Facebook's TikTok-like redesign marks sunset of social networking era
axios.com
axios.com
I've tried to type out several pithy comments, but the bottom line (to me) is that Facebook just doesn't respect its users or care about their needs.
Can you imagine if brick-and-mortar businesses tried to do this? You go out for a Big Mac, but it's not on the menu anymore because Taco Bell had a few really good quarters, so McDonald's decided to pivot to tacos. Maybe you can still order the Big Mac if you know to ask for it, but most people won't, and they'll leave disappointed instead of getting what they wanted.
Edit: To clarify, this example is contrived and the details are not the point. The point is that Facebook offered something to their users, spent years and billions of dollars making sure that as many people as possible got it from Facebook, and then decided to just yank the rug out from under all those people to chase the fairy tale of endless growth.
Would you have said the same for Apple back in 2007?
Ps. Restaurants change menus all the time.
Maybe it was inevitable and necessary to avoid death or maybe they abandoned their primary purpose and turned off their users and therefore the network / social graph from which they derived value.
Or maybe they will continue to print money.
What killed MTV was youtube around 2007-2008, not another tv channel, but a completely different tech.
It's not that Apple changed its menu, it expanded it.
It seems like it would've been easier to go after TikTok with Instagram - which is basically the same product, growing, and still has some brand value.
I'd expect the hype and growth around TikTok to peak once their parent company IPOs, as more corporations, advertisers, mainstream media accounts, move in to the platform to ruin it just like they did with the rest of the other social networking platforms, especially for YouTube and Instagram.
If they don't IPO soon, TikTok will get much worse for their users. Either way, the users will eventually get annoyed by TikTok's changes, pushed and boosted by the company.
> If they don't IPO soon, TikTok will get much worse for their users
So, if they IPO TikTok gets worse and if they don't TikTok gets worse? I don't see why bringing up an IPO matters.
Meanwhile, it seems unlikely they'll IPO soon if ever. They apparently raised a 2 billion round in December 2020, and they won't want to IPO in a recession. And IPOing is going to be a political act, and if I were them I would hesitate to incur the CCP's wrath.
That day is very far into the future (in tech terms). 1.96 billion users are a whole fucking lot of a base to bleed. I would bet actual money that they won't dip below 1 billion by 2035, and that they would be still there (in whatever profitable form) with the same trademak in 2050.
While I broadly agree with you, I'd only bet money depending on the odds the bookie is giving, and I wouldn't bet on 1:1 odds either.
The reason is because those timescales are a full generation away. Since the entire value of FB is in the social network of people, it's possible that the upcoming generations bypass FB altogether for a competitor, and FB is unable to risk the pivot[1].
[1] FB might have to intentionally discard the aging existing users for the new users if the featureset that the new users want is exclusive with the featureset that the old users want.
If they didn't think their main product would decline or get unpopular soon, why would they bet on spending $1B on buying Instagram before anyone else and copy the greatest hits and main features found in other competitors (Stories, Disappearing posts, etc) directly into Instagram first?
Without Instagram, Facebook would likely have sunk much faster and I already said they will be around for 10+ years.
So the death of Meta Platforms has been greatly exaggerated.
So that means what? That other social medias can't exist unless they are on the absolute top? Sounds like a race to the bottom, patched up with investor creole language bullshit.
Is this an inside joke/reference I'm not familiar with?
Is it a typo?
Edit: Thank you all for the replies. I am aware of and respectful of the literal definition.
The usage on the comment I responded to strikes me as either antiquated, inaccurate, or a typo.
From Wikipedia: a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language.
I still found the comment to be a bit of a stretch with that usage.
Is there not a better or more general word we have for this these days in English?
Maybe we could borrow it from the Germans. I do like words like Schadenfreude.
I do think you need to read more about this. You seem hung up on a singular meaning, which to me says a lot more about you than me. In this context, unless you're going to be obnoxiously pandentic, creole simply means "a bunch of words and phrases smashed together" Really not worth going into highschool mode about.
"Creole bullshit"
I expect the Yankees and the city folk to do this unintentionally, but not one of our own.
I have never lived in Silicon Valley.
My parents are from N'awlins (New Orleans, Louisiana).
TIL creole can be a trigger word. I've only heard it used as "a creole language" and have never even heard anyone use the word relating to its original meaning (though I was vaguely aware of it). Personally, I'm more likely to use the word "creole" than "pidgin language", not sure about others though.
Considering it as a poster-child or general term for "bastard", "degenerate", "inbred", or "made-up" way of speaking is the issue.
That was the sense I got from the original comment.
Also, all languages are "made up".
> "Creole bullshit"
They didn't write that it sounds like "creole bullshit", they wrote that it sounds like "investor creole language bullshit" ie) bullshit in an investor creole language ie) investors saying bullshit in a language consisting of words which mean one thing in English but which have a different meaning in the language the investors are speaking.
You've clearly totally misinterpreted the original post due to an unfamiliarity with the linguistics term "creole language", a term which does not even derive from the Creole peoples of Louisiana (although both the people and the term share a common French root).
Facebook is dying because they stopped being Facebook. If they gave what's left of their userbase what they actually wanted (chronological feed, seeing friends posts, not seeing spam, more ways to interact (bring back pets, gifts, superpokes etc)) they'd do ok.
It doesn't help that their core code is a steaming pile of bloated dung that doesn't seem to be tested by anyone.
I'd love to have something like that again that everyone uses, but everything is about goosing the influencer economy now rather than letting me socialize.
BTW have you tried dreamwidth.org, a fork of the venerable livejournal.com? They look as if 2005 had never ended,in a good sense.
They simply don't offer enough value over say a WhatApp group.
That's actually what Google+ was with circles before the morons in charge forcibly bundled it into Youtube and killed it. Google should have had some patience like the people over at Musical.ly and built an audience organically rather than shoving unwanted garbage down our throats.
[0] https://theprint.in/tech/the-covid-19-pandemic-has-led-to-an...
a) No evidence they are dying. All we have is a single quarter's result i.e. statistically meaningless.
b) No evidence that staying true to the original Facebook is the best strategy. Unquestionably, Stories has been a popular feature in both Instagram and Facebook ecosystems and perhaps certain features from TikTok will be the same.
But there is plenty of evidence that the opinions of HN, Reddit etc. often do not match that of the broader public and so should be taken with a grain of salt.
You're right that HN is not the right place to judge this. I will say, as someone who works with high school kids, almost none of them have seemed to use it over the last 4-5 years.
My point is you should dispute the original claim that it is life or death for Facebook instead of the subcomment running with that theory.
I think Facebook is doing OK, but they have issues breaching the younger democratic, which is worrying them.
You cant build a buisness on a bubble. You can build a bubble and extract money from investors, but honestly, the only people who use facebook are doing it because they are addicted and likely not internet savy. Its like hooking people on sugar. Except fb doesnt own the sugar, and cant only buy up the competition for so long before your no longer the hot stuff investors belevied.
Facebook is a fad. Social media is not, it has overtaken traditional media in less then a decade. Social media will morph, it is not static. You cant own it. And Facebook is not the defination of it anymore.
Are they as sexy as the bajillion TikTok users out there? No.
Are they enough to build a solid business aruond? Yes.
Would facebook ever consider stepping up to the plate that built their core business again? No, because Facebook management sucks.
I don't give a shit about algorithmic recommendations and of horse-shit force-fed happiness content don't anticipate ever changing that. Many of my friends are the same way.
What ever happened to servicing the long tail?
People keep saying this is what people want. Show me the numbers that it's true.
Because when Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, Youtube etc. all move to this model and stick with it the evidence is clear that it's not want people want.
But as a solid, sustainable profit source? Are you claiming that only a marginal number of people want this, or what?
So clearly they know a little bit about what is a solid, sustainable profit source.
It is more than a "solid, sustainable" profit source, it is a best-in-class cash cow that feeds a growing monstrosity for shareholders that want more, more, more.
The business they left behind is still sustainable.
Facebook and other social media isn't quite at that level, but the same logic applies to your argument: there are fundamentally different kinds of "wants", and the drug dealer/social media metrics invariably cater to the unhealthy kind.
The evidence may be clear, but it is also driven by tech that is increasingly effective at pressing our dopamine buttons. I'm not sure that the opinions of a drug-addled constituency are important for the far more simple question of, "is there a sustainable business here?"
There is a lot of biases and nonsense in here and in the news being spread around over the death of Facebook (Meta) or even the beginning of its death, which has been greatly exaggerated.
They will be around for another 10+ years.
But their first down quarter (for users) does say something. No one would be talking about this if it hadn't happened.
Can't think anyone serious would look to derive any meaning from a single data point in this environment.
For all we know the entire DAU drop could be from Ukraine and Russia alone.
Literally none of these things account for people not logging in to FB. In fact, some (all?) of those sound like the sorts of things that would drive engagement among millions of bored and frustrated people.
That means less to spend on new phones, data plans etc. And more time spent at work.
The DAU drop happened before the war, in the quarter up to December 2021.
You may very well be right. Facebook is adjusting their offering to keep a certain segment of users. That will eject another group, or at least reduce their engagement. That’s fine, if it ensures profitability for the next five years.
It’s just interesting to be part of a group of users that aren’t intersting to the social media platforms. Which in a way just confirms that the social media part of Metas business isn’t actually important to them, only the ad revenue that it might bring.
You're describing Instagram. Facebook has been the "parents' generation water cooler" for several years now. They don't even post "original content" like party pics unless it's an obituary. It's all "shares" of news and political content.
I don't think so. TikTok is vastly more addictive and fresh in its content. How much content can your circle creating in a day? No more than 20 posts I would say? If facebook stays being facebook, they will die anyway.
Problem in facebook right now, there isn't enough people to interact with, it is a social network, but tiktok is not. Tiktok is the new TV, with endless contents. I follow zero people there, but still I using it the right way.
FB took care of that by removing the chronological time line. As soon as it went away from a time line of things that happened to the people I love into a addiction stimulating ever refreshing list of flashing images it took away the interactivity. It became more of a consumption site place and they're leaning heavily into that (with Instagram too). This then means that content creation is moving from users you know to professionals (people playing the algorithm).
I have no horse in this race, but why do you think you know what's better for FB more than the thousands of smart engineers and PMs working there?
They clearly saw TikTok as a direct threat, and, probably fueled by thousands of data-driven tests, confirmed that this change results in more engagement and keeps more people on their site for longer.
