9 ms·

Facebook is ruining Instagram

108 points by achairapart 11y ago

smt88 11y ago
This post informed me that Instagram has fixed the problem that made me hate it and never want to open it (irrelevant/boring photos cluttering my timeline). The most prolific posters, often also with the lowest-quality content, would drown out all the more thoughtful posters. Time to try Instagram again!
- prebrov 11y ago
  May I ask why would you follow most prolific and boring photographers in the first place?
  - spery 11y ago
    Maybe because he uses it like FB, adding friends.
    - manyxcxi 11y ago
      > Maybe because he uses it like FB, adding friends Exactly! I've got PLENTY of friends on FB that don't get followed on Instagram. There's probably a 20% overlap at max. I keep my follow count low and start unfollowing anyone or brands that bore or annoy me. In that way most of my media posts (which I shamefully admit are 90% my kids being adorable to me only) go to Instagram only or Instagram and shared with FB as well. I NEVER post directly to FB with media. I think a lot of people who don't see value in Instagram think of it like they do Facebook.
      - HipstaJules 11y ago
        > I think a lot of people who don't see value in Instagram think of it like they do Facebook. That's exactly the point. (I'm the author)
- leshow 11y ago
  unfollow the people who prolifically post low quality content. problem solved.
blakesterz 11y ago
The closing line: >> It is stealing me as much time as they can. They are fighting to get my attention span, only to feed me with more ads. They are just like the television. That's an interesting point. Seems like that can be applied to a long list of sites/apps now (or maybe it's always been like that, not sure now is any different).
- Odinly 11y ago
  Well its apt that Mark Zuckerberg gets the blame then. There really should be a weekly game. Top score to the person with the most items added to the list - If Mark Zuckerberg was running Wikipedia: 1. Everybody in the world would need an account to access it. 2. The most liked parts of a topic, lets say Linear Algebra, would appear before everything else on the topic. 3. A "free basics" version of Wikipedia would be made available to those who can't afford cake. 4. <please continue> Next week we play, if Mark Zuckerberg was running Linux.
  - Joky 11y ago
    Not sure why focusing on Mark Z. It sounds to me like rather "if Wikipedia was a business"...
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Excellent point! Shall we start the discussion about how some of these services should be B Corps/non-profits with a governance board? Like Wikipedia?
  - criley2 11y ago
    >"Next week we play, if Mark Zuckerberg was running Linux." I prefer the game "Crucify Mark Zuckerberg for following Google's lead". Although every day is that game around here :)
    - pekk 11y ago
      That's a bizarre complaint. Companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook (and their CEOs) are all routinely discussed and criticized here. Nobody is "crucified" and it is in no way specific to Facebook. Nor is HN somehow unique as a place where Facebook is criticized. Why so sensitive on Zuckerberg's behalf?
colmvp 11y ago
How is this Zuckerberg's fault? Where was the Product and Design leads on this implementation? I see everyone liking posts from them on Medium but suddenly they are absolved from changes that irk people?
- 01Michael10 11y ago
  I guess you are not familiar with the phase "The buck stops here" popularized by Harry S. Truman.
ttn 11y ago
This type of stuff makes me wonder when humanity will treat ads just like we treat cigarettes today.
- javajosh 11y ago
  "I only look at ads when I'm drunk."
  - jmarc 11y ago
    "I only look at ads when I'm in a social setting"
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- s_m_t 11y ago
  That is a difficult problem to solve. How do you differentiate between genuine (even if self-interested) self expression and 'advertisement'? If I think I make really muffins and I want everyone to know is that advertisement and is it a bad thing? Of course, I love my muffins so much that I want everyone to have them so I'm going to have to start charging, because the best way to get as many people to try them is to do it full time. And of course at some point I'm going to have to hire other people and teach them to make the muffins for me because one man can only make so many muffins. I'll probably have to incorporate and buy a muffin factory. And I'm much better with muffins than I am with words so actually the proclamations of my muffin's superiority are going to be designed by a professional. I actually don't have a way with words so I'm not sure how to wrap this up but it's a piece of my perspective either way.
  - Retric 11y ago
    IMO, simply flat out preventing for profit companies from talking with non customers is probably worth it. Sure, you might end up with some edge cases, but in the end customers pay for advertising and it's often zero or even negative sum. The edge case is of course. Disease X now has a treatment! But IMO, if it's important people are going to find out other ways.
ProAm 11y ago
When you alter the timeline, it's no longer a social network.
rspdelhi 11y ago
I don't believe so....
meeper16 11y ago
Copying & Pasting code is not innovation. It worked when they copied and pasted myspace but that will eventually stop working for facebook.
- phaed 11y ago
  None of that code as copy/pasted.
dforrestwilson 11y ago
