As a mid-30s guy, I use Facebook primarily to share pictures and updates of my son and things we do together with my friends and family.
Every. Single. Person. that I personally know despises the political crap, occasional venting of some personal problem, and news outrage fishing that comes across on there. I wish there was some way to "categorize" these posts, and to allow me to simply filter out what I don't want to see. As an example, there is a person I am friends with on there who I greatly admire and enjoy being friends with. But every time I see "Drumph" with a big red background, I sigh and scroll on. I don't need that in my life.
Even if that makes me miss the odd post here and there, they are practically valueless anyway and seeing only the categories of updates that I want greatly outweighs that minuscule loss.
I'm in the opposite camp: I stopped using FB because all friends were posting pictures of their kids, family, trips, parties, whatever. I really don't understand how people can post such things to FB.
I don't care what their kids ate today or how they fell asleep. I don't care that they bought a new phone and now posting pictures of it. I think all that stuff is personal and shouldn't be exposed to the public.
But I wish I could open FB and read political and tech news (no fakes please).
But ... why? You can read political and tech news anywhere why read it on Facebook? The only thing I want to see on Facebook are the things I can't see elsewhere which are: personal updates and local events.
Yah, the only thing I really like on facebook is pictures of friends hiking and backpacking trips. Some of the hiking groups also have great content and relatively recent info on trail conditions that is hard to find elsewhere.
Because FB collects so much data about everyone and it would be nice to have personalized news, events, articles in your feed. Instead of using websites that show the same thing for everyone.
But they use all that data to show me pictures of crappy food, kids, drunk parties and stupid FB game ads.
FB doesn't optimize for enriching you, or even for agreeing with you - it's optimized for engaging you. If a barely-lucid rant comming out of a political faction you hate will mindworm you, that's what they'll show you.
>Instead of using websites that show the same thing for everyone.
But that's a good thing. It sounds like you WANT to be ensconced in a political bubble. People splitting off into echo chambers is a major source of the problems we see today.
Uniquely? Do you really have a hard time finding news sources that align with your views? This has been a solved problem since the invention of the newspaper.
How is that a good thing for where you get your news? It is one of those things where it is probably better that you are getting an objective (not crafted for you) selection of the contemporary news instead of one that's filtered for you.
That's exactly the problem with politics in today's society. So many people are getting their information from places like Facebook, and much (most?) of this information is biased and/or less than factual. This causes people to develop more extreme, more polarized viewpoints than they would otherwise have.
I think it's fairly accurate. If you have a couple dozen (or 100) friends scattered around the world, it's a lot easier to see pictures of their kids or new kitchen on a Social Media platform than to try to call them every day.
Here's what I'm getting at: if you really cared about someone, you wouldn't settle for the bare minimum of passively consuming their uploaded photos and status updates.
I posit that Facebook is popular among people with scattered friends and relatives because it makes them feel like they care. However, in my opinion, truly caring about someone warrants more than just maintaining an awareness of what is going on in their lives by consuming their content on your news feed and occasionally clicking 'Like' or posting a comment.
In terms of social media, yes, it's the only place that will tell me that my high school friend is getting married. And to a large extent it's the only thing I will ever find that out from, depending on who we are talking about. In other words, the social updates that I go to Facebook for are updates that I cannot get elsewhere.
You "don't understand" how people can have a desire to share pictures of their children with friends and family members who care about them? No one cares that you "don't care what their kids ate today" - just stop following them or unfriend them.
You've got it backwards -- FB is for staying in touch with people digitally (i.e. the pictures of their friends and family). There are a plethora of other sites better suited for reading political and tech news (HN being an example)
I find Google photos to be much better at sharing photos and videos with family and friends. Photos are posted to specific shared albums. People who may care are invited those albums, those that don't care don't accept. They get notified when there are new ones and can make limited comments. I like that it is just a place to share/view photos - I don't need a million other features or distractions.
News - anywhere but FB.
So what do I use FB for? Local groups, the community, yard sale, a few for specific interests. I might check it weekly.
I agree - posting pictures of your children on facebook or any social network (assuming they are young enough to not understand or care) is doing something against their will. Who knows how facebook/government is going use this data in the future, and how it will affect them down the road.
Disclaimer: I have no kids, and im not on facebook
> As a mid-30s guy, I use Facebook primarily to share pictures and updates of my son and things we do together with my friends and family.
Make sure you have the originals of those pics backed up somewhere else. When I tried to use the "takeout" (not sure what's the proper fb name) to download all my FB content and get pics from a decade ago when I wasn't as diligent in backing, I was surprised to find out that fb gives you 800x600 versions of your photos, with all EXIF metadata wiped out, even though they still have the original size.
It was a big "oh, you want your stuff so you can leave fb? here's a big fuck you". They actually spent resources to make your experience worse.
I'm pushing my kids photos to their own Google Photos album. Every once in a while I'll pull down the entire thing so I have a copy. They don't act like they own my photos.
Are you sure they have the original size from 10 years ago? I think they may have been saving space/bandwidth back then by only keeping resized versions.
They do, if I open the photo on the fb website and download it, I get the original size. If I download through their takeout service, I get around 800x600 (exact dimensions vary slightly) with no EXIF data.
They actually go the extra mile just to make your life shittier. Such a great company!