What you seem to want from FB is likely what a minority of its older userbase wants, but wouldn't make graphs go up and right as much. They need to attract younger generations and new users if they want to do that.
doubt they're the ones making the big strategic decisions
Of course not, but I doubt that the ones making these decisions are ignoring the metrics that the thousands of smart engineers are generating.
All the large companies are able to afford extra staff whose job is exclusively to generate and analyse metrics.
It seems a reach to conclude that the company pays thousands of people for a specific output, just to throw that output away. It may happen to one or two of them, but certainly not to all of the people generating the metrics.
In my own network (age brackets 25-40), I rarely see any people posting updates or uploading pictures, which was common 5 or 10 years ago.
On the other hand, Meta managed to keep the younger generation audience by acquiring Instagram, but apparently, it failed to acquire the Next-Bing-Thing (Tik-Tok)
Facebook tries so hard to push junk and noise content at you it’s ridiculous. They’ve become a parody of themselves, and the obvious knockoff of TikTok looks pitiful.
Obviously anecdotal and personal opinion here, but me & many other people I know tried it a bit, spent MANY hours mindlessly scrolling, and eventually got bored. Nonetheless, it's still growing like a wildfire, but I deeply suspect it'll be a very, very fast fire. Which is a deep irony, since Facebook is following TikTok into the same cliff.
Also TikTok is dope and I only go to Facebook to see ads for clothes and other stuff I might want to buy.
That's interesting. It never occurred to me that people would use Facebook that way.
You don't just pivot to copycat the tacos business years late. Why would customers go to you rather than staying with their Taco brand of choice?
People were on Facebook for the people that were on Facebook.
They still are, but they were too.
People are under the illusion of some fleeting chance of working as advertised
We keep in touch over Signal, WhatsApp, FaceTime, Jitsi, Messages... It's a little more work. We don't speak as often as we used to see each other's posts on Facebook but when we do get in touch it's a lot more personal and meaningful. It's not rare either. I speak to some pretty much daily, others weekly to monthly, and others perhaps more spread apart but it's always great when we do get in touch.
No vicarious experiences, no voyeurism into one another's lifes. Only pure and intentional human connection with all the imperfections that come with it. I recommend it.
It _is_ a bit of a pain to juggle the matrix of options, but the bulk go through iMessages, Keybase Chat, Twitter, and good ol' mail.
Also, I never did understand the benefit you get from deleting your FB/Instagram account - Meta still owns your content. It never gets deleted. Isn't it better to maintain your account but lock it down to your own standards? (e.g. link external content, share content to focused groups of users, etc). You can use Messenger (which is all some people actually use). What do you gain by deleting the account? Just losing control.
EDIT: One thing I think is great with FB is the ability to export all your content. I do that at least annually and have a MySQL database into which I import it all (which gives me the coveted ability to search for a specific post either by date back in 2008 for instance, by text etc). Why would I want to lose all that?
How can you verify that? This would be against the GDPR and other data protection laws in other countries.
Obviously the internal procedures Meta follows regarding content is unknown. It is probably different for different countries - you mention GDPR, well very little of my content is shared in Europe, so I'm sure the rules that apply to me are completely different from rules that apply for Europeans. It is probably different for different time periods in Facebook history, and it is definitely different for different levels of universality of sharing. That is if you post something "Publicly" then it gets shared by another user, then the original post account is deleted, in all my testing the content that was shared by the other user persists. Facebook has argued that it is "public" content [2]. I personally have seen corporate posts get LIKED and commented by users who delete their accounts, but their content endures on the corporate page.
I do not envy Meta. Knowledge of the legal environment in every country for a global operation makes programming in assembly seem trivial by comparison. I had a friend who was a federal (securities) agent who told me back in the 1980's that the legal environment in the US is deliberately complicated/obfuscated to the point where if you are in compliance with one law, you are automatically in violation of another. It is up to you to pay for representation to contest constitutionality on appeal to a high enough level for acquittal.
If you are unsure about what Facebook does and it matters to you, then test it - you will find FB still has a few human users, some of whom may be interested in running tests with you. Posting content of different types, different sharing, deleting different users etc ... test it! Just delete your account. Then later try and recover the account. It is all still there.
For me, I just assume when FB says 'it may retain copies of "some material" from deleted accounts' [2], I just assume there is no privacy and that I own nothing.
[0] https://www.facebook.com/terms.php
[1] https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/who-legally-...
[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ok-youve-deleted-facebook-but-i...
> Knowledge of the legal environment in every country for a global operation makes programming in assembly seem trivial by comparison.
That may be so but they still need to comply.
I've just signed up with the same email address I had on my old account. I can't say for certain whether my data has been permanently deleted but I can't find any of it.
I'll try to get in touch with others who have had access to my old posts and comments and see if they are still there.
Edit to add:
The deletion option on Facebook states:
Delete account
This is permanent.
When you delete your Facebook account, you won't be able to retrieve the content or information that you've shared on Facebook. Your Messenger and all of your messages will also be deleted.
'Some conservative justices do not consider privacy to be a legal right, as when discussing the 2003 case, Lawrence v. Texas (539 U.S. 558), Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia did not consider privacy to be a right, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas argued that there is "no general right to privacy" in the U.S. Constitution in 2007. Many Republican interest groups and activists desire for appointed justices to be like Justice Thomas and Scalia since they uphold originalism, which indirectly helps strengthen the argument against the legal protection of privacy.' [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy#Argument_against_legal...
Discord, to me, is "shiny consumer IRC that I hate" (I similarly consider Slack to be "shiny commercial IRC that I hate").
Whatsapp, to me, is "the thing I use to replace SMS when I'm talking to people in other countries and don't want my phone bill to explode."
The people who're local to me I catch up with in person, and regularly get "oh, yeah, you're not on facebook, I can actually tell you about this" with a huge grin and it's a big happy for me every time.
I've found that for whatever reason people's twitter feeds are "stuff I've found interesting" and I catch up with them separately from that, which I've found fine.
(note: this is an observation of what works for me, please don't consider this as in any was a criticism of your use of facebook if it's working for you, keeping in touch with people is awesome and "whatever works for that is good" applies)
I don't know what you mean by "walled-of version of the web". At least, I don't know what kind of warning you are talking about, with respect to Facebook Marketplace.
I lost track of the number of people saying (myself included) "Give me all my friends posts, in chronological order", and facebook just ignored us and slowly removed the ability to do anything close to that.
Ironic how Google tried Google+ and failed because Facebook had all the users and content. If Google had just shelved theirs as-is for 10 years and pulled it back out now, people would flock to it because it would actually be a feed of your friends/family posts in chronological order, with user-customized filtering, again.
This is true and realistically this is what any business should be chasing. People don't know what they want is something I sincerely believe in.
I do agree that people are good a voicing problems, but not desires.
Edit: Got to be a GCU really.
Google would open up 5 competing, different burger places next to each other and then close them all down a year later, confused that none of them did well enough. All to open a new Taco stand on the other side of town and claim it's got the same great food you liked before (it doesn't).
Then after 15 years, they'll, give you three months to upgrade, then five months, then after three months of pushback, they'll begrudgingly let you keep having the free family meal, so long as you promise you're not using it to cater for a business event.
Some new people try to make fresh burgers and get funding, only to be bought up by Mediocre Ads Burger and killed a year later.
That being said, I can make a pretty damn good burger myself. Sadly, can't say the same about Google/Apple/Microsoft products.
There was something wrong with your order. Please do not try again as we will ban you.
They will also lock you out of your car.
What about mixing forum-like experience with open messaging? That's what we're doing over at https://sqwok.im
Wouldn't a consequence of this be that Facebook would be losing users in drovers? And yet the data seem to disagree. This is a type of take that feels very "inside baseball" and fueled more by the feelings of its proponents than any kind of empiricism.
> Facebook's owner Meta Platforms says DAUs fell to 1.929bn in the three months to the end of December [2021], compared to 1.930bn in the previous quarter.
He's a bad guy and invading Ukraine is horrible, all the usual caveats. But Putin under every rock and behind every bush being responsible for every toothache and hangnail is getting old.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/21/russia-bans-fa...
You can't make any claims about Facebook's position based on a single quarter's result.
Especially given we are in the most tumultuous period in the last few decades.
The 90s covered the fall and breakup of one of two world powers, and had a gulf war and the breakup/war in Yugoslavia, so that's similarly rules out.
The 00s covered terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and London, changing air travel worldwide, starting wars and inspiring more terrorism (Madrid, Mumbay). Oh, and a financial meltdown compared to the Great Depression. So that's probably also not in your "last few decades".
That leaves the 2010s, which cover (amongst others) the start of the corona pandemic. I guess you're including that event in your "recent decades".
Plenty omitted from the above, such as famines and wars in Africa, news from Latin-America, "where's my vote" in Iran, the Arab Spring, Rohinga & Myanmar, ...; in short: we've been in a couple of tumultuous decades for a while now.
"Facebook doesn't respect me or my needs, but I likewise don't respect Facebook or care about its needs. so it's kind of fair. It's free, and I think I'm getting more out of it than it's getting out of me. Plus almost everyone I know is on there, so ..."
I wonder what their internal engagement metrics look like. I bet Facebook’s feed engagement (which is their primary ad display) on the Facebook app is way down, because the feed sucks. Instagram risks doing the same with this frenzied push for engagement.
This is a big reason I still use Facebook, and am extremely unhappy that they keep removing features :(. I used to be able to browse events easily for random dates in random locations on my phone, a feature that now only seems to exist on desktop... but, even then, it doesn't seem to support not having a search term :/. When you combine that with fewer and fewer events being on it due to fewer and fewer people being in the target market of using it it is in a death spiral.
I think another perspective is that this is a case of businesses chasing (or being forced to chase) endless 'growth'.
Facebook is likely optimising to increase engagement and revenue.
But in my humble opinion the Facebook of the early 2000s was close to perfect in terms of use. Obviously leaving the product the same wasn't going to drive that revenue and make the careers of all the employees.
I wish Facebook remained as the platform I could jump on a couple of times a week to see what distant friends and my Grandma was up to. For a while they somehow managed to have just the right balance where it seemed like everyone on the planet would eventually sign up.
It felt like this was a huge step forward in how the world communicated.
Logging onto Facebook in 2022 is a cesspit of flashy videos and clickbait posts. What a disappointment.