I agree that FB and Instagram have gone downhill as they ramped advertising, but isn't that a well-understood part of the story? My solution is to use them less.
- HipstaJules 11y ago
  > My solution is to use them less. Good point. Probably my problem (I'm the author) was to get too attached to the Medium. I idealized it.
placeybordeaux 11y ago
I find it strange that they don't simply allow two streams: the reordered via algorithm and the timeline. Introduce the new thing as a cool new beta product that people can try and after a certain amount of time switch it to default, but still allow the old version. Then wait until a majority switch over and cut off the old version.
- iamdave 11y ago
  Facebook "does" this and I put "does" in quotation marks because even when I change the newsfeed sort order to "Most Recent" I still see posts I've already seen from hours ago jumbled in with things happening more recently, and if I leave the page and come back, or merely hit the refresh button I'm back to "Most Popular". Combine that with the ever annoying problem of leaving the page, suddenly seeing something interesting, hitting the back button and being presented with an entirely different order of sorting news items forcing me to go digging through my friend's timeline on their actual page .... I guess what I'm saying is I don't trust them to not fuck up two streams on Instagram the same way they've done it on FB: to the point of being completely useless as a dichotomy.
iamleppert 11y ago
Just stop using the app; lots of people I know have already stopped using Facebook. I don't even have it installed on my phone anymore.
- pmarreck 11y ago
  At least on iPhone, the web app is less resource-hoggy and just as featureful. Most of the social events I go to are now typically organized via Facebook; the non-FB people require a separate email which is an extra step that is not taken 100% of the time.
  - Retric 11y ago
    >an extra step that is not taken 100% of the time. IMO, that's often a feature not a bug.
    - schwap 11y ago
      I suppose if your use case is "hermit".
    - dave2000 11y ago
      Yeah, I used to think that way. Thing is, while you're sitting at home feeling superior because you don't use that horrible mainstream website that all those terrible peasants are using and would stop using if only they knew how bad it was and how it's all about the money, your friends are all out there having fun at events they've organised on facebook and not quite ever got around to emailing all the bold, independent people who are too good for it.
    - pmarreck 11y ago
      I understand this POV, but I think it ends up being more bug than feature :)
- tootie 11y ago
  I have only ever used Facebook on mobile web and it's perfectly sufficient. I don't want push notifications ever, so it's not a problem. The one friend who actually posts anything that is relevant to my interests and not totally inane is my best buddy Suggested Post.
huangwei_chang 11y ago
I guess the same thing (or other things you don't like) won't happen if IG is still an independent company.
Apocryphon 11y ago
And here I thought Instagram was an actual case of the acquirer letting the acquired product be fairly hands off. Are there any examples of happy acquisitions? Oculus?
- dave2000 11y ago
  Whatsapp?
- dreaminvm 11y ago
  How do know this is not purely an Instagram decision? If Instagram usage data demonstrated that most users only looked at 30% of the timeline, then it makes sense to optimize for the most active/engaging content.
andreyk 11y ago
So the point of the post is "Now the timeline order has changed. It's not a timeline anymore, but it's a filtered and reordered feed. I feel very sad about that and I want to explain you why." The why in that is "Now Instagram aims to be the brother of Facebook: a time sucking machine that has to steal the highest amount of my time to maximise the exposure of his ads. Now it’s too hard for me follow what’s happening to my friends, and I can’t do it real-time anymore.". I don't really think it makes much sense to be so sad about this, since the whole reason Instagram did this (according to them) is that people were only seeing 30% of the images on average so it just made sense to try and present the best 30% up front (explained here http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/technology/instagram-feed.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/technology/instagram-feed....). And if like me this guy follows few enough people to keep up with all the photos, then there should be no issue because I can always easily keep up with only the people I am following and see all their output. Maybe it is not real time anymore and it is noticeable to this person, but it still seems to be overstating the case. And how is this change relevant to try to capture most of your time? It seems moreso to be about trying to give the best experience possible, confronting a problem that most people probably friend and follow way too many people to keep up with. Seems reasonable to me... Not to mention it's very dubious to claim the call came from Facebook, and not internally from Instagram following the same direction Facebook and Twitter went over time.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- sp332 11y ago
  It's hard to tell if you've seen all the photos or not when they're re-ordered on a regular basis.
  - sp332 11y ago