I had one who went full lunatic, pizzagate and all. Does anyone have good theories as to how (and I mean cognitively how, not a description of the phenomena) this happened especially more in this last cycle?
Somehow I think it's not ok to post pictures of your children on Facebook. Maybe, in hindsight, they don't want that once they're grown-ups. Then again, maybe that's just me thinking that
I think as long as you keep track of who you're sharing with (maybe keep it to family, close friends who actually care about the children) it's really no different than emailing pics or breaking out wallet snapshots during parties. The only additional issue would be Facebook's face-tracking algorithms and things like that - a parent would have to make their own determination about that.
> it's really no different than emailing pics or breaking out wallet snapshots during parties.
It's more like breaking out wallet snapshots at a party, handing them off to a middleman who scans and stores them for future analysis, then maybe shows them to your friends (with some advertisements mixed in) depending on whether or not their algorithm decides it's profitable to do so.
How about bugs around privacy features? How about somebody clicking "save as" on your pictures and doing whatever they want with it?
Personally, I use an adaptation of the "an unloaded gun doesn't exist" rule and think that once you put something on the Internet, anywhere on the Internet, it is accessible by everybody for ever.
Less tech savvy relatives and friends are not on Snapchat/Instagram. Plus, Instagram feels more like a picture book than a musings diary. Basically, Instagram/Snapchat are less 'communicative' (I mean, they have their uses, of course).
To answer your question, probably laziness. I've got all those contacts on FB and would take a decent effort to connect on other platforms. Secondary to that, I'm sure several of my family members are FB-only.
You can click the button to hide all from "news", politics, and meme pages as they appear in your feed. It's rather tedious to filter out all of them but after doing that my feed mostly only shows my friends and family out doing stuff.
This is starting to break for me. I am getting content now (mostly pages) where that button is missing. I only use the website and whenever I browse my feed I actively filter content. I'm seeing it all start to bubble up again.
It's absolutely worth it. I also started unfollowing people while remaining "friends". My stream is so curated I can get 5 mins of FB a day to see all I want to see.
If this is a true story, you would have taken the 20 seconds to look at the post and click that you want to see either less post or see no post from the person. But it is also possible you just wanted to complain about people complaining about Trump.
That's a bad fix. There are lots of people I like interacting with, on a normal, non-political basis, that I can't get along with politically. In normal social situations, we get along fine, because it's not normal to constantly talk about divisive political issues. But on Facebook, it's become (for many people) a norm to post endless political memes.
If I didn't want to hear anything about these people's lives, I wouldn't have friended them in the first place. I don't want to have to block all of their posts just so that I don't have to deal with their obnoxiously-expressed views.
Ultimately, I think the norm of people posting political things on Facebook will go away--or at least, the only people being obnoxiously political on Facebook will be the same people who are obnoxiously political in real life. In the mean time, it's pretty annoying.
This is a bullshit thing I always hear from pro-FB people. I tried doing that and the result was that my feed is incredibly sparse because it turns out that the most annoying people are the ones that post often, and regular people rarely post. So now, every time I log in, 85% of the content is something I've seen more than 3 times already. Your choice is either crappy content, or redundant content.
My solution has been to unfollow everyone. I still get event notifications, I can still use messenger, but I don’t see ads (the home screen thinks I’m a new user), and it’s one less endless feed to be addicted to. I check it every couple of days, and spend 0 time on site.
Less work than it sounds like. And as you say, bad for them, good for us.
The problem with that is I've found that telling FB I want to see less of a post often translates into not seeing anything from that person.
It's not a left / right... trump / anything else item like you seem to be making (the original person gave an example, you seem to be taking his example personally).
The request seems pretty simple - give people a way to categorize the content they post and then give the friends a way to filter what comes into their daily stream of stuff by those categories.
You missed a possibility: I wanted to complain about seeing things in Facebook that I do not want to see nor add any value to my life, which is exactly what I wrote in my post. It also happens to be the accurate selection of my intent.
I'd be pretty upset if I grew up to find out that my parents had been sharing pictures and details of my life with an advertising company from an early age. You've taken away his ability to make an informed choice whether or not he wants Facebook to have a permanent record of his entire life from birth... and for what? Internet points?
Facebook offers some good functionality for keeping in touch etc, but it's littered with too much noise and too much influencing (to the point that it's unpleasant to use). If they fix that, they'll be okay. If not, there may be a mass exodus to something else once enough people get sick of it.
I have this theory that they've noticed that the platform is being used less and less, and is why we're getting so much ads mixed with our friends' posts. They're milking the cow before it dies.
I feel bad writing that because I like facebook. But I use it less and less in favor of messenger, just because I see less and less about my friends in my news feed.
Now their other acquisitions instagram and whatsapp seem pretty healthy, and VR is the future, so I wouldn't worry about the company as a whole.
Instagram is also becoming a monotonous and boring platform to use. The more ads and other junk features they cram into it, the less people will want to use it.
Instagram used to be my go-to social media, and the millions of images of peoples dinners didn't annoy me, but I find myself using it less and less because of the non-chronological feed. I still don't understand how it can possibly be better than a chronological one.
If anything I wish they would give an option in the settings to make it chronological
Generally if they keep a feature it means that the majority of people were more engaged by it, so the algo feed is probably increasing engagement across the board but alienating a few users.