... that people in your network (re-)post, right?
Do we know that they aren't? Certainly my Facebook usage has dramatically changed since 10 years ago, and I would say that's true of the majority of my network too. I still use Messenger and I still log in about once a week or so, so I imagine I still count towards Monthly Average Users, but still: there was a time in my life 10-15 years ago where my entire social life was mediated through Facebook specifically, and now if it disappeared tomorrow, I'd barely notice other than Messenger. All my social media "attention" is on Instagram and Twitter now.
Pro tip, you will get better service in the Drive-Thru. The large majority of their sales come from there, and they prioritize filling drive thru orders to keep the line moving.
I wonder if somebody will create a "keep track of your friends" application again. There is obviously a need, but there isn't a channel that enables it to appear anymore, unless Google allows (hum... that's how industries die).
Anyway, user hostile is how any software acts nowadays. From becoming difficult to interact with, exploiting the user on unexpected ways, all the way into refusing to fulfill its primary use case. Users don't seem to care.
And nobody hates Facebook more than Facebook users. I don't use Facebook and because of that I don't have many problems with it. Same goes for the people that don't use Facebook that I know. The only people I see complaining about Facebook are Facebook users.
In countries where real threats to democracy like that exist, Facebook and Twitter have played a huge role in communicating suppressed information, aiding protest organization, etc. and by and large the kids are into it.
As for a pivot to a Tiktok-style experience -- that's a hard pass for me, it's like mixing cocaine with television. The kids are into that too and it's pretty scary to watch them switch off their brains, set aside their humanity and obediently wait for the ML algorithm's function calls to twitch_human_thumb() that arise every few seconds. Of course people were saying something similar about MTV, remote controls and the boob tube back in the day and somehow we survived...
Ultimately if you're Meta and the government tells you it's OK for you to sell cocaine, after all they're OK with your Chinese competitor importing it -- who are you to say no?
Under the current climate my only confusion is why we haven't let Coke reintroduce their namesake ingredient to their formula. Or to use your example yes I could totally see Taco Bell lacing their meat with drugs if it was allowed!
https://twitter.com/USA_Polling/status/1552006668514369536
Two-thirds of respondents (67.2%, 95% CI 66.1%, 68.4%) perceived “a serious threat to our democracy,” but more than 40% agreed that “having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy” and that “in America, native-born white people are being replaced by immigrants.” Half (50.1%) agreed that “in the next few years, there will be civil war in the United States.”
I've seen a coup staged firsthand, directly experienced it happening in a country I lived in, watched the tanks rolling down the road to the government district which they proceeded to occupy, and everything that came before and after.
In the US there are a lot of people with loony opinions out there, but fundamentally there's a military which is on the side of the elected government. There's an elections process which is too distributed to suspend or corrupt nationally (sure it can get screwed up locally and does). There's also a free media and Internet. These are the pillars that hold up both the good and bad democracies around the world.
People with a lot of anxiety will poke holes in all of those statements, they will list the ways the US is messed up because that's what they know. But it's just not the same as a country where the elected government actually falls. US institutions today are all vastly healthier today than the countries where that happens.
I think it's good to have some degree of anxiety because it pushes us to solve problems but the US just isn't having a civil war or having its civilian government replaced any time soon, I'd stake everything I own on it.
Here, have a podcast about the subject: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-it-could-happen-here-307...
The US has always been fascist when it comes to international politics. First its reach was mostly limited to the Americas, but after World War 2 and the start of the Cold War, its fascist control spread across the globe.
It would be more of a surprise if the fascism they display internationally would never make it back to the US. After all, it is the same people making the decisions internationally and domestically, and the disappearance of the call logs from January 6th show that there are parts of the military open to negotiations.
You just described In&Out
But Facebook is trying to get new users
Correct about the fairy tale of endless growth
But they just need to convince shareholders for a couple quarters so a couple employees don’t get collateral called on shares they borrowed against and the corporation can dilute more shares issued on behalf of the same employees
And its going to work, long enough
They're communication tools. On all of these platforms you can post video, images, and text either privately or publicly. I can use Facebook the same way someone might use Twitter. I can post only images to TikTok or Facebook and forget about Instagram. I cannot buy a hamburger and taco bell, or tacos and tostada's at McDonald's.
A better comparison would be saying that Chili's saw Applebee's have a great year and decided to make the inside decor and outside building look more like Applebee's. Both restaurants basically serve a bit of all types of food and the menus probably overlap heavily.
The issue is Facebook misunderstand both their customers and their competition so they're just blindly smashing things together
I blame modern tech hiring processes that filter out people who aren't conforming enthusiastic obedient cheerleaders.
You get a sustain and self-extinguish product instead of one that can respond to what the necessity of the times demand
You must have passionate grumps otherwise you're just shaking pom-poms as you run over a cliff.
Just so we're clear, the users are NOT the customers. I think Facebook absolutely understands their customers -- the companies that spend the most advertising and marketing through Facebook.
If it's a bad experience and "boosting" posts leads to noise and garbage they're going away.
The tiering of customers and users is incorrect, Facebook is the meeting place for the two sides of the attention market and they are increasingly doing a failed execution.
The clean delineated hierarchy model where the users are treated as foolish rubes is part of the problem. There's an insular Silicon Valley elitism that is excessively self-congratulatory and is positively allergic to systemic criticism
I was immediately reminded of Mozilla when I read this.
Which makes this a good analogy for social media. We should all be happy they may finally be peaking and fading.
I’m not a fan of the ad driven business model and the damage it’s done, but Zuckerberg and Facebook are correct here. They know the users better than the users know themselves. It’s been true since the launch of the news feed.
Don’t listen to what users say, watch how they behave.
Everyone says they want to be fit but people just sit around and eat chocolate cake.
Zuckerberg has reorganized and saved Facebook a few times now despite hysterics from users and the press. I’d give him the benefit of the doubt.
Facebook cares a great deal about its users--advertisers. You and I aren't Facebook's users; we are the ore Facebook has been mining at a cost approaching zero for over a decade and selling at a huge markup to its actual customers. But now the mine is playing out. We no longer cost Facebook zero to mine and the advertisers are beginning to realize the gold (us) is no longer 24-carat because nobody under 30 uses FB any more.
Like any mining entrepreneur when the mine begins to play out, FB is panicking. They're throwing whatever they can think of at the wall to see if anything sticks.
None of it will work. FB will keep publicly saying "everything is fine" until one day they will simply slink away in the middle of the night leaving several thousand mine workers unemployed and holding the bag.
Anyone who's tried to use their advertiser tools is unlikely to agree with this. Hard to remember any software I've used with a worse user interface in recent memory.
Pretty sure you can do courses and get certified in it.
No one important at Instagram is fighting for the vision of what IG is. They’re just fighting to try and claw eyeballs away from emerging platforms and their success is being judged on how many people they get to push on these new formats. They don’t care if it’s at the detriment to what made their product great to begin with, because all they’re looking at is “how many reels are they watching. How many stories are they posting”.
Thing is with this strategy because there is no overall vision and no one standing up and saying “we shouldn’t add this” you get the equivalent of a burger restaurant serving sushi and tacos too but their burgers just suck now.
Crazy seeing it happen as the competing experiences encroach on screen space. IG now has Snapchat at the top and TikTok “ad breaks” in the feed. Twitter now has Clubhouse at the top. Etc.
Facebook and its properties are dead. Good riddance.
TikTok is next, of course. Just ask Vine.
Daft move unless it isn't sustainable or they want to phase it out.
But if Facebook turned around and would say "hey if you all start paying us we can drop the whole evil thing" then yeah they'll get my middle finger. They just have lost my trust.
a) Isn't that reasonable for a chat app? I mean, contact book, photos, location are all things that are likely part of the fabric of your chats with others?
b) It might ask for permission, but does it stop working if you deny permission? (I genuinely don't know since I'm not a user). If it doesn't prevent you from chatting, I don't think this is a strong argument.
More money means more degrees of freedom to experiment, the acquire others, etc.
MySpace was popular for some specific English speaking age groups mainly. Facebook is basically everywhere but China.
My parents who still refer to Google Maps as Mapquest are even on Facebook. It will take a pretty big screwup to flush out those types of users (not early adopters).
Actually, red-state cousin-humpers might still be on there a while longer. They have no place else to go, after Trump's predictably shambolic attempt at creating a competitor.
Anyway, good riddance, it pained me to see how most of the national politics was being carried out at a certain moment in time (~2014 - ~2019) almost exclusively on FB, a private network. That wasn't right.
The context of this discussion was large populations that might sustain a social network. Implying that people who engage in incest in states that have a majority of Republican voters in recent elections would be a large enough population to sustain a social network is obviously laughable in the literal sense (incest rates are minuscule). So that leaves the implication that a much larger population of “cousin-humpers” does exist and the association with “red-state” implies that cousin humping correlates with political views.
However, when it comes to cousin-humping, I'm going to double down on the assertion that red states win the contest. And hey, it turns out that I'm not the only one: https://www.thefreemanonline.org/what-state-has-the-most-inc...
In case you're too lazy to click, here are the top 20: Kentucky, Maine, Delaware, Virginia, Maryland, Washington, Georgia, Oregon, Indiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, West Virginia, Montana, Alabama, and South Dakota.
OWNED.
Here is an exercise for you. New Mexico is not a red state. What generalization do think was being made about “red-state cousin-humpers” that wouldn’t apply to the New Mexico cousin-humpers?
Sun Microsystems appeared solid. Apple _did_ almost die. IBM is only a shadow of their former self (IMO, the original IBM _did_ die). FB and Google are still young in comparison.
I have no stake in either, but IMO Google is more likely to survive than FB. FWIW, both have high quality staff that will bail if the growth stalls.
What's left is a few pieces that have no idea what they want to be but they just keep doing what they do because the brand name assures them customers.
By the way, Apple only survived thanks to Microsoft money and being reverse acquired by NeXT.
You're confusing users with customers. The customers are advertisers. The users overwhelmingly aren't.
Has that changed?
So no one is really trying to get you to "follow" them, they just hang around neighborhood groups to see if they can find someone who needs a caterer or a contractor.