    I know it's late but I wanted to add something that's been frustrating me on Facebook lately, and that is that it's almost impossible to re-find a newish post that you've seen already. The during algorithm makes you wade through tons of other posts first, even thigh the one you're looking for used to be right on top.
josh_carterPDX 11y ago
When you have a product you give away for free, it's always a challenge to find new and inventive ways to pay for it. Ads are one way so I don't begrudge FB for tweaking something I don't have to pay for if it means they somehow make some money on it. I like using it and find it pretty useful. I think it's just going to impact buyers of ads because they'll likely see their numbers dip as more people abandon Instagram for something else like Snapchat. Users are fickle. If you start messing with something they're used to eventually they'll just find something else to keep their A.D.D. in check.
kin 11y ago
I'm really tired of reading rants and opinions on Medium. In any case it sounds like if there's a huge drop-off of users Instagram can very easily address the issue by setting a sort by option in the settings.
- paulpauper 11y ago
  tired of it too . just another platform for tumrblr people who are grownup to channel their narcissism. And most of the articles are of low quality, with unnecessarily large font and stupid pictures that makes me feel like I'm in 5th grade again.
  - awesomerobot 11y ago
    I'd argue that hackernews uses a font that's too small and doesn't have enough images — but I think your other criticisms are spot on.
- HipstaJules 11y ago
  I'm really tired of reading rants and opinions on Hacker News.
paulpauper 11y ago
yyaawwn people also thought Facebook was ruined when they stopped only accepting edu emails
lazzlazzlazz 11y ago
It's not filtered. It's reordered but not filtered. If you keep scrolling you will see everything posted that you haven't seen since the last time you checked. It's not even bad.
Negative1 11y ago
The changes are a natural progression towards a curated experience. You may not like it but I would argue it does not 'ruin' instagram; just makes it a more controlled experience (which many do prefer).
- teej 11y ago
  But they aren't asking people which one they prefer. Some GM or product manager somewhere has goals to "increase engagement" which is probably naively defined as scrolling or clicking more. They need those metrics to go up to sell more ads. People's opinion that Instagram is 'ruined' is completely valid. Just because the 'average' experience ticked up doesn't mean that you're making it better for everyone. This is a classic case of managing to the average. The desires of the people who are most passionate about Instagram are being ignored in lieu of hitting quarterly numbers. This is why it's important to deeply understand your users qualitatively as well as quantitatively. You can't A/B test your way to a great product.
fordarnold 11y ago
Its all about the money.
wodenokoto 11y ago
So what is chronological order anyway? What time stamp do we order by? Is it when it was posted? The last comment? The last like/reaction? The last interaction by someone in our network?
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  The last content determined to be most likely to make the most money by displaying to you.
colordrops 11y ago
This is why I stopped using Facebook. The feed became non-deterministic and unpredictable. It felt manipulative. I don't need a mediated experience, thanks.
- xufi 11y ago
  Not to mention the constant bombardment of "Trending articles" that you can't even block even with a good Adblocker (so far as I've tried)
completereset 11y ago
All of these shiny social network websites are there for profit. They play nice to grow and then they will squeeze as much profit as they can from users. What did you expect is going to happen? Why would you invest so much effort and emotion into growing a thing that you can be 100% sure will eventually try to consume you. If people want social media that does not feed on them, they have to start using p2p, decentralized social apps. Not like Diaspora (federated), but truly p2p, where each user contributes resources and there's no need to support scalability engineers maintaining state of art datacenters. http://twister.net.co/ http://twister.net.co/ https://zeronet.io/ https://zeronet.io/ https://www.ipfs.com/ https://www.ipfs.com/ http://www.synereo.com/ http://www.synereo.com/ http://maidsafe.net/ http://maidsafe.net/ Somewhere there or in something similiar is our holy grail: social networking by users for users.
nikolay 11y ago
Never got into Instagram, never got why Facebook bought it, never got why would people use it, and not Google Photos, Flickr, Facebook Photos, or the million others... Oh, filters, right!
axelfreeman 11y ago
This algo will show photos with more likes on top. I wanna see photos from people and not this hashtagspam pushed crap in my timeline. Instagram fails at catching spam all the time. More likes = more views = more likes. The same problem facebook has right now. I wanna see pics of my follower and not only the "pages" with photographic skills + photoshop + hashtagspam. It's getting less social and more like magazine-subscription of channels.
jinushaun 11y ago
Facebook's algorithmic news feed is why my feed is full of politics, when if I actually visited people's profile pages individually, that's not really the case. There are all these non-political posts that just don't show up in my feed. Real time is better. Don't guess what I would prefer to see. Let me filter it myself.