This. When companies start looking at features and changes through the lenses of a metric, everything follows that metric. I'm sure that drives more engagement, therefore it's enforced on everybody.
Unfortunately they're not measuring abandonment or annoyance. Metrics like these are the short-term gain investors of today tech, always looking into the today and ruining the tomorrow.
It's not so specific as alienating a few users, it's removing an intuitive UX feature in exchange for the ability to control the order of the content you see, which can increase engagement.
The same things happened with Twitter and FB. There are some tweets I've seen dozens of time because the algorithm think it is relevant, but I just want the latest thank you.
Instagram continually shows me photos from 2-3 days prior. I get shitty ads on a regular basis. The quality of the platform is definitely degrading quickly.
I've never understood the pseudo-ephemerality of instagram. Even if you save stuff, or like it, the interface makes it very difficult to recall stuff from more than a few days ago.
How do you do that? I couldn't find a good way when I looked. It is incomprehensible to me why Google supports the incredibly annoying bait (high res image for Googlebot) and switch (sign up to see high res in browsers) tactic of Pinterest. That shit certainly doesn't make me sign up, it makes me hate Pinterest.
> I've never understood the pseudo-ephemerality of instagram. Even if you save stuff, or like it, the interface makes it very difficult to recall stuff from more than a few days ago.
Hypothesis: these businesses all monetize # of interactions (even if CPI is low), which they want to maximize by structuring interactions such that there is constantly new content that encourages obsessive checking. A sense of ephemerality of content reinforces that behavior ("I have to check because there is new content and it may be gone if I wait to check").
Well, yeah, because they're talking about FB the product, not FB the company. From that point of view, "FB sucks and I'm using Instagram now" is a very valid statement.
> I have this theory that they've noticed that the platform is being used less and less, and is why we're getting so much ads mixed with our friends' posts. They're milking the cow before it dies.
Um, no. Facebook remains the most popular app in the United States with a comfortable lead. It's surpassed only by its own Whatsapp and Messenger globally. I think I read that in terms of time spent in an app, Facebook still beats Whatsapp, but I can't find the stat right now. Facebook just crossed 2 billion MAUs this year.
Its advertising revenue grows at close to 50% a year. Obviously part of that is showing more ads per user, but it's also growth in app usage. I'd say the cow keeps sprouting new udders and they are feverishly trying to keep up with attaching the pumps.
That doesn’t necessarily prove your point. It’s possible that advertising and install counts are lagging indicators, and that there are leading indicators like engagement showing trouble down the road. Anecdotally I’ve heard that this is the case.
when you think about it, it's a bad simulacrum of the social encounter and experience. i use mine as a blog for issues and feelings that have provoked a big response in me but it's far from ideal
But WhatsApp and Instagram are not that big a percentage of overall revenues. And if they do monetise them further, they risk becoming annoying to use like Facebook. Just realised something - as Facebook extracts more money from users it actually delivers LESS value to users. This is somewhat different to normal business where you earn more when you deliver MORE value for your users/customers.
This is exactly the problem with advertising as a business model. You necessarily have to make your product worse to make more money, and it becomes a balancing act. Subscription SaaS services on the other hand are free to make the product as clean and easy to use as possible.
> I have this theory that they've noticed that the platform is being used less and less
I have no data to substantiate but I doubt if it is true. May be in first world but coming from India, I believe there is still a huge market for Facebook. Internet literally means WhatsApp and Facebook to masses who are now getting affordable mobile phone and data connectivity.
There's really no evidence of VR being the future. It's useful for some games and visualization / design work but I expect that 20 years from now we'll still be using flat 2-D displays most of the time, supplemented by AR for mobile use.
I've watched many major social media sites come & go. Most go because the signal-to-noise ratio drops to unacceptable, overrun with people whom people didn't come to hear from. Increase of "censorship" also drives people away, as ham-fisted or biased means of reducing noise frustrate good users.
Take a look at the good money does vs the negatives it brings about the world. Even if it does some good things, the negative consequences are orders of magnitudes larger. you wouldn't keep a poisonous house plant that gives you cancer just because it also provided you with menial amounts of oxygen or a pet that viciously attacks you constantly anytime you come home because sometimes its cute to look at from outside the safety of your window
That's way overboard. My original post was being somewhat facetious. I am in no way suggesting that a return to a barter based economy will make people happier.
The barrier to entry for an upstart is less than you might expect.
According to multiple lines of argument, the value of a network for users scales like O(n log(n)) where n is the number of users. The log(n) factor is sufficiently small that a new and better platform can get traction if the user experience on the most popular one degrades enough.
Now this has actually been happening, but Facebook has learned from what happened to Friendster and then MySpace and has been buying up potential competitors such as Instagram and Whatsapp. However it is just a question of time until a successful competitor doesn't sell..then manages to take Facebook's crown from it.
This probably won't happen within 5 years. I'd give it even odds in 10. But I wouldn't bet on Facebook remaining king for 20.
I enjoy running into people or meeting up with them periodically to keep in touch with anyone who isn't a close friend. That way they can tell me everything they've been going through in person. To me that's more fun than getting a stream of micro updates on everyone.
Keeping up-to-date with multiple people using FB is like trying to watch multiple shows in short snippets concurrently mixed together. When you could just wait a bit and then watch it all as a contiguous story or have a real meaningful conversation with a person to catch up over dinner or something.
