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Comment by gammarator | Hacker News Reader

"A trend I have noticed among my friends is the decreasing number of status updates posted to Facebook. Just six months ago my news feed would have been filled with the daily dribblings of my friends. Now there are less than a handful of status updates in my newsfeed, often from the same 5 people."

I wonder if this was an algorithmic change by Facebook in their "Top News" section. I noticed an extremely sharp decline in the number of new stories I see when I log in, starting a couple of months ago. There's plenty in "Most Recent," however, so it's just getting filtered out.

For me personally, it's made Facebook seem much less interesting and decreased my usage. I'm sure they're watching the numbers, though...

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Facebook friends are not really friends. There is a huge level of distrust in the community when you can't speak your mind for fear of being fired or tagged in compromising photos.

These are not real concerns I have when I'm among real friends.

One of my colleagues has a very strict rule that he does not become friends with current work colleagues on Facebook or any other social network. Seems like a good idea to me, although there is sometimes a blurry line when you work with some of your good friends. I'm sure having such a rule makes him less concerned about the compromising photos or status postings.

It's odd that Facebook hasn't allowed users to turn off all tagging to the Wall. You can turn off friends posting links to your wall, but not photos. Bad incentivizing.

Most people are shy in front of big audiences... this remains true on Facebook as people accumulate ever larger friend-lists. Of course, they're probably all just as addicted as ever. I'm a 'light' FB user, I've only posted one pic, only been tagged in one, post a status update about once a month, comment about once a week, never sent someone a friend-request, only have 60 or so friends, and even I check the thing 2 or 3 times per day.

True. Ironically, filtering based on who you interact with most frequently has the side effect of hiding from you the true number of people whom you're connected to.

I am aware of the Top News vs. Most Recent - and I still see a general interaction decline. The number of brands friends are liking has gone up, but their actual person to person interactions have gone down.

It's plausible that the two are related. The fewer real interactions people have on the site, the less they'll be active. Automated content fills its space, and soon there's little social engagement.

And than your wall is filled with useless spammy content.

Are you also aware of the "Friends and pages you interact with the most" vs "All of your friends and pages" distinction?

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