108 points by achairapart 11y ago

smt88 11y ago

This post informed me that Instagram has fixed the problem that made me hate it and never want to open it (irrelevant/boring photos cluttering my timeline). The most prolific posters, often also with the lowest-quality content, would drown out all the more thoughtful posters. Time to try Instagram again!

prebrov 11y ago
May I ask why would you follow most prolific and boring photographers in the first place?
- spery 11y ago
  Maybe because he uses it like FB, adding friends.
  - manyxcxi 11y ago
    > Maybe because he uses it like FB, adding friends Exactly! I've got PLENTY of friends on FB that don't get followed on Instagram. There's probably a 20% overlap at max. I keep my follow count low and start unfollowing anyone or brands that bore or annoy me. In that way most of my media posts (which I shamefully admit are 90% my kids being adorable to me only) go to Instagram only or Instagram and shared with FB as well. I NEVER post directly to FB with media. I think a lot of people who don't see value in Instagram think of it like they do Facebook.
    - HipstaJules 11y ago
      > I think a lot of people who don't see value in Instagram think of it like they do Facebook. That's exactly the point. (I'm the author)
leshow 11y ago
unfollow the people who prolifically post low quality content. problem solved.

blakesterz 11y ago

The closing line: >> It is stealing me as much time as they can. They are fighting to get my attention span, only to feed me with more ads. They are just like the television. That's an interesting point. Seems like that can be applied to a long list of sites/apps now (or maybe it's always been like that, not sure now is any different).

