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Comment by Nextgrid | Hacker News Reader

Less information density = more time required to read the same amount of content = more "engagement". This is the exact same reason behind the algorithmic timeline: since you can't easily tell whether you've reached the end (up to where you left off last time), you keep scrolling more, thus more time spent and more opportunities for ads to show up.

This trend will continue until users revolt against this by refusing to use engagement-funded services in favor of service they actually pay for, so that the incentive is no longer to waste the user's time to generate engagement but to give the user what they want in the most efficient way possible in order to keep them paying for the product.

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Algorithmic timelines have objective advantages: they can keep the most frequent posters from drowning everyone else.

That's of course not to say they aren't maliciously misused.

the ability to easily filter/unfilter users from my feed is a much more user-friendly solution to that problem.

It's not that simple is it?

I want to see the photos my crazy aunt posts of her family and dogs, but I would love to not see the alt-right political memes she also posts.

I can do this already to some extent by simply blocking certain sources that she's reposting from. It's harder to do when the content is copied and pasted.

I would rather deal with the occasional offputting post than with the completely non-chronological mess FB has now that will decide which friends' posts I don't see at all seemingly arbitrarily. Right now I deal with both.

If someone goes on a racist rant you can quickly scroll past that entire streak with a chronological timeline. With an algorithmic one it's not so easy.

> This trend will continue until users revolt against this by refusing to use engagement-funded services in favor of service they actually pay for.

Will they revolt, though? Will consumers pay for it, though?

I sure hope so, as this is basically the whole reason I started working on communick[0]. But every feedback I've been collecting so far has been along the lines of "You should target this for the enterprise, not end-users". I went to Brave's BAT subreddit (a group of people supposedly tech-savvy people and who I thought were privacy-conscious) to ask them how/if they would like to spend the BAT received in privacy-oriented services[1]. The answers were depressing.

Granted, I was not expecting communick to be an overnight success and there is still a lot of work to be done to help people get onboard - both the technology and the privacy-first mindset. But even running super-lean I am far from covering my operational costs. If I don't get to the end of year and it is still not paying itself, I guess I will have to pivot and focus only on enterprise customers.

[0]: https://communick.com

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/i46g72/howwhere...

Facebook isn't designed to look good or even be usable. It's designed to make money.

I have some faith that Facebook's redesign isn't losing them a ton of money, or they would've reverted it. It's probably increasing the KPIs they're trying to target.

All these metrics are very short-term and the user dissatisfaction builds up over time. It makes sense for everyone involved (the short term is all that counts for investors and CEOs), but I personally can't wait to see Facebook eat itself.

Techies keep waiting for that and they keep falling upwards:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/277963/facebooks-quarter...

Facebook will not eat itself for a very long, long time. Their corruption of various nice things in life will be with us for many decades.

More time required = more bouncing users. I even skip a 5 sponsored ad on youtube. I have no patience for this stuff. The first thing I do is scroll to the comments to see the list of thing the video says (for example top 5 things to eat, or whatever), as I have no patience for these videos being longer just so they get ranked higher, because that's the metric youtube is currently using.

I read HN headlines + top comments, because I have no patience to read a 20 page article that is badly written, or is written in such a way to get more pageviews.

You want engagement? Give me high quality content. Short, long, doesn't matter. High quality, dense content.

The internet is full of fluff. It's like everybody is using this xantham gum these days.

Facebook rolls out UI changes in less valuable markets to gather data to verify their changes don't decrease engagement.

Oh wow this is interesting / something to remember for my own life. So basically, they might try something out first in [small country] and if it works go to [medium country] and then if it stills works roll out to everyone?

This has been how companies have worked since forever.

In the 19th- and mid-20th centuries, all of the big advertising agencies handling consumer goods were headquartered in Chicago (many still are).

They would test products by introducing them a couple of hundred miles away in Peoria, Illinois. If the items were well accepted there, then they were rolled out to the rest of the country. It's where the expression, "But will it play in Peoria?" comes from.

This still happens. Back when Starbucks was still cool, it would roll out new drinks in Chicago and a couple of other cities as test markets, and then later in the rest of the nation if they were successful.

This makes complete sense - I just had never thought about it - Obviously, had thought about testing things in a smaller market, but for some reason my brain hadn't mapped that to software / websites / etc.

And props for history less on "But will it play in Peoria?"

New Zealand gets almost everything first. It's the ideal test market for FB to trial new features that mimic's it's primary revenue generating users in the USA and EMEA.

Yes, Google will iterate on the search results / new search result features in smaller markets also.

You are a minority and/or your behavior is only possible because there are alternative/better sources for the content you’re looking for, allowing you to skip the bullshit and get the same/similar content on a different source (like HN) with a better experience.

Most of the content on FB is either exclusive to it (all your friends are on there) or the majority of their target market doesn’t know/care about finding other sources which provide that content with a better experience.

I am a minority. I uused a chrome extension before to filter out posts that were liked by many people. Also, I forced it to be chronological. I was very happy, until it didn't work anymore.

Most posts these days are tiktok reposts anyway. The only things I like about fb these days:

- Some groups I'm in

- I like the marketplace

- For people to find me

Is this why reddit made its new UI's layout much less information dense?

Most likely. It's also less scary to less literate people. Not tech literate, literate in general.

Yes, and to fit in more advertising.

>Less information density = more time required to read the same amount of content = more "engagement".

No.

Yes, actually. The scare-quotes around "engagement" are intentional. More _perceived_ engagement, even though it's not accurately measuring customer satisfaction or actions.

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