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Comment by legulere | Hacker News Reader

It’s not. With RSS you are in charge, as you select exactly which feeds you subscribe to and see everything from those feeds. Facebook hides posts from things you subscribed to and shows you stuff you didn’t subscribe to, to keep you hooked.

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I agree. Not perfect. But there's no alternative to this kind of curated local content.

I don't mean to sound like a smartarse here but there would be if more ppl stopped using FB (which seems to be the trend anyway).

Problem is we have dozens of various interests, which are different for each one of us. Single interest platforms can be good for only subset of things.

FB does come with lots of strings attached. We're all aware of that. I'm just suggesting that, with some effort of unfollowing and blocking, it can be useful.

But the web isn't "single interest" and, as you yourself referenced, there are open standard ways (RSS) to compile information from across it. This may have evolved more without FB so heavily dominating the scene.

Most of this long-tail stuff we're talking about here had minimal or no web presence before FB created "alternative web publishing" experience for them. And centralized easy experience for their audience to follow what they like.

I still use RSS, but sadly, that's not where I find news from local music school or running group. Could it end up differently if FB didn't show up? Quite possibly.

You just posted the alternative. ;)

>to and shows you stuff you didn’t subscribe to

Never seen that myself. Unless you mean video.

Sponsored and suggested posts consisted of roughly half of my feed. It's also known that even if you subscribe to some page they won't show it in your feed unless the other party pays their fees.

This is Interesting. I have Ads. But I dont see any Sponsored or Suggested Post. I suspect this is specific to certain demographics or Americans?

I lived in Southeast Asia. Have only a low three-figure friends and did not follow any pages. I was sent sponsored content and suggested content quite often. I tried to check why the particular posts reached me, but the answer is just a blanket (Speaks language, age within range). I will be more forgiving if they showed how my friends interacted with the page, but the criteria shown isn't helpful.

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