There’s a lot of stuff wrong with FB but it’s fundamentally a useful thing where there’s no great alternative (being vaguely aware of what not-so-close acquaintances are doing)
It has also basically eaten Craigslist where I live (Baltimore)
My wife and I were not Facebook users five years ago, but our neighborhood organizations are on Facebook, and so are the best places to find secondhand stuff. So we're Facebook users.
well, aren't older eyeballs more valuable anyway? Like more disposable income, maybe more free time for those retired? The mine might be empty some day in the future, but it doesn't seem to be the case right now
Unless you're selling a new kind of golf putter or a very expensive prescription medicine for high blood pressure. Then you want the oldsters.
Occasionally I find myself having lunch someplace that has daytime tv on. That’s where I see the ads for pharmaceuticals and insurance.
When that day comes, the moment Facebook and Meta are declared dead I will go out, order the most expensive bottle of champagne, and celebrate all night. Future generations of an advanced technological society will look back in horror and disbelief that a small cadre of privateers were allowed to run amok dominating the cultural communications of billions of people. The harms to individuals and society will take decades to reckon with. The lost opportunities for us to evolve instead of "amusing ourselves to death" will be one of the great questions of the future. "Why, while the planet was burning", they will ask, "did people spend all day sending each other selfies?"
Are you thinking that digital technology is irrevocably corrupted and hereafter can only be employed toward abusive and manipulative ends?
Or are you supposing that because we have allowed some companies to damage society through abuses of technology, that the situation can never be remedied. No laws can ever be brought to bear?
Or are you alluding to something within the collective psyche, making a social-anthropology statement of sorts, that people, having tasted the ruin of apathy, nihilism and decadence will not recover in spirit and build a more positive technological world?
Or something else?
I'm genuinely curious what you imagine is the powerful force that underwrites malevolent entities in the digital realm?
So, pretty much "option 3". A social shift.
> Meta will only disappear when someone else creates an even more engaging and therefore malignant platform.
I agree that there has been a profound change in "western" culture, and about a third of all the world are in this space (a staggering three billion people!). But I disagree that is an irreversible state of affairs and therefore a downward spiral towards worse and worse technology.
Let's not suppose the worst of people. Can they not change. Do all sick people and addicts remain sick and addicted forever? Or do they recover?
I wrote a chapter in Digital Vegan that presses a striking metaphor.
The chapter is "Hatland" [1]
It's based on a funny discussion I have with students in lectures about a photo from the 1940s. Every single person in a crowd of hundreds of people is wearing a hat! Trilbys, bowlers, caps... men the women too. In the 40's you just didn't go out without a hat in polite society. (It's also parodied in Python's "The Meaning of Life")
What people didn't realise is how parochial and fleeting that moment was. At the time people would have said "The hat is out of the bag!" A photo from 20 years later has nobody waring hats, but everyone with long hair and tie-dyes.
By your reasoning we would all be wearing 10ft high top-hats by now, because "someone else will create an even more engaging and therefore malignant head wear" :)
It's only when you look at culture as a historian/anthropologist that you break out of parochialism see the bigger truths.
One might label it a flaw in human evolution (even though it might have had positive selection pressure), something that can be "cured". Perhaps.
> Do all sick people and addicts remain sick and addicted forever? Or do they recover?
I don't know that any significant number of addicts, let alone many or most, ever "recover". But I also don't know that they don't. My money is on the former until we deeply understand addiction and can cure it.
It's actually a lot more work to imagine a better society, because that requires actual ideas for what could be different and how we might get there. Saying, "things will be the same but worse" is a lot easier than saying, "things could be different and better, and here's how". (Full disclosure: I'm stealing this idea from Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit, which I'm currently reading and thoroughly enjoying.)
Notwithstanding its potential to become (or current reality as) a propaganda tool of the Chinese government, based on my very limited experience with it, TikTok actually feels both healthier and stupider (in a vapid entertainment sense) than Facebook and Twitter. I have yet to be outraged by anything I've encountered on TikTok, whereas if I so much as glance at a tweet on Twitter on its web interface, while not logged in, I'm almost guaranteed to be presented with other tweets from people who infuriate or disgust me. Discord also feels healthier than either of those platforms, it's really just a much better version of IRC. As such, perhaps we are already seeing a more healthy ecosystem emerge.
But setting aside the platform side of things, this discussion [1] on the Ezra Klein show calls the current disruptive era "transitory" in the same way that the dawn of other communication media were disruptive and transitory. Eventually, people adjust. Perhaps we are on our way to becoming immune to attention hijacking, outrage politics and FOMO. Speaking for myself, I've certainly become far better at resisting the pull of those phenomena.
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...
I don't think this is necessarily true. Maybe this will end a different way.
For n=me, I've used facebook when I was younger but stopped using it (and all other social networks for their stated purpose - sharing and connecting) when the algos replaced the chronological order and tried to shove odorless excrement in my eyes non-stop. I'm not looking for a new one.
What I do now? I have a couple of private Signal groups where I and my friends shoot the shit. That's where I get most social value out of the Internet. I use Twitter for news. I use Reddit a bit for trash-browsing. That's it.
Now, this might be a function of me getting older and grumpier and preferring meeting people I already know, sure. I wouldn't however assume that this all will end in a more and more terrible "social" networks. Then again, I might be totally off base because I see that TikTok is eating facebook's lunch and it's not any better for humanity I think.
Indeed, that's what the parent commenter said.
What I do is look at all those historical "slippery slopes of bad faith" that didn't survive, and ask "Why not?". What changed in society and stopped that?
Child labour was set to explode in the industrial revolution. Kids as young as 7 or 8 worked in factories. At the time it would have been reasonable to extrapolate that in a few decades all children would need to be employed in mills and mines. And we can talk about slavery, and disenfranchisement of women, and many more things in the same way.
To take a counter-example, the proliferation of cars on the roads is something we have not been able to stem through reason alone. I think this sets up a sense of "technological exceptionalism" in which theories of determinism currently dominate. In my opinion this is a very immature (Level 1 civilisation) view of things.
But when we look at all the malevolent trajectories that were corrected, it always begins when we name it. Naming a problem (acknowledging it as undesirable) sets in motion the progress towards overcoming it.
I think we are living through precisely that age with digital technology. We are in a process of naming, qualifying and understanding new harms. We are starting to apply the same progressive models we have for race, gender and public health, to technology. The course is set. It might seem time is not be on our side, but the industrialists of today are no more powerful than those of yesterday against the tides of society.
There are substantive differences to this time around. We had a technological explosion for one which meant in terms of technology we jumped much farther forward than we had before. However the same cultural and civil failings are still there and still proceeding in much the same cycle.
I don't think Social Media is evil per-se. I do think that it is an extremely effective Mob amplifier. We used to have mobs form at a local level and their effects rarely managed to expand to a national level. Now we get global mobs via social media. Mob's have been around forever in human society.
They are rarely rational. Even when they are motivated by real problems they often tear down or destroy as much or more of the good as they do the bad. They tend to be indiscriminate and I don't think we are really prepared for the types of Mobs that Social Media enables. Maybe we'll be able to name this for what it is and find a counter to it. But I haven't seen any effective attempts to name the phenomena for what is. Instead I just see yet another Mob forming with a complaint about how companies are getting away with exploiting people. In this case I think it's less exploitation and more just amplification, intended or otherwise.
How do you limit the amplification without limiting free speech?
I can't speak for the rest of the world, but in the United States? Absolutely yes.
I'm working for a small company currently and am watching the same thing play out on a much smaller scale. The company was growing organically at a good clip. We've had zero customer churn in 6+ years and service some of the largest companies in their respective verticals. Company fires the current CEO based on board recommendations, hires a CRO who was in sales at Oracle for 7 years, CRO brings in his overpriced underlings to "manage", CRO starts refocusing all concerns around the sales process (starting with making everyone spend an inordinate amount of time learning/relearning MEDDPICC) and tying up hours of the work week in unproductive oversight meetings. Now I haven't been here long but I've seen this play out before. CRO will sit here for 2+ years and milk it into the ground blaming everyone for every failure but himself. He'll even throw his guys under the bus if needed (which is why they're there in the first place - ownership buffer). We're starting to see product issues because of the focal shift internally and the distraction this guy is creating. It's so unfortunate - I've yet to hear the CRO talk about a customer outside of the subject matter of revenue. It's sick and twisted. These types of "executives" are narcissists through and through and they are the toxic seed that kills great companies.
Then they take their "success" to the next company and the cycle repeats.
A reasonable definition of social media is that it refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, and/or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. "
In other words, roughly: a medium in which media created and consumed by the crowds vs. institutions.
Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media for a longer description.
> Is YouTube also social media?
Yes. "YouTube is an American online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube
They are all media that you interact with and also interact with others via. The distinction is made with television/radio, where interaction is purely one-way, and is therefore not social media.
There is no reason to celebrate
I think it is much worse than dominating. Let me try: as a FB user, your "communication" with your network is not only mediated by FB, but actively manipulated to such a degree that you're no longer communicating directly with individuals in your network. When we give up the ability or the pattern of communicating directly with each other, bad shit happens.
I'll keep my bottle of champagne for the day targeted advertising is regulated away, either on privacy grounds or on "Section 230" grounds (if you're curating content to increase engagement it's fair that you should be considered an editor and thus lose Section 230 protection and start being liable for any inflammatory content you promote to increase engagement).
This has rarely been a priority in capitalism.
As someone the wrong side of 50, I can actually tell you that practically none of my friends in my age group use FB any more either. For my non-techie friends, we're all in whatsapp groups.
The only thing that keeps me on facebook are sports clubs that I'm a member of, organise a lot of activities via facebook.
In my opinion it's not the UI that is the problem; it's the decision they made to allow all nutcases with their nutjob theories to run rampant, in order to make a quick buck out of peoples' outrage.
The elephant in the room is advertising tracking. Nothing to facebook matters. If I as an advertiser can't see what I am paying for, I am leaving. Advertisers DO NOT want to pay for impressions - they want to pay for conversions (clicks/installs/etc). Without a way to see if a particular ad spend converted - all ad spend ends. Facebook could now be doomed. Apple has changed its policies [1] to help its users to remove advertiser tracking. Mobile has taken over almost all impressions.
"They're throwing whatever they can think of at the wall to see if anything sticks." They are beyond fucked here. Whatever they create, apple is blocking tracking. So new products/features do NOT matter. They need a way to figure out tracking - I don't have a solution (besides leaving and just using apple store iads).
https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22405474/apple-app-tracki...
> You and I aren't Facebook's users
A user is someone who uses a product, by any reasonable definition.