Odinly 11y ago
Well its apt that Mark Zuckerberg gets the blame then. There really should be a weekly game. Top score to the person with the most items added to the list - If Mark Zuckerberg was running Wikipedia: 1. Everybody in the world would need an account to access it. 2. The most liked parts of a topic, lets say Linear Algebra, would appear before everything else on the topic. 3. A "free basics" version of Wikipedia would be made available to those who can't afford cake. 4. <please continue> Next week we play, if Mark Zuckerberg was running Linux.
- Joky 11y ago
  Not sure why focusing on Mark Z. It sounds to me like rather "if Wikipedia was a business"...
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Excellent point! Shall we start the discussion about how some of these services should be B Corps/non-profits with a governance board? Like Wikipedia?
- criley2 11y ago
  >"Next week we play, if Mark Zuckerberg was running Linux." I prefer the game "Crucify Mark Zuckerberg for following Google's lead". Although every day is that game around here :)
  - pekk 11y ago
    That's a bizarre complaint. Companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook (and their CEOs) are all routinely discussed and criticized here. Nobody is "crucified" and it is in no way specific to Facebook. Nor is HN somehow unique as a place where Facebook is criticized. Why so sensitive on Zuckerberg's behalf?

colmvp 11y ago

How is this Zuckerberg's fault? Where was the Product and Design leads on this implementation? I see everyone liking posts from them on Medium but suddenly they are absolved from changes that irk people?

01Michael10 11y ago
I guess you are not familiar with the phase "The buck stops here" popularized by Harry S. Truman.

ttn 11y ago

This type of stuff makes me wonder when humanity will treat ads just like we treat cigarettes today.

javajosh 11y ago
"I only look at ads when I'm drunk."
- jmarc 11y ago
  "I only look at ads when I'm in a social setting"
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
s_m_t 11y ago
That is a difficult problem to solve. How do you differentiate between genuine (even if self-interested) self expression and 'advertisement'? If I think I make really muffins and I want everyone to know is that advertisement and is it a bad thing? Of course, I love my muffins so much that I want everyone to have them so I'm going to have to start charging, because the best way to get as many people to try them is to do it full time. And of course at some point I'm going to have to hire other people and teach them to make the muffins for me because one man can only make so many muffins. I'll probably have to incorporate and buy a muffin factory. And I'm much better with muffins than I am with words so actually the proclamations of my muffin's superiority are going to be designed by a professional. I actually don't have a way with words so I'm not sure how to wrap this up but it's a piece of my perspective either way.
- Retric 11y ago
  IMO, simply flat out preventing for profit companies from talking with non customers is probably worth it. Sure, you might end up with some edge cases, but in the end customers pay for advertising and it's often zero or even negative sum. The edge case is of course. Disease X now has a treatment! But IMO, if it's important people are going to find out other ways.

ProAm 11y ago

When you alter the timeline, it's no longer a social network.

rspdelhi 11y ago

I don't believe so....

meeper16 11y ago

Copying & Pasting code is not innovation. It worked when they copied and pasted myspace but that will eventually stop working for facebook.

phaed 11y ago
None of that code as copy/pasted.

dforrestwilson 11y ago

I agree that FB and Instagram have gone downhill as they ramped advertising, but isn't that a well-understood part of the story? My solution is to use them less.

HipstaJules 11y ago
> My solution is to use them less. Good point. Probably my problem (I'm the author) was to get too attached to the Medium. I idealized it.

placeybordeaux 11y ago

I find it strange that they don't simply allow two streams: the reordered via algorithm and the timeline. Introduce the new thing as a cool new beta product that people can try and after a certain amount of time switch it to default, but still allow the old version. Then wait until a majority switch over and cut off the old version.

iamdave 11y ago
Facebook "does" this and I put "does" in quotation marks because even when I change the newsfeed sort order to "Most Recent" I still see posts I've already seen from hours ago jumbled in with things happening more recently, and if I leave the page and come back, or merely hit the refresh button I'm back to "Most Popular". Combine that with the ever annoying problem of leaving the page, suddenly seeing something interesting, hitting the back button and being presented with an entirely different order of sorting news items forcing me to go digging through my friend's timeline on their actual page .... I guess what I'm saying is I don't trust them to not fuck up two streams on Instagram the same way they've done it on FB: to the point of being completely useless as a dichotomy.