And what do you suggest for people who have broader circles of friends all over the world, and/or can't jet-set to visit them all periodically? A platform's utility to you might not equal its utility for others.
Email, text messages, the telephone, and a million other similar services?
I will point out that the parent seems to be referring to the posts that people make to no specific recipient. That is not keeping contact with your friends, this is watching your friend make an appearance on TV, so to speak. Admittedly neat the first time you see it, but the novelty quickly fades when they are "on TV" every day.
Yes, Facebook Messenger and Groups do actually provide a decent service for keeping contact with friends around the world. You can absolutely use Facebook in that way, but, from the perspective of business longevity and health, does it really provide more than similar services that do the same?
Personally, I'm not sure the network effects are as strong when talking about friends keeping in contact with each other. If I want to check in with a close friend who lives abroad, it is not a huge barrier to ask for their phone number or email address. And chances are I already have that information.
The one value proposition that Facebook does have, in my option, is that it is the internet's "telephone book". For acquaintances that you want to contact and have to look them up to find them, it is a pretty good bet that you will find them on Facebook. But there is also plenty of competition here as well, such as Linkedin, which seems to embrace the "telephone book" concept even more so than Facebook.
> Email, text messages, the telephone, and a million other similar services?
Mostly one to one, meaning more time investment if you want to reach a bunch of people with some news. Or maybe a mailing list you'd have to manage (which can be quite a chore thanks to spam). Dependency on high/reliable bandwidth for the video-char route. Again, utility to one might not equal utility to others. Some people have less free time to do everything in the way you or wybiral might, or maybe they just have different preferences. Maybe they actually enjoy seeing two of their friends who would otherwise never meet discover a common interest, or maybe even have a good argument, in the comment thread for something they posted. Maybe they're perfectly happy with "short snippets concurrently mixed together" and would derive less utility from your alternatives. It's awfully judgmental, and even a bit privileged, to assume that you're doing social life right and they're doing it wrong.
> It's awfully judgmental, and even a bit privileged, to assume that you're doing social life right and they're doing it wrong.
There is no right and wrong, but the fact remains that watching a carefully curated TV program featuring your friend is not keeping contact with your friend. It is watching your friend play a role on TV.
Hey, if that makes you happy, I'm not here to judge. It makes no difference to me if someone likes watching TV and is able to feel a connection to the players shown. But I think for most people the novelty of seeing their friend on TV starts to wane over time. I think for most people friendship requires mutual reciprocation and involvement, not glimpses of the person appearing on their TV each night.
Maybe I'm way off base, but from a business perspective, it seems Facebook has to maintain its attractiveness in spaces where competition is already high, and where there is little barrier for users to switch to on a whim. The network effects that have allowed Facebook to become what it is do not seem to be there long-term.
Problem with Facebook is the difficulty of keeping circles separated, resulting in a frequent unwillingness to post. I often am unclear whether a potentially triggering post intended for a limited group will end up being broadly distributed, so often just don't or find another site to converse on.
Christ, I'm the opposite. I like Facebook for getting all the banal minutiae about kids and holidays and who's fucking whom out of the way so on the rare occasion I hook up with friends we can talk about whatever it was that drew us together in the first place.
Back when FB didn't exist... Friends didn't just talk about that kind of stuff either. That's like the typical smalltalk you make with people you don't really know, not conversations you have with friends.
To me FB just seems like an extra dose of that unnecessary smalltalk mixed with self-promotion with the only real benefit being basically an address book.
Before Facebook existed, if I didn't see someone for a year, I could pretty much guarantee I wouldn't see them again (barring odd coincidences).
These days I can arrange to hook up with an old colleague through Facebook because of Facebook and via Facebook and know exactly where s/he is in terms of work/relationships/kids, without the social pressure to spout the traditional cliches.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I was anxious quitting Facebook, but now that I have it feels so much more meaningful to meet with someone I haven't seen in months and have a nice lunch or dinner with them and catch up.
Catching up feels more important and seems to have more substance that way.
The little snippets people share on FB probably are also less personal, imo. It's stuff they're announcing to everyone instead of sharing with you or a small group.
It just doesn't feel like actually "keeping in touch" to me. Feels more like promoted content (from the people and the actual ads).
I quit for a number of reasons, excluding this one. It never occurred to me that keeping "up-to-date" in the way that you do on FB/Twitter/IG makes IRL less exciting. Once I had been off for a while and felt less self-conscious about being out of the loop, catching up was SO much more enjoyable! So was sending specific people specific photos over text. So was giving people in my life a chance to re-tell a story about something great that happened to them. It never occurred to me that I was missing out on that ...
Do people honestly use FB to keep up with what others are doing? IMO it seems like the primary use-case is to let everyone else know about what you are doing.
News Feed Eradicator is the only reason I haven't closed my Facebook account. A lot of my friends organize events via Facebook, so it's good to have for that. Status updates are mostly a waste of time.
OG Facebook jumped the shark when the timeline release that made the platform visually stunning (huge photos, etc) was scrapped in favor of a redesign that had more advertising space.
Not sure who made that product decision but it was lethal for me.
> "ripping apart the social fabric." ... "literally changes your relationship with society, with each other ... God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains."