Advertisers are certainly (commercial) customers, but the average person IS a user of Facebook.
> we are the ore Facebook has been mining
This I do agree with, my own metaphor has been harvesting rather than mining (like in the Matrix or in Jupiter Ascending). But being something mined/harvested does not preclude also being a user.
Not only that, they're actually killing and destroying art forms. Many forms of art don't lend themselves to 15-second videos, and they're being actively downranked and not even shown to their own friends and followers anymore. Facebook is gatekeeping content between friends. You could have spent 500 hours painting a picture but Facebook will HIDE it from your friends just because it isn't a 15-second "Reel".
Zuck: "We want Reels to be the best place for creators to connect with their community and make a living"
Well, did you even bother asking the creators? A lot of them CANNOT make a living through short videos. They need still pictures, writing, interactive pages, and other ways to present their creations.
No, Zuck, you don't want it to the best place for creators. You actually don't give a flying f about creators. You just want to copy and compete with TikTok.
I do a lot of landscape photography and astrophotography, and my views have been slashed to 1/3 of what they were last year. Same quality content, it's Instagram HIDING stuff from my own followers and friends. I'm just glad I don't make a living from it, but feel really bad for those who do.
Your point is 100% valid, so don't consider this a disagreement. It is merely that McDonalds has changed, and it annoys me.
I went to the one on El Camino near Oregon, and waited 7 minutes to have my order taken, and 14 minutes more for my food. Why?
Doordash, and others.
https://nypost.com/2022/02/14/doordash-to-penalize-mcdonalds...
This is a pivot too, from restaurant to delivery as a primary business model.
But, just like facebook, mcdonalds borked this. Its whole business model was fast food, and really the only reason I ever went there.
They could have added more cooks, and another cashier, keeping the responsiveness and speed of old, keeping their food fast for walkins.
But instead, drop the old, and now I can go to a real restaurant, order a burger, and get it made and on my table faster.
Good job McDonalds!
By prioritizing DoorDash over in-store customers, you're just destroying your long-term value prop and brand.
1: set the veggies aside
2: put the whole burger in the microwave upside-down for half the time it takes to reheat (usually 30 seconds for this step if cold from the fridge)
3: flip it and nuke it the rest of the time
4: restore veggies to rightful place
I was amazed the first time I did this and had a 100% sog-free bun. The burger was indistinguishable from fresh. I don't know exactly what's going on, or what's different from just nuking it all the way on one side, but it works.
They'd probably make more money if they moved spaces into a ghost kitchen and cut out walk-in traffic entirely.
Heck, that’s true for all real estate markets. Funny money and overseas wealth has distorted all notions of market efficiency.
Until very recently I used to be able to get a full meal for ~$4, but now it’s hard to get out for under $12. The only reason to ever eat McDonalds at this point is the “it’s there” factor when I have left the house.
Triple cheeseburgers reheated in the microwave with a brick of extra mature cheddar added between two of the patties first remain one of the most cost effective "my depression is trying to eat me but I really should still actually have food" meals I've figured out though. (the trick is to microwave it just enough to soften the cheddar then cut it in half, stupidbrain finds a whole burger upsetting but half a burger twice acceptable, yes I know how little sense that makes logically but the entire point here is "working around my brain being irrational.")
At the same time they did this they changed to touch-screen ordering and panelled off the 'kitchen'.
Wait times seem much longer to me, I assume they prioritise drive-through.
They just moved the assembly process closer to the customers but the ingredients aren't any fresher.
The reason for the slowdown is purely just the delivery apps. Staff doing payments & cooking/assembly are usually different people unless it's like 3am on a weekday.
I first learned about them because I ordered a kebab on Just Eat and my order arrived with a flyer inside saying "please use them next time, they charge us less."
The site is honestly a bit janky and regularly annoys me slightly ... but only slightly, and I'm happy to deal with that to have all the revenue go to a local company and my favourite food places - and the cost is at worst identical to the venture capitalist subsidised companies and sometimes lower.
I have a possibly misplaced hope that they'll survive the collapse of the VC players. I intend to live in hope anyway though because (a) I much prefer my money to stay local (b) they're the easiest way I've found to order from the chinese place with the best prawn toast I've ever had.
If they disappear at some point I'm going to have to go back to phone calls and paying cash on delivery, and while I love the places I order from enough to do that if I have to I'd really rather not.
A centralised "we pick your food for you"? Unlikely
The cost right now is subsidised by VCs to get everyone to switch.
With the incoming recessions VC will spend less money, especially on a business model which doesn't feel novel anymore.
No more. Why? Because they've stopped selling burgers.
They've switched almost all of their restaurants to a "made to order" model, wherein they assemble your order on demand from warming trays, instead of producing them ahead and storing them in this huge heated cabinet.
Now the result looks exactly like the product shot on the menu, but is so lukewarm that the cheese hasn't even melted. That's not a burger, that's a at best a strange sandwich.
Another way to look at this is that McDonald's is making customers feel like they're getting restaurant quality food for less money. Personally, like you, I miss the cheap fast food.
In the same way the fries seem to be cold from the complexity of all the different menu items messing up their flow.
95% BigMc and fries must have been so much more easy to organize around.
They can cook and assemble a burger in 2 minutes, along with fries... even a dozen burgers.
This was McDonald's specialty! How to keep ahead of the crowd, in sync with demand, and also, how to build a burger fast.
The fact that they don't have 50 big macs on the go, during doordash/dinner peak, is a major problem.
No, it's not difficult, not for them, they've been doing it for 70 years!
There may be some merit to some of what you say, but it just leaves one with more questions.
It was around long before all of the delivery service apps, and before smartphones were a huge thing, even.
Don't know where you're from, but you gotta remember that Macca's is not quite the same all around the world. In Europe as an example, you can notice clear differences between the different countries Macca's. So even though MFY exists for a long time where you live, it's very well possible that the other persons local Macca's only recently-ish changed too.
I guess that change is not only noticeable between countries, I'm pretty sure you'll get a different experience if you either visit a big restaurant in a city vs. a smaller restaurant on the countryside.
About the regional differences - I remember visiting an Amsterdam restaurant in the mid-2000s that still served the food in styrofoam trays, many years after those had been phased out in Germany. And being able to pump my own ketchup and mayo into little waffle cups in another one in Denmark. There are quite a few regional differences.
In Switzerland as well, yes. And I can't remember which burgers or items it were, but I remember seeing items in a german McDonalds which I've never seen in Switzerland.
In Italy you can order a couple of different beers, even from self-service terminals. In Switzerland I remember them only being available when ordering at the counter, and they only offer one kind of beer. Not that I care about beer at McD, just something I noticed.
as someone who has managed the front lines recently at a fast food restaurant, companies like Doordash have been a boon for the in-house efficiency
McDonald's hasn't been fast food for a long, long time -- and this has nothing to do with Doordash/delivery.
In the 80's and 90's at least, all food was made ahead of time. There were rows of burgers sitting under heat lamps, and once you paid the cashier, they would grab your entire order in under 30 seconds and hand it to you. It was fast food.
But as competitors started making better-tasting food freshly prepared (e.g. Wendy's made all hamburgers to-order), McD's had to catch up. So the burgers under heat lamps are long gone, and you have to wait 5-15 minutes for your food to be made. You get a number on your receipt and walk over to a pickup area now.
Also the 7 minutes to have your order taken has nothing to do with DoorDash/delivery -- it's the fact that McD's raised their minimum wage a few years ago, so they can only afford 1 cashier instead of 4-5, and they want you to use a kiosk/app to order using a touchscreen.
McDonald's didn't bork anything. Their hot, fresh quarter pounders are now almost infinitely tastier than the old shriveled ones in dried-up buns baking under a lamp for 30 minutes prior that we ate in the 80's and 90's. But that comes at the cost of waiting for them to make them fresh.
Not disputing that facebook is uniquely poison, but that's most sane users on social giants. Users of reddit and twitter specifically absolutely and openly loath them, users of instagram and linkedin are too stifled by the ultra-superficial cheeriness of the platforms to openly admit their hatred on the platform itself, but it's burning inside them quietly.
Socials are an amazing\terrifying experiments in how you can use the herd instincts of humans to hold them hostages against their will.
This is just diversification to reach more market segments, and as long as that feeds tab exists they aren’t doing anything different from e.g. youtube, where the home tab is not what I want at all, but the subscriptions tab does exactly what I want.
If McDonalds had been a pizza joint within the memories of much of its user base before introducing a Big Mac which was chicken one year and beef the next with constant tweaks to the sauces and vegetable content, I'm not sure the introduction of tacos would be that controversial.
Google keeps swinging secondary apps in and out of existence, social networks come and go every 5 years. It's low energy high frequency, low integration and unstable.
Lazy people need to own their laziness. What alternative is there? The UI can’t get infinitely complex.
Beg to differ there. Facebook should be broken up and senior execs facing charges. [1] Loads of people think so and has been motivating for many to delete their account. Don't overlook that group of people. (There are dozens of us, DOZENS!)
[1] In weaker moments this can be expressed with rather more venom.
Why is any of this news!?
Facebook (and Instagram) has been using an algorithmic discovery engine for years, hasn't it?
There's hardly any of my friends left actively using it.
All my friends are now in fb messenger groups, whatsapp groups, discord, and so on.
Until they get "monetized", then we'll be off to somewhere else I suppose.
The difference is that, similarly to how social networks grow exponentially when things are going well, they lose users even faster when things are going bad. There are tons of academic papers explaining this.
Users are not customers.
And for what? To show you some ads here and there? To collect data that can be used to… sell more ads and products?
Instagram was once my favorite app. There was a golden age before stories came a long where people just posted random pictures of what they were up to or what they were seeing. Things weren’t too memefied or political, unlike Facebook. Then photos got more and more glamorized and more about flexing and showing how much cooler and more awesome your life was. People started following themes and niches for their profile content rather than just posting random unorganized series of photos. Businesses and brands started getting built on the platform.
Building an Instagram clone the way it used to be is fairly trivial these days. I could probably throw one together in a few months, but growing its popularity is practically impossible these days with such entrenched incumbents and no niches left to start a user base with.
…unless perhaps… we build a social network on the blockchain
Is this something that people really want to do though... I did that for a bit back when fb was still new but quickly and I mean quickly fell off the habit and stopped using fb.
You can meet some people, but they are unlikely to ever ascend to the level of a close friend.
