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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

I pretty strongly disagree with this. I don't think that user preferences have changed so much, in that I think a lot of people would respond well to an "old-school"-style Facebook, even if released right now. The issue is simply that that version of Facebook probably has people only using it 15-30 mins a day max, but you really need to get the continual mindless scrolling to maximize ad rates. Facebook is just suffering "the tyranny of the marginal user", the topic which was so well-discussed on HN a couple months back.

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You're welcome to try it. "Old school Facebook" took a couple days to implement, and it'd probably be even quicker with modern web frameworks.

I was on FB in 2005, and it was definitely not 15-30 mins/day. People were on there for hours, or rather they'd go on, scroll for 15 mins, then come back next hour for another 15 mins, and so on. But again, that sort of behavior was a product of the times, and I really doubt you would get that sort of engagement if you put the same product in front of users today.

But try it! If you're familiar with a database-backed web framework like Django or Rails, it'd probably take a weekend to re-implement the original Facebook. Do it and see if you get any traction.

The really old school Facebook didn’t even have feeds. You spent time on there because you had to check out everyone’s walls.

> If you're familiar with a database-backed web framework like Django or Rails, it'd probably take a weekend to re-implement the original Facebook. Do it and see if you get any traction.

The issue is not whether it can technologically be built easily. While I always chuckle a little bit whenever developers say "It can be built in a weekend!" (in classic fashion...), my issue is not that it's technologically challenging. Of course the hard part with any app like this is getting the network critical mass, which is a very hard problem.

But my point is really to argue against this being a consumer led difference in preferences. This is really an issue where, economically, the tech powers that be have found that hijacking our dopamine pathways via TikTok/etc. algorithms is more profitable than a "come in and check on your friends"-app.

I expect the consumer would much prefer to keep up with friends than some random performer. But friends don't want to create content anymore. It's a production problem. People don't want you, a casual onlooker, to know what is going on in their life. When they do, they will invite you into a private space. This is why Facebook moved to allow most activity to happen in private (chat, groups, etc.).

But that's exactly the issue. You need to hijack those dopamine pathways to get adoption. That's what adoption means - somebody found an activity appealing enough that they alter their behavior and give you some attention. If your product doesn't generate enough of an emotion to get people to alter their behavior, you won't get adoption.

That's why other successful products like Twitter, crypto, vaping, clickbait, greenwashing, political rage-bait, gaming, gambling, arguing on the Internet, pyramid schemes, etc. have been successful too. The one thing they all have in common is they hijack your dopamine pathways. Lots of other things like exercising, eating your vegetables, saving a small portion of your paycheck each month, becoming a homeowner, maintaining your home, investing in your relationships are all good for us, but people don't do them because they don't give us enough of a high to be worth doing daily.

You're metaphorically saying "If you build a product that helps people eat their vitamins, they will come." Spoiler alert: they won't.

> You need to hijack those dopamine pathways to get adoption.

That is absolutely untrue, and in fact has it backwards. Lots of tech products (even social media) got tons of adoption by appealing to a smaller set of users and fulfilling their needs extremely well. It's only when products, pushed by the demands of "infinite growth", decide the drug dealer path is the only way to go, that we're all just lobotomized versions of ourselves with "one working thumb" (seriously, this HN discussion of the tyranny of the marginal user is one of my all time faves, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37509507)

And my argument isn't that, as you seem to say, that checking in with your friends is somehow equivalent to eating your spinach. I'm just arguing that apps only need to go down this "lowest common denominator" version of ourselves when they're not satisfied being great products for a lot of people - all that matters to them is more people than last year, which requires an enshittification of the app eventually.

You’re right about the time spent. The novelty of finding people you know on a site like that was still pretty exciting. People would spend a lot of time poking around new people.

Facebook didn’t invent it but they were the winners of that generation.

Modern social networks don’t operate that way. It is no longer exciting to find out that person you went to 3rd grade with is online. Of course they are online, everyone is

Yeah this is super confusing revisionist history.

Even The Social Network had a scene where a young Dakota Johnson was telling to Sean Parker about how addicted she was to Facebook.

Facebook was absolutely as addictive to young tech-savvy consumers at the time, as TikTok is today.

The only difference is this was pre-mobile. So they were doing it from their laptops, not from their phones wherever they were.

source: i was there, i was one of them.

Don't bother coding, there's already Friendica that does everything old Facebook does and even more.

What matters is not the code. Never has been.

There are multiple “white label” Facebook knockoffs available right now. One of them even advertises near pixel-perfect replication of the original Facebook UI.

But nobody uses them.

I think we’ve learned the lesson of what happens when you give all your data to some third party. Nobody is super happy about it. But if you’re going to do that, then it’s better to stick with the Zuck you know than to risk it with the Zuck you don’t.

yes! also the op (comment) is basing themselves as Facebook being a business... which may escape the great scope what a social-media is. Facebook isn't 50 years old, social-media ins't 100 years old & we are wired to be social and we got computers!

i'm all to concise and non-exploitative networks... some people still chat on Habbo daily

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