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For a while when I was younger I naively thought Facebook would formulate my timeline in such a way that I could keep up with genuinely interesting and special

For a while when I was younger I naively thought Facebook would formulate my timeline in such a way that I could keep up with genuinely interesting and special things people who enjoy tech like me think and do, and likewise feel genuinely encouraged to reciprocate occasionally. Why instead does my timeline have to be so precisely boring, mindless, impersonal, and yet addictive? Maybe because 1) incentive to post is largely motivated by lowest-common-denominator, broadest appeal rather than niche, 2) posting about specialized interests are therefore unincentivized, and 3) such posts from friends produces a positive feedback loop in the rest of the group? Maybe it'd be worse if Facebook actually worked this way because it would be harder to avoid entirely.

danso 9y ago
> Why instead does my timeline have to be so precisely boring, mindless, impersonal, and yet addictive? Maybe because 1) incentive to post is largely motivated by lowest-common-denominator, broadest appeal rather than niche, 2) posting about specialized interests are therefore unincentivized, and 3) such posts from friends produces a positive feedback loop in the rest of the group? Maybe some of the addictive effects you're feeling are out of habit. When's the last time you quit Facebook cold turkey, and for how long did you do it? I found that quitting for a few days -- by doing something as simple as changing my password to gibberish so that I could not login without going through the email verification process, thereby preventing me from "reflexively" checking FB -- could be enough to get me to forget about FB for weeks, even months.
- ProfessorLayton 9y ago
  It might sound silly, foregoing most apps and using private/incognito browsing on all my devices 100% of the time is a productivity booster for me. The friction of having to log into every site all the time means I'll only go if I feel I need to, thereby keeping my device usage "productive". A huge bonus is not being bombarded with push notifications and a lot less tracking.
  - danso 9y ago
    Not silly at all. I think we as humans vastly underestimate the degree that we're influenced by small subconscious things, even though there's entire professional fields and countless dollars devoted to the practice (e.g. design, copy-writing, ui-ux). It feels better to see things as rational decisions, sometimes between good versus evil, rather than to admit our mundane weaknesses. I do something similar to you, except that I log off at the desktop (except for HN, sadly). If I want to send out a pointless but time-consuming rant about something ultimately trivial, I'm going to have to do it on my phone's touchscreen. And the thought of doing so is often more than enough to kill the desire so I can just focus on real work and writing. When I find myself lying in bed longer than I should because I'm touchscreen-typing these comments/posts, then I go cold turkey on my phone :).
- mercer 9y ago
  I agree you're right, speaking from the perspective of someone who uninstalled the mobile app and checks Facebook every few days. Nonetheless, I recently checked the 'recent/chronological' feed, as well as just profiles of individual friends and old friends that I cared about. In both cases I felt that the offering was better than the algorithmic and default news feed, and somehow a net positive to my life (I'll elaborate if necessary, but I really do believe this). If I'd have to choose, I'd go for chronological feed of of friend updates. And if I could choose what 'categories' of friends to filter by, that'd be great, but that's basically Google+ with its circles. Anyways, what surprised me most is that even though I only have a 'facebook browsing sesh' every few days (3+), the experience I've defaulted into, the regular feed, is nowhere close to the quality that of 'recent updates hose' or 'updates from specific friends, chronologically'. But at the same time good enough in a generic sense that I can see them optimizing for that. Not really all that far off from my experience with Reddit, by the way. On the one hand I can commend the clever nature of Facebook to go for the current News Feed approach. On the other hand it strikes me as a prime example of the dangers of algorithms and optimizing for very specific things, and the growing anti-SV narrative (much as I've grown to hate these sorts of things).
ghostcluster 9y ago
News feeds are basically slot machines, and intermittent reinforcement is psychologically powerful
sp527 9y ago
The reason for this has to do with ‘variable reward’. Specifically, the brain quickly acclimates to a constant stream of rewards and gets bored. By contrast, spacing out rewards at unpredictable intervals is much likelier to keep the brain hooked. As someone else noted, this is the same principle that underpins slot machines.

danso 9y ago

> Why instead does my timeline have to be so precisely boring, mindless, impersonal, and yet addictive? Maybe because 1) incentive to post is largely motivated by lowest-common-denominator, broadest appeal rather than niche, 2) posting about specialized interests are therefore unincentivized, and 3) such posts from friends produces a positive feedback loop in the rest of the group? Maybe some of the addictive effects you're feeling are out of habit. When's the last time you quit Facebook cold turkey, and for how long did you do it? I found that quitting for a few days -- by doing something as simple as changing my password to gibberish so that I could not login without going through the email verification process, thereby preventing me from "reflexively" checking FB -- could be enough to get me to forget about FB for weeks, even months.

ProfessorLayton 9y ago
It might sound silly, foregoing most apps and using private/incognito browsing on all my devices 100% of the time is a productivity booster for me. The friction of having to log into every site all the time means I'll only go if I feel I need to, thereby keeping my device usage "productive". A huge bonus is not being bombarded with push notifications and a lot less tracking.
- danso 9y ago
  Not silly at all. I think we as humans vastly underestimate the degree that we're influenced by small subconscious things, even though there's entire professional fields and countless dollars devoted to the practice (e.g. design, copy-writing, ui-ux). It feels better to see things as rational decisions, sometimes between good versus evil, rather than to admit our mundane weaknesses. I do something similar to you, except that I log off at the desktop (except for HN, sadly). If I want to send out a pointless but time-consuming rant about something ultimately trivial, I'm going to have to do it on my phone's touchscreen. And the thought of doing so is often more than enough to kill the desire so I can just focus on real work and writing. When I find myself lying in bed longer than I should because I'm touchscreen-typing these comments/posts, then I go cold turkey on my phone :).
mercer 9y ago
I agree you're right, speaking from the perspective of someone who uninstalled the mobile app and checks Facebook every few days. Nonetheless, I recently checked the 'recent/chronological' feed, as well as just profiles of individual friends and old friends that I cared about. In both cases I felt that the offering was better than the algorithmic and default news feed, and somehow a net positive to my life (I'll elaborate if necessary, but I really do believe this). If I'd have to choose, I'd go for chronological feed of of friend updates. And if I could choose what 'categories' of friends to filter by, that'd be great, but that's basically Google+ with its circles. Anyways, what surprised me most is that even though I only have a 'facebook browsing sesh' every few days (3+), the experience I've defaulted into, the regular feed, is nowhere close to the quality that of 'recent updates hose' or 'updates from specific friends, chronologically'. But at the same time good enough in a generic sense that I can see them optimizing for that. Not really all that far off from my experience with Reddit, by the way. On the one hand I can commend the clever nature of Facebook to go for the current News Feed approach. On the other hand it strikes me as a prime example of the dangers of algorithms and optimizing for very specific things, and the growing anti-SV narrative (much as I've grown to hate these sorts of things).

ghostcluster 9y ago

News feeds are basically slot machines, and intermittent reinforcement is psychologically powerful

sp527 9y ago

The reason for this has to do with ‘variable reward’. Specifically, the brain quickly acclimates to a constant stream of rewards and gets bored. By contrast, spacing out rewards at unpredictable intervals is much likelier to keep the brain hooked. As someone else noted, this is the same principle that underpins slot machines.