This is absolute nonsense in my opinion and more importantly, in my experience
The Facebook general experience is to slowly (or immediately) dislike your family. Instagram's general experience is to like posts from strangers and occasionally your friends. Tiktok's experience is to really disconnect from your social circle and get sucked into shockingly personalized content from strangers.
Facebook's feed is a dying product, Instagram is barely keeping its head above water, and Tiktok is growing so fast the government is worried that it's a national security threat.
Nah. The government calls it a national security threat because Facebook has been lobbying pretty hard for it. They did ban tiktok in india for this very reason. Though for the same so called national security threat. But interestingly, facebook allows ruling fascist party's pages to call for genocide quite openly on its platform, and has recently invested a ton of money into businessmen close to the ruling party.
On Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/LinkedIn, I still have tons of people I'd be interesting in passively keeping up with. Maybe even actively, sometimes. But all that latent sociality is increasingly just dead out of the gate, seeing as I no longer use any of those platforms regularly.
My closest friends, the ones I will actually put in effort to talk to? Group chat. The polar opposite of the public social media ecosystem that we used to have. A closed, private space that admits no outsiders, marketers, or clout chasers, but strongly discourages developing relationships with new people or expanding one's horizons.
I sometimes post the same content to two groups, but it's pretty rare.
I do miss the broader reach of classic Instagram where I could follow friends without them needing to be in a close circle with one another. Lots of them are unwilling to join the chat.
But I don't miss it enough to put up with f---ing TikTok behavior.
I guess FB overextended by invading out feeds with ads and "recommendations" rather than gossip about friends.
While I am quite sure some are hooked on the feed, the core of Facebook (friend gossip) is gone.
I guess that's why they have ads in Messenger now.
I find it much better. If I want to, there are hobby groups like discord, anonymously, not show off to all for likes and follows kind of social media.
There should be no need to passively know what people are doing all the time. If anyone do that, it becomes addiction.
Sounds wonderful. This is how the vast majority of humans have experienced socialising for the vast majority of human history. And they were happier for it.
Closed just means you can't open a page and read the full history like a forum. It doesn't mean it's only knowable to people currently inside and people they invite.
I've been thinking about these exact tradeoffs in building Haven[1]. Completely private, self-hosted or paid-hosting so no ads, or tracking. Built on RSS so you even get interoperability with the rest of the web.
But also no discovery.
I haven't decided yet if there is a reasonable way to do discovery which doesn't turn into a cesspool of promotion--I think it would have to lean on peer recommendations of some form, kind of a pseudo curation. Or maybe we just leave discovery to FaceTok.
[1]: https://havenweb.org
Ah yes, the one thing that would be worse than the status quo.
There is no alternative! It'll be the end of history!
I've given that guy a fair shake, I think he's a well spoken idiot. I wish I could come to some other conclusion.
There's an adage that (properly defined) economic liberalism warps the imaginary and closes off possibilities, he may be a victim of it. The guy is clearly sincere and passionate and I really like that, I just think he's really mistaken
There's healthier futures possible based on we and not on me, one that pulls from more human emotions than greed and fear and there's something that precludes the man from considering it possible or palatable.
I want so much for those that care to be better.
Whatsapp, Telegram and Signal fill that place quite nicely.
I regularly check my Whatsapp contacts status messages. Most of them are filled with things from their daily lives.
I have a bunch of groups in Telegram, both personal and professional.
I feel FB style of "feed" thing has become a chore solely due to the mind-numbing complexity of the interface. WA is dead simple. I know what I am looking at, I can interact with the person who put the status message, I can block them or delete them or archive them.
SM has evolved itself into chat apps, which, funnily, was what we used FB for in the first place.
The likes of IG, TT, etc are a mixed broadcast medium, that are natural evolutions of the Twitter model.
Also, FB is finally evolving into a form that is close to how users use it.
I think a feed is still the best way to deliver updates, but they seem to quickly get corrupted for monetization and algorithmic manipulation.
I grew to appreciate Stories as a way to tell the behind-the-scenes story of the main feed highlight shot/video. And the ability to save those screens into actual stories (of an outing or a project).
Then they ramped up ads, added Reels and wrecked the way the main feed works with integrating Reels. Reels feels like the step too far. Revert the main feed UI, let me switch off all suggested content (not just for 30 days, you bastards), tone down the ads, and I'll be OK.
Pre-social media, nobody shared pictures of food.
I don't think we're self-censoring, I think we're returning to normal.
In a scrolling feed, no issue. If you were creating a collated folio of best work, no issue. I think having a chronological grid is what irks people. Better to let people choose a grid that represents them. A photographer could have their best work, someone else might choose to have their most popular, and others could leave it chronological.
I share food pics with family all the time these days because technology allows me too. Didn't work back in the 320px resolution days.
Bo Burnham has some interesting comments in his "Inside" special about how social media makes us disassociate from ourselves and think about both living in the moment and how it will be perceived afterwards. I think that's a big part of what causes this - after you know that you're not just posting for fun then you have to think about why you're posting something and what it means. This has caused by to basically stop using them because it never seems "worth it" to post something
IMO it’s pointless to “passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing”. We should either actively keep up (thus actually maintain the relationship), or let it go~
People want something like Facebook as an option. It has usefulness- sharing photos, inviting people to events, a simple platform for small business. I’m not going to get into the negatives of Facebook which, I feel, outweigh the benefits.
Facebook has become a net negative on society but in the early days it was quite good. The problem isn’t social networking apps as much as the sad reality that these services can’t exist without ads or sweeping changes to drive growth. If only it were possible to have something like Facebook but without the suits.
Also, people are artists or learning. It’s nice to have a simple and organized way to save your public work online to share with friends.. I can keep going. It’s easy to forget the usefulness of facebook.
To be clear, Facebook has done harm and the company is at fault for much, but I do think there is something in the structure or DNA of facebook which could be salvaged and become useful.
I don’t think that Likes, algorithmic feeds, or sharing political/insane links with everyone you kind of know are quality features of facebook.
I think Instagram still works for that. You can also do that by having a blog.
But if anyone needs more than that, it's addiction generated by fb, the red notification, likes, followers, desire to open the app, desire to know what others are doing, gossip, all this kind if things. Fb was pretty effective to create this desire and it permanently changed how we function mentally.
My main point is that there are functions or core uses in FB which are worth having.
> there is a desire or even need to have robust and interactive options in our communication devices for keeping in touch with all the people we know in a more inclusive and less active
OP seems to take this as axiomatic. I'm not so sure.
This is the single use case that kept me on Facebook for a while, I decided it wasn't worth it but just by their network effects so many people were on the site that it was very good for that.
I think we need some public alternative(s) - then you don't have to worry about funding it through advertising or the company trying to use the users for profit by selling data.
SNaaS.
Letting anyone run their own, and turning whatever features they want on or off.
You as the service provider take a cut of advertising revenue, or subscription fees, etc.
Keet.io and whatever comes next
Setting aside the fact that the social media platform you are cloning is probably going to sue you for copyright infringement if it takes off, you'd still be fighting the network effect. I'm not saying it is impossible, but I doubt that building a clone of a product will successfully move people from the original. Signal and telegram haven't been able to best WhatsApp.
Building it in a decentralized way probably makes it even harder.
I have 4 large (10+) groups that are friend groupings from different interest areas. Which use iMessage/WhatsApp/Signal
1 huge one for a group of concert/rave friends on Signal
3 overlapping groups of various family-relatives using iMessage/WhatsApp
I don't even need to open FB/IG anymore. Bye Felica
Signal has an excellent app these days and supports encrypted group chat. But Whatsapp doesnt require convincing people.
Mmmmm yes, documenting my shitty cringe opinions in an immutable record forever with the full force of a global distributed hashing network.
Unironically though, imagine where we would be if logging to social media was even a tiny bit more expensive than free, PoW was originally invented to combat email spam after all.
How about Mastodon? You can even set up your own server if you want, exclusively for your friends and relatives.
As both cause and effect, Twitter has missed the capitalistic financial success of similarly sized and engaged companies.
To pretend that Facebook is the only party extracting value is wrong. People (who aren’t you) cause a lot of the problems that drive these apps to the places they end up.
Turns out that most people would prefer to see the Kardashians over their friends most of the time. Sad, but there it is.
In WallE, everyone is floating around in chairs having their content spoon-fed to them with a generous amount of ads mixed in. If you've ever scrolled or seen someone scroll, its kinda close. Just mindlessly moving their thumb up and down, taking in content that will be forgotten within minutes. Ask a tik tok user to tell you even 10% of the videos they saw within the last hour. I'd be surprised if they could.
I hope its not too "old man yelling at cloud" because I do my 15 minutes of mindless instagram scrolling but I have a timer that locks the app and I usually only need 15 minutes, more just feels bleh. Some of my family/friends "brag" about having 7+ hrs of "tik tok time" on their iphone stats. Just crazy.
Heck you could ask the same for any HN user as well :)
Yes this is social media. Yes some of it is mindless time wasting. For me personally I sometimes get useful information that helps improve my work / profession. At least that’s how I justify it.
I remember reading some article about the sunset of social media and TikTok and Facebook and stuff.
At the very least I think we have to admit a 15 min session on HN will be more productive, memorable and engaging than 15 minutes on tiktok. Again, if your goal is mindless scroll, I get it, I do it too... but still, lol
Not to get all high and mighty but I dunno, I guess I see it like alcohol. A little is fine but I can't imagine a barrage of second-sized content being optimized to perfection (to keep you scrolling) is a "good" thing for any long period of time.
Especially when it seems these companies are doing everything they can to emulate tiktok.
Again, people can value even mindless scrolling for 6 hours a day. My OP was more about how not even 10 years ago, having quick and mindless content spoon-fed to you was seen as a satirical exaggeration of future humans. We're much closer to that now than we were 10 years ago.
In fact tiktok sounds like an endless "$Country's got talent" show, and not a spontaneous stream of posts
I totally get that ppl have been doing this forever... it just seems tiktok has taken it up another level. A real time/attention sucker on a truly massive and global scale beyond TV/Youtube.
And yep! I think 15 minutes is perfect. I think there is benefit to just having funny/mindless/interesting videos lined up to unwind at the end of the day or on a break... its just I can't imagine how some ppl rack up close to "part-time job" hours on it haha.
TV is also very passive, but most content still requires thinking about a narrative for an extended period.