iamleppert 11y ago

Just stop using the app; lots of people I know have already stopped using Facebook. I don't even have it installed on my phone anymore.

pmarreck 11y ago
At least on iPhone, the web app is less resource-hoggy and just as featureful. Most of the social events I go to are now typically organized via Facebook; the non-FB people require a separate email which is an extra step that is not taken 100% of the time.
- Retric 11y ago
  >an extra step that is not taken 100% of the time. IMO, that's often a feature not a bug.
  - schwap 11y ago
    I suppose if your use case is "hermit".
  - dave2000 11y ago
    Yeah, I used to think that way. Thing is, while you're sitting at home feeling superior because you don't use that horrible mainstream website that all those terrible peasants are using and would stop using if only they knew how bad it was and how it's all about the money, your friends are all out there having fun at events they've organised on facebook and not quite ever got around to emailing all the bold, independent people who are too good for it.
  - pmarreck 11y ago
    I understand this POV, but I think it ends up being more bug than feature :)
tootie 11y ago
I have only ever used Facebook on mobile web and it's perfectly sufficient. I don't want push notifications ever, so it's not a problem. The one friend who actually posts anything that is relevant to my interests and not totally inane is my best buddy Suggested Post.

huangwei_chang 11y ago

I guess the same thing (or other things you don't like) won't happen if IG is still an independent company.

Apocryphon 11y ago

And here I thought Instagram was an actual case of the acquirer letting the acquired product be fairly hands off. Are there any examples of happy acquisitions? Oculus?

dave2000 11y ago
Whatsapp?
dreaminvm 11y ago
How do know this is not purely an Instagram decision? If Instagram usage data demonstrated that most users only looked at 30% of the timeline, then it makes sense to optimize for the most active/engaging content.

andreyk 11y ago

So the point of the post is "Now the timeline order has changed. It's not a timeline anymore, but it's a filtered and reordered feed. I feel very sad about that and I want to explain you why." The why in that is "Now Instagram aims to be the brother of Facebook: a time sucking machine that has to steal the highest amount of my time to maximise the exposure of his ads. Now it’s too hard for me follow what’s happening to my friends, and I can’t do it real-time anymore.". I don't really think it makes much sense to be so sad about this, since the whole reason Instagram did this (according to them) is that people were only seeing 30% of the images on average so it just made sense to try and present the best 30% up front (explained here http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/technology/instagram-feed.html?_r=1 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/technology/instagram-feed....). And if like me this guy follows few enough people to keep up with all the photos, then there should be no issue because I can always easily keep up with only the people I am following and see all their output. Maybe it is not real time anymore and it is noticeable to this person, but it still seems to be overstating the case. And how is this change relevant to try to capture most of your time? It seems moreso to be about trying to give the best experience possible, confronting a problem that most people probably friend and follow way too many people to keep up with. Seems reasonable to me... Not to mention it's very dubious to claim the call came from Facebook, and not internally from Instagram following the same direction Facebook and Twitter went over time.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
sp332 11y ago
It's hard to tell if you've seen all the photos or not when they're re-ordered on a regular basis.
- sp332 11y ago
  I know it's late but I wanted to add something that's been frustrating me on Facebook lately, and that is that it's almost impossible to re-find a newish post that you've seen already. The during algorithm makes you wade through tons of other posts first, even thigh the one you're looking for used to be right on top.

josh_carterPDX 11y ago

When you have a product you give away for free, it's always a challenge to find new and inventive ways to pay for it. Ads are one way so I don't begrudge FB for tweaking something I don't have to pay for if it means they somehow make some money on it. I like using it and find it pretty useful. I think it's just going to impact buyers of ads because they'll likely see their numbers dip as more people abandon Instagram for something else like Snapchat. Users are fickle. If you start messing with something they're used to eventually they'll just find something else to keep their A.D.D. in check.

