Comment by randomdata | Hacker News Reader

Comment by randomdata | Hacker News Reader

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> It was mostly stupid and sentimental

Which is why it didn't last. When there was a novelty to it, people tried posting things to see what happens. Being something new, they didn't know what to expect. But soon the novelty wore off and the stupid and sentimental revealed itself as being cringy.

As such, the people made it clear that if they were going to continue to produce, they wanted tighter and tighter control over who can see it. They wanted private chats and closed groups, not a global newsfeed for all to see. Which, indeed, Facebook delivered on, but that also destroyed the "what I did today" content for the casual observer.

So, that left Facebook to draw on professional (or wannabe professional, at least) content creators to fill the void. And here we are today.

> I’m sad the world now looks like a worse place.

There does seem to be a missing gap in news about regular people. Before Facebook you could read the newspaper to find out what your friends "did today". Seriously, look at newspapers from the last century. There are pages upon pages of stories like "Mr. and Mrs. John Smith invited Miss Jones from Nantucket to stay at their home this past week. A good time was had by all."

But maybe lacking that isn't actually worse. Perhaps there is something to be said about staying close enough to your friends that you already know what they "did today" without having to read an account in the news?

No, what killed Facebook for me was the 'like' button.

Until the 'like' button, you had to either start or contribute to a discussion. With the 'like' button, the door was open to zero-value 'engagement'.

Skinner tells us that rewards for any kind of conditioned behaviour are most effective if they are delivered on what he calls a ‘Variable ratio schedule (VR)’, meaning that the reward delivery should be proportionate to the stimulus response, but not predictably so. It’s like one-armed bandits in the casino - you put in 100 coins, you’re more likely to get a reward than if you put in 10, but it’s not predictable that every 50 coins you’ll win something. Or if you go and like 20 photos, then maybe someone will like one of yours back.

So I ended up 'interacting' more with likes, hoping for the social affirmation of a like in return. I ended up spending more and more time on Facebook, 'liking' this, and watching that, but I think the quality of personal interactions decreased. Once healthy friendships fizzled out into yearly birthday messages and the occasional like on a post.

But what was once a place to catch up on what was going on in the lives of my friends (even if it was just ‘anyone going to the pub tonight?!’) became reposts of recipes reduced to a minute’s play time. Opinions about divisive issues, boiled down into pithy quotes in curly writing on square backgrounds.

Without the 'like' button, would this have happened anyway? Maybe. But for me, the 'like' button was really the beginning of the end of Facebook.

I've more or less removed Facebook from my life by now, but I do lament the passing of the early Facebook—a platform for people to share and chat and be social, rather than a place where people compete for internet points that only win Facebook more money.

I agree that the Like button was the final blow, driving home the idea that other people were watching the stupid. Obviously you always knew in some nebulous way that they were watching, but when "Joe Blow", who you chat with on the street but aren't inviting to your wedding, liked your stupid post it made it real.

To which that quickly turned into "I don't mind Joe as a distant friend/acquaintance, but I don't really want him to know my every move." and soon "‘anyone going to the pub tonight?!’" posts went out the window, moving them, if still posted at all, to restricted regions where there is stronger curation of who can see it than just a general friend list (or the public at large, in some cases).

I think for some people it has the effect you describe, for others it made it important to get as many “friends” as possible to maximise the number of likes they get on each post, as though that actually means something.

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