Tiktok, reels, stories, etc., on the other hand, are just like watching a constant barrage of seconds-long commercials, often even shorter than traditional TV commercials were. And without the catchy jingles that stick in your head for years. Of course they'll be less than 10% memorable.
It seems strange to me that for so many years people complained about commercials, hated them, paid extra to watch shows without commercials, etc. And now it's the hot new popular trendy thing for people to watch them for hours on end?
Not that I’m much better.
I call them lost souls.
We've all been there in one way or another but seeing someone in that trance, from the outside, is very disconcerting. These phones are no joke.
For a lot of people, facebook basically is the internet. The same way AOL was a long time ago. Everyone they want to talk to as they go about their day is there. Basically every business in the US that bothers with an online presence at all either has a facebook page or exclusively has a facebook page. Craigslist is being eaten by facebook marketplace. Even Facebook messenger is still a wildly successful chat app and it's like... their 3rd or 4th-place messaging platform.
Facebook has become a sort of digital town square that is a pretty significant part of the economy; the real-world brick-and-mortar economy. Tiktok and instagram are much more recreational.
It's interesting that you call it the new Aol, to me it's the new Yahoo.com.
Maybe in hindsight it's always been this way?
Facebook DOES NOT OWN social networking. Facebook improved on an existing design at the right time, PERIOD! Now, as before, the world has moved on, and the bubble has burst. The laggards in 3rd world countries will flock to the next service to disrupt social media, just like before. Facebook innovated at a time when mobile phones were being delivered to these countries. Not because they were a superior service or somehow godlike in its ability to hold mindshare. Tiktok, by its very nature, is its own worse enermy. Chinas economy is crumbling as we speak, and its not going to be long before the CCP will get caught with their hands in the cookie jar. No one makes money in China without authority from the superme leader. And No one can be more famous then the supreme leader. Tiktok, tiktok; Huawi 2.0.
Oh no man, a laggard from a 3rd world country has already reached HN. Maybe you should pack your bags now because the future of HN looks grim.
For looking up a business it's always Google/Website, Yelp, and Instagram for me.
I may be reaching too far here but maybe it is your adblocker? A lot of times companies use the "facebook page integration" thing in their websites which I think most adblockers (including mine) filter out.
With Facebook chat you just send the inquiry and they respond when they log back in the morning. My ISP actually responded immidiately at 2AM once, that was also a nice surprise.
Consequently, Facebook is 'the internet' for most here. We have Facebook groups with member counts that are 1/3 of the country's population. For example the group 'Yumi Toktok Stret' has 128K members for a country of 300k. It is an amazing look into the thoughts of a nation since everything from jokes and gossip to serious arguments on policy occur there.
TikTok doesn't feel social at all. It feels entirely too performative. Everything on there is a performance. Everything is an act. Everything is simply an effort of some kind or another. Sounds more exhausting than fun.
Really wish there was a thriving ecosystem of small online communities that had some sort of financial structure that could collectively create as much money as these larger companies do.
Instead, well, here we are.
I believe I've heard it said that Hulu makes _more_ money per user on "with-ads" tier users than those that pay extra to remove the ads.
Unfortunately there are grammar errors throughout this page.
E.g. the heading "Your communities place to connect" should be "Your community's place to connect".
In fact, reading through more of it, it comes across as if English is not your first language? It would be worth it to find someone to copy-edit all your content.
Admittedly I'm not the most well versed in copy-writing and will do as you suggested to get someone who is to read over it in detail.
How did you find the overall structure and contents of the page? Did you find it was clear at conveying the messaging?
Cheers.
I guess it's always more fun when the VCs pay for all that and all the fun evaporates when they want their money back.
I agree entirely but I'd argue that this is a feature rather than a flaw. It's more like community TV than a place for dialog with social connections.
> It feels entirely too performative.
I think this depends greatly on the niches of TikTok that you have led yourself to. Some is definitely very performative and it can feel like you're on the receiving end of an endless stream of pitches for your attention. But other parts are far more laid-back. SynthTok, for example, is mostly just context-free synthesizer jams.
The whole vertical video craze is a weird one, and one I’ve only recently tried to adjust to. I mean the pace of it is so fast, and I barely have time to process each video before moving to the next one. A whole generation are going to be raised on cheap dopamine hits and will probably suffer mild ADD symptoms because of this.
I want the slow web back where I can chew on long form content and mull over large pieces of text and long winded podcasts, not boiled down snippets of info that prey on my base instincts and giddy 1 minute dopamine fixes.
It is what you make it, really.
I watch YouTubers who make long videos, go deep diving on subjects which have no real use in my daily life and have very, very few apps on my phone — all but one are something which makes my life easier than not having it and the exception is because I want to buy a condo.
No Instagrams, Facebooks, TikToks, Twitters, nothing.
I don’t even feel I’m missing out on anything worthwhile either.
Hacker news, because duh.
Instagram is for softcore porn.
Facebook I deleted years ago, no regrets. (I'm aware they own Instagram, and I don't care. This is just a personal issue for me.)
Tiktok I watch funny videos when people send them to me, I feel no need to install an app.
Twitter, I read tweets when people link to them, and every time Twitter reminds me why I'm glad I don't use Twitter.
I understand why other people use them, and some people can do it in a healthy way, but for me, this is the absolute maximum I can use social media without losing myself.
Here you go: https://jakeseliger.com/. Scroll through and note the most interesting or useful venues. Then, there are an array of RSS readers available; I've been using NetNewsWire but think that Feedly seems to be the most common.
The "slow web" never left.
i wish we had usage stats that were as simple as FB or insta’s “monthly active users”. because i feel like there’s an ebb and flow to this. 15 years ago, blogs had comment sections, pingbacks, RSS. 10 years ago, SEO displaced the blog. 5 years ago, blogs grew again with Twitter announcements replacing the role of RSS. today, email lists are back in style and my friends ask me for RSS reader recommendations.
then there’s the whole aspect of forums. most of the forums i used growing up are effectively dead. on the other hand, there are still new ones i run across monthly. it’s very difficult for me to separate my own trajectory from the overall “small web” trajectory: i just wish i knew of clean stats to illuminate the true state of things.
The "slow web" never left it just became more underground as the flashy algorithms paved over it in favour of turning visitors into media consumption addicts then into a product to sell to advertisers.
This would aptly describe a tabloid newspaper.
For instance lots of birders post their pictures to Facebook, it helps to connect with people and get tips about birding locations. But...at the cost of depth. The pictures look good, but you don't learn very much about nature. It's like fast food, not nutritious.
It also sucks the air out of the room, and prevents other sites from growing. Sites that could grow into something more useful.
I feel like it's the opposite. Everything on Reels is either a meme, scam or an ad (be it influencer ad or a blatant one). My theory why Youtube shorts and Instagram Reels turn out this way is that they are attached to an existing network with developed spam/influence markets where's TikTok had to reinvent in and in the progress the culture managed to reduce the obcenity of it. Though, TikTok is getting worse by the day as these markets develop.
> - Posts are even less rooted in a web of social relationship.
> - The larger the crowd, the louder the threshold for speech to be heard.
This is prescient. The "social media" of today is more like Napster than it is like the the early-2000s Facebook:
* People look for content that they want (political rage, softcore pornography, funny videos), with little concern for who it comes from.
* Content is exchanged between peers, but centrally indexed and mediated.
* While the network is ostensibly peer-to-peer, the content exchanged on it is filtered by the central entity according to any policy they see fit.
I get the impression all of these sites that use quick 10-15 second video clips followed by screenshots of a tweet or quote are a dystopian method of controlling human behavior.
It seems like a way to implant a thought or feeling and minimize critical thinking.
In the past social media sites reddit / facebook had great comment sections and links to actual articles. Although this still exists (to some extent and on niche subreddits for example) it seems to be rapidly changing to screenshot of a tweet, or quote or a short video clip. Followed by one line responses or even just a single emoji.
For example you will see a quote from politician x … as a screenshot …. ughh that makes me so mad!!! But little context is provided about the quote, when it was said, was it actually said and is the the expanded text available to help understand.
Nope it’s .. just a quick emotion that makes me mad!!… followed by scroll to cat video #532
Watching people sitting at parks, waiting for a bus, waiting at a restaurant … lots of the same … scroll scroll … giggle giggle… go political team A they are saving world … ugghh political team B is so bad and makes me mad they hate everyone … scroll .. scrolll .. did you know if you eat Kale you live forever … scroll … scroll
Just something really off putting about this experience IMO. Seems very shallow / minimal thinking …
I've noticed a lot of people hold conservative views despite growing up fairly liberal because a lot of the solutions to difficult problems are difficult. An easy way out is to accept the first thing that seems fine without any thinking involved. Add to that the fact that it's a worldview that doesn't make sense at first (like many things in maths and science) and people just give up.
I stopped using FB years ago because of this. I've also stopped using instagram on the last couple of years for the same reason. I'm constantly being shown recommended posts from either random people or ads rather than a basic linear timeline of people I actually give a fuck about.
FB can go die in a fire.
All I can think about is how every big social media company continues to invent persuasive technology to keep everyone glued to their devices and steal away our most precious asset in our lives; our attention.
Where your attention goes, your life goes. I'm only 30 and much of my 20s went to these platforms. I can't say for the better. I think we all need to be bored again and not have a constant IV drip of dopamine in our hands at all times.
My only marketable skill is software development and I pretty much hate what it has become. 16 years down the drain."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32233969
I remember being disappointed that an early iPhone I bought came with some Facebook preset/integration pre-installed.
If I've learnt one thing from social networks, it's that competitors only rarely succeed in capturing another network's niche. Instagram has tried to become TikTok too but few would say the Reels concept is a smashing success... Facebook has tried to be Snapchat as well with ephemereal messaging, but few would say Facebook is known for that and recapturing the youth culture today. Meanwhile, Snapchat still thrives at a more rapid rate than Twitter and Facebook. You can not simply copy features and then the culture will come.
And when Google+ was rising, Facebook desperately tried to introduce more ways to handle your friend lists due to the innovative "circles" of Google+. These features still remain but few today are aware that Facebook posts to Friends aren't seen by friends in your Acquaintances friend list because those are there to only see Public posts... This is an example of a relic from those days but there are other examples too.
