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Comment by DisjointedHunt | Hacker News Reader

Wow, i wonder if Facebook realizes how complacent they've become through such a relatively short period of dominance.

They need to rely on the army of data scientists and smart people still left there to help guide their decision making through data. Increasing ad load solves the short term problem of depressed conversion reporting thanks to privacy changes in the Industry.

It DOES NOT solve the business problem of a rising competitor in TikTok, a failing ads business model (for growth that wall street expects) given present privacy challenges.

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I have the absolute opposite take. Facebook/Instagram were good tools for staying in touch with friends and sharing photos with them. Then TikTok came on the scene, and it was much less about connecting with friends as it was seeing short form entertainment. I view TikTok as much closer to YouTube than I do Instagram.

So FB tried to chase TikTok, and ended up (a) making it much harder to follow and connect with your actual friends, and (b) ended up with a shittier version of TikTok.

I feel like the smart play here is de-politicizing Facebook. No more politicians, no more political groups, no more political ads. Bring it back to being about people and connections.

Far too late for that now, The place is a cesspit with no hope for decent discussion. The funny thing is they are redesigning groups to go in the opposite direction by copying Discord. True Insanity.

> I feel like the smart play here is de-politicizing Facebook. No more politicians, no more political groups, no more political ads. Bring it back to being about people and connections.

Unfortunately, it's not that simple. A lot of people "connect" online by raging about political obsessions. A "no politics" rule will make a lot of people angry, especially if it wasn't like that from the start so violates their expectations.

Good riddance. Let them be angry.

I feel like this will be very difficult because mommy blogs and the like can get political around school policies. The line between political and non-political can get quite confusing. Eg. lesbians in $area meetup facebook group, but then they talk about anti-gay policies the local politicians of $area are implementing; maybe even organizing calling politicians/protesting in that group.

> They need to rely on the army of data scientists and smart people still left there to help guide their decision making through data. Increasing ad load solves the short term problem of depressed conversion reporting thanks to privacy changes in the Industry.

> It DOES NOT solve the business problem of a rising competitor in TikTok, a failing ads business model (for growth that wall street expects) given present privacy challenges.

You've got it backwards. The "army of data scientists and smart people...guid[ing] their decision making through data" will tell them to make tactical, nonstrategic decisions like this, because they're about measurable stuff.

And that problem was clear long before the ascendance of data-worshiping computer nerds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy.

That's a great point, thank you for the link.

They are relying on their data scientists and the data scientists are saying:

"We did an A/B test and figured out that we can increase ad revenue by x if we increase amount of ads shown to users by y! We are geniuses!"

That's . . . a very good point and hadn't crossed my mind.

I do hope these large firms with such a wealth of smart people on the inside have robust debate on the nuances of what "success" looks like as you say. If someone pushed a formulaic approach of juicing metrics, you need a healthy ecosystem of pushback.

I’d say 15 years is fairly amazing considering how fickle social media crowds were when FB showed up.

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