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Comment by brap | Hacker News Reader

My Facebook feed is about 40% sponsored posts, 30% suggested posts, 30% group posts (usually from very large groups), and then maybe 1% actual friends (and it’s usually just something that they’ve shared or commented on, almost never actual content).

If we could go back to the days when 80% of the stuff you see is from friends with the remaining being ads, I would happily use FB more frequently and I’m sure most of my friends would too. Surely FB would make more money this way.

How did we end up like this?

I think once engagement dipped a bit, they started adding filler content just to keep us scrolling and seeing more ads. But that made things worse so they had to add more filler. Which made things worse. Repeat until it’s all just filler and ads and people don’t use it anymore.

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The non-friend posts on social media are the root of all problems here. Once your engagement is with people you don't know IRL, bad things like ragebait and bots tend to win the global popularity contests. The simple "algorithms = bad, chronological = good" mentality was right all along. Explicit sharing is fine too.

How'd we get here, well the inflection point was removing the timeline and putting algo feed instead, which was probably a response to dipping engagement as social media became less cool. The cool places nowadays are group chats.

Social media companies focus more on investors than users these days, and the negative effects for users are painful. Crazy ad loads, totally irrelevant and vapid but popular posts to boost time-on-site and engagement metrics, and every other trick of the trade to keep those investors happy make users seek alternatives at scale.

My mastodon feed is 100% actual friends. That reality exists; it's just not evenly distributed yet.

My Pleroma feed is not 100% actual friends of mine, but that's because I choose to follow certain organizations or public figures. The Fediverse is great because it's exactly what you make of it.

> 100% actual friends

But no family because they'd never figure out how to use the damned thing, amirite?

And if they do join, there is the implicit SLA of ongoing support anytime issues arise.

Probably the nicest bonus feature of Mastodon is that I can subscribe to a friend's original posts but unsubscribe to their "boosts," which is Mastodon's way to quickly share content. This way I can follow artists that make cool stuff I want to keep up with, but I don't have to see their political reblogs and other interactions, which helps to cut down considerably on the noise.

It's great because it's granular at the friend level. Some of my follows do legitimately act as curators, infrequently boosting cool content that I do want to see. Some are more noisy, and I can pick and choose and tailor my own feed accordingly. It's a nice happy medium, one I'd like to see other platforms emulate if possible, but I suspect they won't because the algorithmic feed is much easier for advertisers to pay to manipulate.

I wish SoundCloud supported this.

Someone should make SoundCloud for the Fediverse.

Does Funkwhale count?

https://funkwhale.audio/

While it is a cool piece of software, it doesn't really work like Mastodon or SoundCloud.

That said, you can post audio clips on Mastodon quite easily.

This is what made me delete my Twitter account.

I may follow a software engineer that writes books on functional programming but I just don't care about his stupid dogs or his alt right political ideas.

bite my app?

You can do that too in Twitter

"Turn off reposts"

> Mastodon is that I can subscribe to a friend's original posts but unsubscribe to their "boosts,"

Wait, you can do this?! I guess I wasn't paying attention. Time to give Mastodon another go.

It is. On Facebook you can sort your feed that way and also on Twitter. Not sure about Instagram.

In my opinion, people are bored out of their mind also on a chronological feed from their friends. Not because they dislike their friends, it's just all very repetitive and time-consuming with very little to show for it.

By the way, the article doesn't even mention Mastodon. I gave up social media owned by billionaires, Tweeter mainly, and I am very pleased with Mastodon.

Same for me. Lately my feed is full of Formula One and Debbie Harris of Blondie fame, neither of which is an actual interest of mine. And basically no content from people I care about.

Oh yeah, this is definitely a great observation. Once in a while FB decides I have a new interest and shoves A TON of suggested content in my face, as if it’s all I ever cared about.

And it’s usually the most random things. Dragon Ball Z. Gangsta rap. NBA. Race cars. Marvel. None of these things interest me yet for WEEKS they only showed me those very specific things.

Maybe they have tuned into your hn username -- would explain the race cars and gangsta rap...

This is my biggest frustration! For some reason, Facebook stubbornly thinks I'm into cars, into Hollywood drama and some other weirdly specific topics. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to indicate that I'm absolutely not interested in any of those topics.

Deep into the ad topics I managed to find a place where I could search for topics and indicate that I would not like to be targeted for those, and that seemed to have done something. But it replaced one topic with another.

It's crazy how they managed to ruin their own product. They're rapidly bleeding real users and it's totally their own fault. Facebook used to thrive with close social interaction mixed with some suggested content that seemed to be actually relevant. Now it's just anonymous filler content and they don't even show relevant posts anymore.

