but they probably shouldn't change it.

Its not about what other chat applications can do, its about what happens.

> But the other Americas, Europe and Africa are so heavy on it.

FWIW at least in my neck of the woods I stopped receiving messages on WhatsApp about 2 or 3 years ago and when I got a new phone in October last year I didn't even install it.

Everyone is on Telegram and while I see people joining Signal all the time, the first time I actually had a conversation with anyone on Signal was a few weeks ago.

Telegram is 100% crypto in my world and its a riot, very entertaining. It serves a purpose because crypto people will SS7 attack you if you they know your phone number, so whatsapp isnt good.

Beware, instagram deletes your account after a few months. I've had this happen to me a twice. Second time around was few weeks ago when i decided to return after taking 2-3 month break.

Oops, that's a bummer. Thanks for the heads up.

I agree that some years back it (FB) was way more engaging and meaningful. It's certainly changed for the worse over the years.

Regarding Instagram, I never thought about it in this way, and now that you mention it, perhaps that is why out of the 3 x services I talked about, this one was the least worrysome for me. Restricting reposting does seem to be pretty key to keeping content at a higher 'quality'.

> As long as instagram does not allow reposting, I think it'll maintain a certain degree of quality.

I've never been a big Instagram user, but considering one of my big complaints about FB is the prevalence of regurgitated reposted garbage (memes, crap news, chain letter nonsense), I might have to revisit my IG account and see if I can salvage a bit there.

I make it a point to check if an upstart is from bay area or not. If they are, my first assumption is that behind all that fancy "awesome" talk there is a sugar-coated sociopath that has been vetted and backed by a popular venture firm.

Bail. Find an alternative from Europe or Canada instead. Or simply let it go.