I'm not saying he's entirely wrong, but a lot of what he's saying sounds very much like how TV was once described.
> I'm not saying he's entirely wrong, but a lot of what he's saying sounds very much like how TV was once described.
Calling attention to Neil Postman’s __Amusing Ourselves to Death__ is the usual rejoinder to a statement like this. But, Daniel J. Boorstin’s __The Image__[1][2], published in 1962, just about perfectly presages the outcomes of 2016 – 2017 vis-à-vis social media; I cannot commend it enough.
(N.B television (especially with news shows) is also both a form of, and antecedent to what we call social media.)
[2] http://www.transparencynow.com/boor.htm, (Disclaimer: I don't know anything about this site, having just discovered it a few seconds ago, but it provides a nice summary of the book).
Thanks, nice reference. The Wikipedia page has an amusing phrase: The Image is also well-known for defining a celebrity as "a person who is known for his well-knownness."
They definitely weren't wrong. But at the same time, it shows that this isn't a good argument against Facebook, and that it likely means we'll be using Facebook more in future instead of less. Probably to our detriment, but definitely to Facebook's profit.
TV has also changed dramatically in the last decade. With Netflix, Amazon Video, Youtube, etc (not strictly TV I guess but similar) it's possible to waste days on end binge-watching entire seasons of TV shows, in many cases ad-free. That was never possible in the past.
I'm having trouble parsing where you are disagreeing. The linked article says the average over age groups is about five hours, plus additional screen time on devices, with average time spent going through a dip when we become young adults, then an increase as we age.
I used to be in the Nielsen TV surveys, for the manual data entry (IIRC they had a thing that attached to your TV but I wasn't in the automated survey portion). They had some tiny reward program with a dollar showing up in the mail every once in a while. I believe the average person is probably a little like me and too lazy to fill in every single thing they watch and self conscious sometimes, too, about self reporting too much. The manual diary was pretty laborious.
A particular medium is not (necessarily) to blame. Even the proliferation of what can be perceived as low quality examples of a medium isn't purely to blame. A large part of it is in how you interpret it.
Even with books, it's all in how you intepret it. If you just read the story without giving it any thought, it's no better than watching "mindless TV". I just think there is probably a positive correlation between people that are willing to think critically about a topic and those who are willing to put in the additional effort of reading vs watching.
To put it another way, if you knew nothing of painting or any the history behind it, the Mona Lisa would likely be indistinguishable to you from some random photo on someone's Facebook.
I will admit that some forms of media are easier to mindlessly consume than others. I am just sick of seeing the "X is only for stupid/lazy/ignorant people" (where X is TV, internet, videogames, etc.)
tl;dr you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
Edit: to get back to the topic of Facebook, I think the format of social media is not the cause of the issue, but I definitely see a problem in people having high exposure to insular opinions. Mostly because there seems to be a large number of people who only use Facebook as their source of information. Like any tool, you can use it for good or bad.
> A particular medium is not (necessarily) to blame. Even the proliferation of what can be perceived as low quality examples of a medium isn't purely to blame. A large part of it is in how you interpret it.
Suppose we were to say, “Apple pie is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way it is used that determines its value.” Or, “The smallpox virus is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way it is used that determines their value.”
I would agree? Apple pie is pretty good for lunch, but if a clown is throwing one at your face it might not be. Smallpox sucks when it's uncontrolled, but the small amount kept for vaccines is probably a good thing.
I understand your point that some things are worse than others (for humans), but I think it also completely ignores the fact that we don't (usually) think of smallpox as a tool as much as something that happens. Kind of like how we don't consider a tornado a tool.
This idea doesn't seem very useful to me, given that specific things tend to be used in a limited number of specific ways.
Sure, we can imagine a theoretical beneficial use for almost any object. However, we shouldn't be blind to the fact that certain things tend to cause more harm, even when we try to prevent it.
Note, I'm not saying how exactly we should respond to more dangerous objects, I'm just saying we should not falsely claim that they aren't dangerous.
Edit: I'm not saying the medium has zero influence on the message. I'm just pointing out that a) the medium does not dictate the message, and b) effectively "beauty is in the eye of the beholder".
McLuhan's point of view was that the means for media delivery have a much more significant global impact than the content contained within the media itself.
He did not contend that the content was meaningless, or lacked a message. He did, however, quip throughout his life that focusing on the content is putting the cart before the horse.
Communication theory is the medium constrains the possible messages. Further, McLuhan, Postman, others are saying various mediums have their own intrinsic dominate properties, character, which crowd out most other messages. TV gave us the sound bite. Usenet gave us trolls. Twitter gave us Trump. Facebook gave us "fake news" (aka gossip posing as truth).
One should not blame heroin- it only brings out in humans, what was allready there. Blame the monkey constructor instead- get a torch and find a church.
TV didn't cause teenagers to stop going out with friends, having sex, getting their licenses, and skyrocket their depression rates. All in under a decade. The Atlantic did a great article on this a couple months ago.
> Typically, the characteristics that come to define a generation appear gradually, and along a continuum. [...] I had grown accustomed to line graphs of trends that looked like modest hills and valleys. Then I began studying Athena’s generation. Around 2012, I noticed abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states. The gentle slopes of the line graphs became steep mountains and sheer cliffs, and many of the distinctive characteristics of the Millennial generation began to disappear. In all my analyses of generational data—some reaching back to the 1930s—I had never seen anything like it.