The only reason I'm still on Facebook is because our local town's official communication is through Facebook (sad, I know) and the neighborhood is active there as well. Otherwise I would have happily deleted my account a long time ago.

I tried something like this with the LinkedIn timeline, where they suggest a popular post from a stranger "Because you are interested in topic X". You can indicate that you are, in fact, not interested in topic X and tailor your timeline that way.

But the next day they will show you something "Because you are interested in Topic Y". Where Y is very closely related to X.

I religiously indicated I didn't want to see X, Y or whatever, because I am just not interested in posts from strangers at all. It took two weeks. Then apparently they ran out of topics for me and started right back at the beginning and showed me something for X.

> How did we end up like this?

Because sharing personal stuff privately, on group chats, groups made up of close friends, family etc., is the normal thing to do, sharing our personal stuff on FB, IG and the like was the exception. No, it was definitely not ok to share photos of one's unborn baby on FB/IG for almost anyone to see, that was creepy.

Glad that things are returning to a sort of normal.

For a long time Facebook was friends only - so what you posted was only visible to people you knew. They slowly changed the default to friend of friends and then public and that changed the whole feel.

Nobody in their real mind has more than 10, let's say 15 close-ish friends (with whom to share photos of your unborn baby, for example), as such Facebook was never really about friends, it was more about acquaintances.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number Just in case you weren't aware :)

It was for college kids, it was for hooking up.

Sure, however I want to follow what acquaintances are doing too. It's especially useful if they are in my city and I see that on social media and want to catch up with them.

Well idea was that everyone could become influencer.

Reality check came and now we have cast of influencers whose lifestyle is “being influenced”.

Local Karen is left disappointed that she is not that funny/hot/interesting and she is left with watching pro influ stuff only.

If it's anything like my friend groups, the reality of the matter is that small groups aren't chatting 24/7. But a social media site never wants to look "empty". Gotta always keep them scrolling.

- Part of that is age, of course 20's people will have less time to microblog than their teenage counterpart.

- Part of it is novelty. We're far past the point where sending messages to people everywhere is a hot new thing. So we simply won't talk as much once that wears off

- And lastly, part of it is societal. We are also far past the point where people WANT to post everything for the internet's view forever. Hearing about job opportunities lost because of FB posts made over a decade ago or being cancelled online over some twitter flame war means that talking is dangerous. You don't want to leave everything in your mind out to the public. So you either close down your privacy settings, or talk less. Why take unnecessary risk on stuff you may not even stand by later on?

> How did we end up like this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham's_law

If we could go back to the days when there was no feed and Facebook was just a way of keeping track of your friends and sending a message, I might use it at all.

The problem is the incentives for any ad-supported profit-driven social network and the incentives on "what makes a social network good for users" are basically a venn diagram that's two circles that touch about 2% in the center.

Spot on. It’s ironic because a social network that stayed true to users will presumably ultimately crush those that wander off into profit-chasing, as ultimately their currency is user engagement.

But it seems impossible given the incentives you touch on. They can only come up from a startup apparently.

I don't really believe it isn't possible to make the relatively small amount necessary to have a stable and useful business. The problem is VC forced drive towards enshitification.

Agree mostly. The problem is the trends all seem to favor short-form video and streaming now (I cannot express enough UGH but alas) and video is just the worst in every aspect for web development. Big files, big and fast storage needed, big content management tools, big applications to support it, big fat internet pipes to move it out, and none of that comes cheap. To make a social network that's going to ding the mainstream, you basically need VC money and a shit-ton of it at that.

Personally if I and the rest of people like me could just get a nice Facebook circa 2010 somewhere to chill on while the rest of the internet burns these sites down over and over on the altar of wanting to stream video, that'd be lovely.

> How did we end up like this?

Shareholders, product managers, business people. Unlimited growth.

That's how these companies become shells of their former selfs.

FB has a friends-specific feed, but it is buried a bit. EDIT: just browsed it a bit and I was refreshed to see things that are at my scale and about the people I care for. I wish this was still the main thing with FB.

https://www.fbpurity.com/ is good to fix that (web only I think). My feed is all friends.

People are also probably way more active in middle or high school as well and age out. Without the fodder ad content filling the feed, you’d probably only need to check facebook once every two months to be current, maybe even with less frequency.

To be contrary; It seems like many of the posts on facebook / twitter (that aren't marketing / influencers) are people without social outlets; People join for nextdoor style posts or untactful political posts, or to be heard.

In one of my community groups; it's 90% business, but then someone decides to post an unrelated meme or political message (neither allowed by group rules) as if they don't have any actual friends to share that to.

> How did we end up like this?

Optimization.

You've seen SEO, this is Social Media Optimization.

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