Despite the confidence you would expect them to have from having more than a billion users, they are surprisingly unsure of themselves and who they want to be. You can also see it happen with Meta and VR. Is that supposed to now work in tandem with the TikTokification (how? a clip feed is hardly interactive?), or are they still just confused about who they want to be? I wonder how much of it has to do with Zuckerberg himself?
When facebook bought Instagram and changed everything around, people screamed wolf, but IG's popularity exploded. When IG copied snapchat and added stories, techies said it was terrible, the end of IG, but it only caused its popularity to skyrocket, snapchat to practically die, and stories to become the main way people used IG. The average user doesn't care - IG will continue growing and most users will get used to the new normal. A few unhappy users will leave, but they won't even make a dent. Competition in the platform will only increase as every company and "content creator" tries to be on top of the reels feed.
I say this as an outsider that doesn't really use IG.
Linkedin has public research doing the same type of thing.
Chat platforms like Telegram/Discord/Whatsapp and TikTok clearly lean into one direction (albeit on opposite ends of the spectrum). TikTok tends to be a mile wide and an inch deep but at least it leverages what the internet is good at, and chat apps do the reverse.
I think that bifurcation is just happening in general, not just on social media apps. There's more interest in private spaces as well as mass popular culture but the middle-ground isn't that appealing any more.
Nobody I know uses it anymore and we were Facebook's core audience when it started. We all just use WhatsApp now.
(taken from just seeing front page of news site)
No, no and no. It's all nonsense. Yet to some degree, I will have to use energy to process and engage with it. If it "annoys me" I may comment, which wastes even more energy. (and yes, I do get the irony of complaining about this, lol)
I'm not saying all news is bad or to turn it all off... just that one has to realize so much of it is news for the sake of news and the world will still turn without your investment in it.
It does nothing to help us in life other than give us misery. There are enough problems in life to handle. I don’t need to know about the drama of another stranger.
I could not find a way to filter friends by current city. Seems like such an obvious feature meant for a side supposedly about connecting you with friends. Guess it wouldn’t move the right KPIs.
I think the TikTok threat to Meta is overblown. They’re a one trick pony and their trick is the unhealthiest of them all, presenting the user with the least amount of control and provided by the most opaque, state controlled, spyware-esque organisation.
You thought Russia using Facebook for political interference was bad? The CCP is hardwired into TikTok for fucks sakes!
I think Facebook has a longer runway. They will keep milking insta and will prob start doing a better job of monetising Whatsapp.
Also, I think the Occulus is actually pretty great, especially for the price. I can envision a “dumber” version, lighter and with more battery life but 5G dependent for the compute requirements being a thing for external use.
Once a company gets VR done well the smartphone is OVER.
AR maybe. I seriously doubt that VR will ever be the primary way people interact with computers. People tend to use their phones as a distraction in public, and as a brief reprieve in private. VR entails completely submerging yourself in the computer interface, which might be fine occasionally, but I doubt will ever be most people's preferred way to access social media and the like. AR would enable you to distract yourself while still leaving you aware of what's going on around you. The issue there being that its much more difficult to do AR well. I doubt that VR will take off until someone does AR or MR really well, after which enough people will be already using the headsets for a VR application to become popular.
Facebook is now explicitly deciding which content to allow, editorializing content at will, and dictating the content that you see.
Looks like a news publisher. Sounds like a news publisher. Acts like a news publisher.
Facebook should not receive Section 230 protections any longer.
Twitter shows clearly editorialised content in the trending sidebar.
It's not just Facebook either, Twitter is also becoming harder and harder to get good engagment on unless you're already a big account. It wasn't always like that.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/thes...
https://twitter.com/mosseri/status/1551890839584088065
He says users are using Reels more, even though they say they don't want Reels. Replies say content creators are reluctantly making Reels because the algorithm favors Reels over regular posts. Ironically, he posted this on Twitter (as a video) because it's a better medium for reaching Instagram users?
I think the de facto surrender of Facebook to TikTok here is evidence that social networks ARE generational. That implies that TikTok may reign supreme for about 20 years, but thereabouts, they'll have to contend with yet another rising challenger.
Actually kind of sad to see considering I'm a big fan of Social and 'Meta' has been on the forefront for years. I hope they find a way to rethink this.
The culture of Facebook is to drive metrics so they're doing their job just fine according to this.
So there you are: your organization has no taste or ability to create 'good' things that people enjoy, you're also so large that big or wild bets are too hard for the org to stomach. What options do you really have? Pretty much just 1) buy companies or 2) fade into obsolescence...
They don't prefer it. They just can't resist.
But I refuse to be nostalgic for FB, it's always been meh to me.
And the sad thing with all these changes is it's going to frustrate all the old retirees who just want their computer to do the same thing that it used to do.
Or Google without... or like Google.
I also saw no comments about this "Facebook will continue to provide old-school friends-and-family networking via a subsidiary tab. Those posts will be chronologically ordered, as some users have long wished for."
One final point is political ads being big business at FB. So it'll be interesting how are their numbers in the 4th quarter.
This is the same as saying "in 10 years we'll have flying cars". No, we won't.
Turns out people don't want it.
I'll admit that Messenger has greater sway over my daily life, but I could probably switch over to an alternate messaging platform with minimal pain.
> Maybe the answer is that I should delete facebook and go back to beforetimes when the world was smaller
It's absurd how highly we've come to value a platform that brings only an incremental amount of joy to our lives (and who knows how much grief). I would be lying if I said I don't enjoy seeing what my old friends are up to, or knowing who's had kids, etc. But well, maybe I'll have to call them up for coffee and a chat instead.
That's all it has to do to be a great, profitable, thriving business.
But that's not what 95% of the employees at facebook want, for obvious reasons :)
It's that classic tragedy of the commons - what a business school/marketing/advertising graduate wants is always at odds with what's good for the rest of society.
Personally I don't like Tik Tok. I'm sure there is good content on that platform but I don't like the format, just like I despise Twitter. It's all made for people with a short attention spam and I've seen way too much creepy and unhinged stuff on it.
- Turn on every privacy setting they have available and "serve me up generic ads only"
- Unfollow EVERTYTHING and EVERYONE, cut your friends list down too, or click on the "follow" only of your real most frequent friends of concern except your core groups of interest, pare it down to less than 20-30, and more so if your groups are active.
- Turn off active status except for your top 10 friends/family and treat messenger like email otherwise (I do the same with do not disturb mode on iphone)
- Use the "Most Recent" button on the left and make it a habit so you don't see the same posts over and over.
It become a lot more useful of a tool after that. Everyone whines but like a lot of things for it to be useful you have to put in a little bit of time and trim your hedges instead of letting them grow into amorphous blobs. or delete it, there's not much in between. Also I hate hate hate tiktok and this whole video thing, I don't think they bring very much more useful info to the social media conversation.
The other model that seems to work well for users are obviously platforms like Signal/Matrix/Whatsapp.
Social media facilitates the forming of grassroots movements and this challenges the existing power structures. What Facebook does is curiously well aligned with preventing people from forming grassroots movements.
It does not require a conspiracy for this to happen. It may just be that FB gets pressure from some governments to set up policies that effectively curb down grassroots movements, and if it does not comply, it would get pushed out.
Kids think its cool and use it -> Slightly older generation enters because its cool with the kids -> even older generation enters -> now its cringe for the kids -> they find something else.
Add on top the fact that the business model incentive is to push as many ads as possible and any medium is transformed from an exclusive sharing space to a public square with your awkward aunt and a million ads.
TikTok is not escaping this. Its still early and people share a lot of intimate things on there (and they are proud that they can do it), but that will quickly change as it becomes more mainstream.
There are alternatives to corporate-run social media (the Fediverse, to name one off the top of my head) that are less-known. I've personally just left social media altogether. I had a period of time I spent in cycles of addiction/absrinence and I have to say I much prefer to keep in touch with people on more personal direct contact (snail mail, e-mail, messaging) without meddling, extra baggage, advertisers, my data being sold off to unknown entities to do as they please according to their most likely not benign motivations. But the biggest factor in my exit from social media was how negative it all became.
I joined facebook in 2007 when you needed to be invited in and it was basically mostly students. Ober the years things went from "so neat I can connect to people all over the world" to an online battleground in the span of a decade (arguably 2 decades, depending on your online experience). The convenience of keeping in touch with relatives/friends overseas and the wonderment of making friends online has become eclipsed by all the other things which have nothing to do with people being able to connect. If anything these big platforms have become all about (directly, indirectly, incidentally, regardless) gaming the divisions between people to push them apart and foment rifts they can profit from, at least that's how I see it and I am just done with all that.
In instagram the only redeeming feature left is the "story" buttons at the top. I stopped using Facebook long ago, though I still use messenger.
I also use Slack and WhatsApp to communicate, basically SMS texting but in groups.
Whatever the "social" platforms now are, they are very off putting to say the least. Maybe good for killing time writing for the bus? A reversion back to cute cat and dog videos.
Oh also Snapchat.
I'm still waiting for the tiktok redesign for WhatsApp lol
Where FB wins is it owns the best connections. Who cares what the app shows you, FB actually knows more about who you care about. When that comes to the metaverse that will be like owning the yellowpages and always brings added value.
FB App is dead. Meta is still winning.
In the last six months, a steady rot has crept into instagram. I hardly see any of my friend's photos anymore. Just reel after reel after reel from people I have never heard of. I wish they had a settings button to block all reels, but they don't.
So, that is the end of instagram for me.
Meta sucks.
[1] Or maybe it changed already. I haven’t used Facebook in a long time.
It's becoming more and more evident that this whole thing is one giant intelligence bootstrapping simulation.
Investors believed for 5 years to the "growth first, profit later" theory. But now, another competitor (TikTok) is stealing their market share and profits for FB will never arrive.
This is also a confirmation that not always focusing on growth will give you confidence on market share.
Will i go back and use it because it has a new design. probably not, as i believe FB's core approach has not changed
But I won't use or even condone a product that actively manipulates its users via dark patterns. Such a blatant disrespect for personal choice and autonomy. No thought about the consequences on democratic systems, or radicalization of folks exposed, or mental health... just greed, money, and growth above all else.
There is a very special place in hell for people who talk in the movie theatre. And Mark Z.
How many non-behemoths survived and are still used by real people?
Even something like IRC is pretty much dead these days because it is too simple.
What a unique garden-path sentence.[0] I had to re-read that a couple times since I thought it was referring to Mark Zuckerberg given the title of the article..