Apparently it was excerpted from the author's book. I wonder if the book is good.
Just like TV was different from Radio, the Internet is different than TV. Traditional TV had/has "gate keepers" to filter the raw information and present it with a certain level of professionalism. With the Internet, these gate keepers are less important/powerful/needed. Individuals can "create" their own information feed based on their own pre-chosen resources (legitimate or not).
Yes, cable TV expanded TV beyond the "big networks" (CBS/NBC/ABC etc.) but the democratization of news, reporting and information spreading is entirely new.
Isn’t Facebook and it’s algorithms that sell you a pretty hefty gatekeeper in deciding what you see?
I mean, HN, Reddit and what other social sites do the same thing, and you could still go where you want without relying on internet“channels” or google searches, but most people don’t.
>Isn’t Facebook and it’s algorithms that sell you a pretty hefty gatekeeper in deciding what you see?
Good point, I would say however that you create/add the sources first (by following), Facebook then guides what you see, based on your behavior.
Facebook doesn't decide upon, and broadcast a pre-determined message - they simply work off of your preferences, and try to give you more of what you want (not need) with a healthy side of advertising.
Very true about Facebook especially and you only have to look at the last U.S. presidential election to see how it can have dramatic effects on people's perspectives and expectations.
Echo chambers are a dangerous thing that people should be educated about early and often.
Has that targeted brainwashing been shown to be more effective? I have a feeling that there are enough similarities between folks that watch a particular TV channel to make the profile-targeted ads to be unnecessary. Anecdotally: They usually creep me out and drive me away from what is being advertised, and on top of that it's usually for junk I've already purchased.
i only compared facebook with tv yesterday when i read the other news on how one of the previous executive of fb was feeling "sad" for how facebook is gaming our life to make it more addictive...but there is limitation to television and at that time you could not take tv in your pocket so it was limited to your home
also tv is a one way broadcasting system when facebook is like 2 way system ...
It's important to note that these are quotes from people deeply involved at one point in FB; it's as if Ed Sullivan said such about TV, not just some crotchety pundit.
Readily available passive entertainment with a low content to noise ratio and based on an exploitative model of consumption has been a net detractor to the intellectual prowess of our species. Both TV and Facebook fit this description like a glove.
The difference with TV is that you're time-gated by the station. If your favourite show isn't on for another 30mins, you have to sit and wait. And you can't skip through content to get to the juicy bits.
Facebook is intense. I catch myself getting caught in the feedback loops all the time now, it's very potent. It's different than video games, because those are time-gated too (loading times, takes time to find a multiplayer match, takes time to build your base or whatever). But with facebook, you can keep scrolling and scrolling. And you can quickly skip parts of videos that are uninteresting.
It's interesting this xkcd seems to be making the point that complaining about the increase in pace from the previous generation is as old as time itself. This conclusion is plausible, however I would be interested to hear opinions from earlier than the 1800s. If you consider the past 300 years in the span of human evolution, it's miniscule. On that timeline the 1800s seem much more closely related to modern day. My point being that decreasing attention span could still be considered a relatively 'recent' phenomenon.
I want to point out you can invest in something that you think will end up giving a good return even if you personally disagree with what the company or security does. I'd love to be wrong on my investment and see Facebook crumble and society free from it's harmful influences, but if that doesn't happen, at least the money I get from it's ever rising stock price will give me some comfort for a while. It's a win-win scenario, and pre-empts me from taking any stance in favor or against Facebook, which actually has some present value for me.
If working at a company through and after its IPO period has taught me anything, it's that professionals choosing to put their money on the line or not is not really saying THAT much.
Facebook may become better at monetizing the remaining users, even as there is an exodus, and overall, it could show increasing profits and revenue. This would "excite investors" but it doesn't mean the company isn't screwed in the long term if things continue the way they are.
The other guy joked about Blackberry, because even as the US and Canadian markets were dumping Blackberry, the company continued to see some nice growth overseas, which also led to record sales, profits and so on. But it was obvious Blackberry was fighting against time with the iPhone destroying its core markets.
Most investors didn't see it at the time either, because they were just following the "positive quarterly results," much like Blackberry's leadership was.
If you believe that investors don't look at non-revenue metrics like MAU you are sorely mistaken. In fact, it's almost all they care about in this category. Twitter's stock is in the toilet because their user growth has tapered, whereas Facebook continues to grow at a healthy clip.
You hear a lot of anecdotes about how "nobody uses Facebook anymore" etc for years now, but these stories don't seem to be congruent with the skyrocketing user growth numbers that Facebook officially reports.
I removed the FB and Messenger apps from my phone about 2 weeks ago, and I've mostly managed to not open it on my desktop until after 6PM, which has drastically reduced my usage. What finally did it for me was trying to turn off notifications for messenger and realizing there is apparently no way to really do this. You can "mute" them for up to 24 hours but in 5 minutes I couldn't find a way to turn them off permanently. Whether it is possible or not is besides the point. It's an obvious feature and should be easily accessible. I decided to start actively avoiding software that doesn't respect my agency. I'm moving to open source where possible and paid products where not. I'm sick of software designed for engagement rather than user experience.
