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Comment by dangus | Hacker News Reader

The techno-elites act like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok aren’t at all enjoyable when they have billions of daily active users.

This is the 2020s equivalent of saying that there can’t possibly be legitimate news culture happening with Comedy Central viewers at the peak era of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It’s just out of touch with the common person.

By the way, Meta products are incredibly good at a UX and technical level. Fast loading, simple UI, and ads have a predictable layout where they don’t bloc site elements or interrupt you (much unlike a typical news website).

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It’s not just the “techno-elites”, it is elites of all stripes. I grew up in DC with exactly the sorts of interactions you might imagine, none of those people are techies, and they all have similar anti-social media views.

AFAICT, most of what they really take issue with is intrinsic to allowing direct communication between anyone in the world. There seem to be severely anti-democratic implications for many of the critiques of Meta that I hear.

Truly the only place where the techies seem to diverge is that they care about privacy, whereas it is about “fake news” for everyone else.

and ads have a predictable layout where they don’t bloc site elements or interrupt you

Are we using the same apps? My FB and Insta feeds were a steaming pile of ads and influencers and other garbage. I stopped using both because posts from people I follow were buried

“Updates from friends you know” is what elder millennials think the product is, but that’s not primarily what it is anymore.

I’m talking about the endless stream of content that is the bread and butter of social media. Your friends don’t have infinite content to post.

The endless stream of content product (think Reels and TikTok) is what captures 90% of users’ attention.

In that context, yes, you’ll get ads and influencers shilling sponsored stuff, but you can swipe them away instantly. And my argument is that this product is very good for very many people.

“Ads don’t get in the way”

“Your feed will be mostly ads”

If that’s the way it’s supposed to work, I want none of it. There was a time I could check FB or Insta a few times/week and see mostly friends/family.

:old man yelling at clouds:

Also, elder Millenials. Snort. Gen-Xer here. I’m not even all that gray. Yet.

I guess Elder Millenial is the new Boomer.

Incoming on-brand Gen X comment: it’s funny that they even skip over us when handing out pejoratives.

I couldn't just acknowledge Gen X ;-)

> There was a time I could check FB or Insta a few times/week

I mean, we can obviously see why the above is not a viable product no matter how ethical the company making it may be.

> In that context, yes, you’ll get ads and influencers shilling sponsored stuff, but you can swipe them away instantly.

I'd note that this isn't even good at the UX/technical level.

I very rarely use FB, but opened it the other day and noticed that that the promo card for reels is always showing up despite me having clicked "Hide" on it several times before. I spent a minute or two clicking "Hide" on it probably 20 more times, and as far as I can tell, it has zero effect. Not good UX. Furthermore, if you click "Report this post" in the dialog after "Hide", you get a consistent "Sorry, something went wrong" popup. Not good technically.

Have you tried using Facebook in a web browser? It's an utter disaster. Scrolling jumps all over the place. Sometimes it just starts loading more content as you scroll, kicks you off of the post you were just reading, then just keeps scrolling around loading the page in an infinite loop. Marketplace is abysmal to try to find things on because the filters are trash, and just shows you shit you weren't searching for. Messenger is slow as fuck in every browser I have tried, and the notifications are totally inconsistent. Fucking errors all the time when I use it.

I dunno to what extent you use Facebook. But it's not technically great at all, and the UX is total trash.

Smoking was "enjoyable". Sugar is "enjoyable". Snorting cocaine of a hooker's ass is "enjoyable"

A thing being "enjoyable" doesn't mean it's good, neither for society or the person(s) doing it.

Well, everything's on a spectrum, moderation is key, the dose makes the poison, etc.

Not every moment of life needs to be healthy or productive.

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