kin 11y ago

I'm really tired of reading rants and opinions on Medium. In any case it sounds like if there's a huge drop-off of users Instagram can very easily address the issue by setting a sort by option in the settings.

paulpauper 11y ago
tired of it too . just another platform for tumrblr people who are grownup to channel their narcissism. And most of the articles are of low quality, with unnecessarily large font and stupid pictures that makes me feel like I'm in 5th grade again.
- awesomerobot 11y ago
  I'd argue that hackernews uses a font that's too small and doesn't have enough images — but I think your other criticisms are spot on.
HipstaJules 11y ago
I'm really tired of reading rants and opinions on Hacker News.

paulpauper 11y ago

yyaawwn people also thought Facebook was ruined when they stopped only accepting edu emails

lazzlazzlazz 11y ago

It's not filtered. It's reordered but not filtered. If you keep scrolling you will see everything posted that you haven't seen since the last time you checked. It's not even bad.

Negative1 11y ago

The changes are a natural progression towards a curated experience. You may not like it but I would argue it does not 'ruin' instagram; just makes it a more controlled experience (which many do prefer).

teej 11y ago
But they aren't asking people which one they prefer. Some GM or product manager somewhere has goals to "increase engagement" which is probably naively defined as scrolling or clicking more. They need those metrics to go up to sell more ads. People's opinion that Instagram is 'ruined' is completely valid. Just because the 'average' experience ticked up doesn't mean that you're making it better for everyone. This is a classic case of managing to the average. The desires of the people who are most passionate about Instagram are being ignored in lieu of hitting quarterly numbers. This is why it's important to deeply understand your users qualitatively as well as quantitatively. You can't A/B test your way to a great product.

fordarnold 11y ago

Its all about the money.

wodenokoto 11y ago

So what is chronological order anyway? What time stamp do we order by? Is it when it was posted? The last comment? The last like/reaction? The last interaction by someone in our network?

jsprogrammer 11y ago
The last content determined to be most likely to make the most money by displaying to you.

colordrops 11y ago

This is why I stopped using Facebook. The feed became non-deterministic and unpredictable. It felt manipulative. I don't need a mediated experience, thanks.

xufi 11y ago
Not to mention the constant bombardment of "Trending articles" that you can't even block even with a good Adblocker (so far as I've tried)

completereset 11y ago

All of these shiny social network websites are there for profit. They play nice to grow and then they will squeeze as much profit as they can from users. What did you expect is going to happen? Why would you invest so much effort and emotion into growing a thing that you can be 100% sure will eventually try to consume you. If people want social media that does not feed on them, they have to start using p2p, decentralized social apps. Not like Diaspora (federated), but truly p2p, where each user contributes resources and there's no need to support scalability engineers maintaining state of art datacenters. http://twister.net.co/ http://twister.net.co/ https://zeronet.io/ https://zeronet.io/ https://www.ipfs.com/ https://www.ipfs.com/ http://www.synereo.com/ http://www.synereo.com/ http://maidsafe.net/ http://maidsafe.net/ Somewhere there or in something similiar is our holy grail: social networking by users for users.

nikolay 11y ago

Never got into Instagram, never got why Facebook bought it, never got why would people use it, and not Google Photos, Flickr, Facebook Photos, or the million others... Oh, filters, right!

axelfreeman 11y ago

This algo will show photos with more likes on top. I wanna see photos from people and not this hashtagspam pushed crap in my timeline. Instagram fails at catching spam all the time. More likes = more views = more likes. The same problem facebook has right now. I wanna see pics of my follower and not only the "pages" with photographic skills + photoshop + hashtagspam. It's getting less social and more like magazine-subscription of channels.

jinushaun 11y ago

Facebook's algorithmic news feed is why my feed is full of politics, when if I actually visited people's profile pages individually, that's not really the case. There are all these non-political posts that just don't show up in my feed. Real time is better. Don't guess what I would prefer to see. Let me filter it myself.