I use this and love it because I still communicate with a lot of people via Messenger. I'd delete my FB except I've got a ton of logins to other apps that use it, unfortunately. This blocks the news feed completely.
Chrome only (recently switched to Firefox). But it looks awesome. It's incredible to me how effective the post at the top of the timeline tends to be. They know exactly how to suck you into scrolling.
Facebook forces you to download the app to use Messenger when on an Android device (possibly others). A third party app is required to avoid that ridiculousness.
> A third line of attack is likely to become important soon, perhaps as soon as next year. Former Facebook executive (yes, another dissident insider) Antonio Garcia-Martinez argued earlier this year that Facebook's ad targeting based on data collected from users is essentially unethical (and also that Facebook oversells its targeting ability).
That last parenthetical about overselling points to a fourth line of attack: fraud. There's been a lot of rumbling for years that FB (and Google for that matter) are not doing enough to combat fake clicks / views / likes and are essentially ripping off advertisers. If everyone smells blood in the water all of a sudden due to these other issues heating up, there could be a lot of pressure on these companies to provide more transparency. That could bring their revenues way down.
Surprised that the article didn’t mention the EUs incoming data protection laws (GDPR) compliance with which is bound to be costly for Facebook as well as shifting power towards individuals more broadly.
The unintended effect of GDPR, like other regulations aimed at particular industries, will be to entrench incumbents like Facebook and insulate them against competition.
Users will have to explicitly opt-in to advertising and tracking, and GDPR says you can't deny service to people who opt-out of these privacy protections. GDPR is pretty specific that you have to explain to users why you collect data, what you use it for, before you collect it, and then get their explicit opt-in to use it in that fashion.
Only my opinion but, Facebook will find a way around this. An easy strategy will be to annoy the users enough that they opt-in. For example, want to post a pic? It's seamless if you are opted-in, but your not, so click through these 10 screens while we explain why you should opt-in. Every time you post a pic, you have to view 10 screens. Most people will just opt-in. They won't quit the service or deal with the annoyances, they'll just opt-in.
They do the same if you don't enable push notifications in Messenger. Every time you open the app, "Won't you just let us send push notifications?" open a chat, "ENABLE PUSH NOTIFICATIONS NOW!" open another chat "You haven't enabled push notifications yet" ...
Reddit does the same thing. If you go to their mobile site, occasionally it blocks you and says "you really should download our app". And every update to the site makes more and more frustrating to use the mobile website.
I don't want your app. The site works fine until you broke it.
WhatsApp has a better image on this kind of stuff, but I’ve found it to be even more obnoxious when it comes to nagging you to enable push notifications.
You may be right. Facebook does a similar thing with ads, if you run a page/business, they heavily restrict who is going to see your posts. Unless, of course, you pay Facebook to display your posts as ads. Then everyone will see them... depending on how much you pay.
Yes, it would seem especially relevant to things like shadow profiles which are collections of data gathered and processed without consent. Further, it specifies ‘right to data portability’ and a ‘right to access’.
I think cigarettes are a great comparison. I heard it a few years back.
When popular, a huge amount of the population used cigarettes despite growing research showing that it had a slight but consistent harmful effect. A hooked individual is unlikely to stop using even when given this evidence, as the product is addictive and gets stronger with network effects. Younger generations understood the harm better and had to avoid regular temptation to engage.
I'm not sure what all these articles are complaining. Facebook is in the business of selling influence, just like Google or Twitter, that's how they make money. The product is people's attention span, just like TV or newspapers or any website or business financed by advertisement.
So what is the problem here? the fact that anybody around the world can buy influence on Facebook? When you needed millions before to buy a spot on TV or newspapers?
It's the black smith complaining about the automaker all over again.
The issue is much more subtle than the blacksmith compaining about the automaker.
A simplified version goes something like: Social media feeds are controlled by computer algorithms (AI) and the psychological, social, and political effects of social media are, at best, poorly understood and may, at worst, run counter to the long term goals of the humans building and using those systems.
Also, because these systems are generally autonomous (complex-ish AI), systems which do run counter to the goals of society may be doing so without the intention of the systems' builders.
This was covered here on HN a few days ago [0] and the featured video by Zeynep Tufecki is clear and accessible (23 mins). [1]
Another compelling analysis into the unexpected negative effects of AI in social media (in the domain of YouTube children's videos) is James Bridle's "Something is wrong on the internet" which was featured on HN back in November of this year. [2]
I uninstalled the facebook app from my mobile and only use once in a day for about 10-15 mins in the evening to get update on web. This has become very effective and I still keep update with some of my friends/relatives there.
I think facebook has to do much larger research on the impact it is having on wider group of people and not just in western world in terms of politics, news, kids, humans behavior, etc. I have seen people spending hours and hours of unproductive time on facebook in very poor and developing countries where the same time could have been used for more useful stuff.
For me the biggest problem with Facebook is that you bust your ass to obtain an audience and then you can't reach them all because they change the algorithm and you have to pay extra. So you're paying initially to advertise and reach an audience and then you pay again to actually be allowed to say something to them. That's fucking pathetic. I mean come on Facebook, get your shit together. Either you'll make money from advertising or from promotions. You can't have it both ways. You're pissing off businesses, especially the smaller ones.
2017 Was Bad for Bloomberg. 2018 Will Be Worse. All of these anti-Facebook articles should have disclaimers informing readers that they are in competition with Facebook and that Facebook is winning.
For viewer time and attention I guess. As mentioned by another poster FB stock is up about 50% on the year, the earnings are up a similar amount. I'm skeptical 2017 was that bad for them.
Though many have mentioned in their posts and comments, following things made me weary of using FB:
1. More friendlier to businesses - after each N number of posts (where N sometimes < 5) we can see sponsored posts
2. Feeling of stalking - after searching few things in e-commerce sites (the exact same items getting listed in advertisements of sponsored feed). Though its through the Ad affiliation this happens, its totally creepy to see the "things" you searched for following you all over the social media.
3. Pushing for wider attention - though you haven't uploaded any picture of you, if in someone else's photo you get a part (even in a corner) all your friends will be notified!
4. Always-on-top - Their messenger app displays always-on-top floating bubble in mobile phones whenever there is a notification! Never ever look anywhere else!
5. Feeling of being their product - if the data we generate (not the moments we cherish) is their selling point for being an attractive platform, then there is no human part to it. We are just the products they sell!
6. Getting annoyed when an user doesn't login for a long time - sending an email and text message to say "if you have trouble logging please click this link"
7. Thank you animations other custom generated animations - All these animations are auto generated (may be mostly using AI), though in the end of the animation it says "Team FB", its more of a "AI @ FB". Why bother creating it, if it is auto generated!
FB's business model will eventually clash with its value proposition to users.
The hedge fund and institutional investing world has fallen in love with facebook because it obviously is growing like crazy and scale and in a profitable manner, but also because it is viewed by many as a modern-day "value investment" (strange as that sounds), in the sense it has a powerful competitive moat and compounding returns on investment. but ultimately this thesis comes down to placing more paid ads in front of users. facebook will have to choose between cramming more and increasingly intrusive ads into its platform or dealing with a falling stock price. when it happens who knows, but it will at some point
the regulatory risk is real but vague. out of curiousity, i wonder how many people thought the regulatory risk for microsoft in the late 90s was real
I only use Facebook for work - promoting nonprofit events, but its utility is diminishing as there is a growing share of people who flee Facebook and it's now creating double work as I both need to support Facebook, and email and the format of work are different. Facebook made it especially hard when they removed the ability to invite the same people from an old event - now I have to go thru my over 1,000+ and select who I should invite to which event, which is total nonsense! For personal stuff, I still use Skype and Viber to keep up with friends and family.
The title and content is not matching. As a to-customer company, whether it is a good or bad year depends on how much they earn from their customers and how much they grow instead of how badly they are regulated or criticized. As long as people love using Facebook, every year is a good year. If the article describes that Facebook is losing their users either drastically or gradually, I would agree with the title saying that it was bad for Facebook.
I think that the main reason of Facebook's failure is that people need someone to listen to them. Facebook is just about sharing. People will hear you but you want someone to listen to you, eventually.
So,this feeling of being heard can only satisfy you temporarily until a certain point, meaning until you realize you need something more. Facebook has failed iked at what their main purpose is: communication.
Is there an alternative? Yeah, it's called life, listening, opportunities, etc.
Does anyone take Bloomberg and their "predictions" seriously? I may be biased (I think, most of the predictions I've seen are in "Apple is suffering badly and will be suffering" context). But it looks like their "predictions" never ever hit their mark and only serve to drive traffic.
I think Bloomberg as any other online news try to come with catchy titles like this one. Apparently, it works. Look at how many comments dit it bring here on HN. :-)
I stopped using FB because the feed was full of promoted posts, which made me really mad. And when your interested in finance/fintech/investment you get some really suspicious(most likely some scam) ads for promoting some X crypto-coins.
Every technological revolution has profound effects on society, our brains and our ability to interact. Witness [0]. From the printing press to the internet, a change occurs, it affects our brain and the way we interact, and then eventually we begin to deal.
The start of the vaccine(/backlash/response) to social media has begun.
I love xkcd, and the point the cartoon makes is not lost on me. However, one could also argue that the thoughts expressed more than a 100 years ago are still true today and have only accelerated still further. We are humans with finite limits on our capacities. While machines got faster, smarter and more flexible, we have not.
Not that I don't take the point, but presumably if mankind were in an endless decline into intellectual laziness, then each of the writers in that XKCD comic would be correct: they'd each be sampling a different segment of the same downward slope.
I'm torn between wanting to agree with you ("Idiocracy is a documentary!", et al), and the cognitive dissonance of the greater and greater scientific and technological achievements we continue to create.
Maybe there's an analogue at work here; like financial/wealth inequality, but for intellect (that feels incredibly elitist to 'verbalize').
On average, we are much better educated then in 1871 and spend waaay more time learning. So I doubt we are in that endless decline into itellectual laziness.
Every. Single. Person. that I personally know despises the political crap, occasional venting of some personal problem, and news outrage fishing that comes across on there. I wish there was some way to "categorize" these posts, and to allow me to simply filter out what I don't want to see. As an example, there is a person I am friends with on there who I greatly admire and enjoy being friends with. But every time I see "Drumph" with a big red background, I sigh and scroll on. I don't need that in my life.
Even if that makes me miss the odd post here and there, they are practically valueless anyway and seeing only the categories of updates that I want greatly outweighs that minuscule loss.