4 ms·

Facebook needs to have separate feeds for politics and news sharing vs original content and family photos. In general, being able to let people filter and cont

Facebook needs to have separate feeds for politics and news sharing vs original content and family photos. In general, being able to let people filter and control the parameters of the algorithms defining their experience.

deleted 6y ago
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Super_Jambo 6y ago
Why would they do that? Thanks to network effects they have an effective monopoly & clearly they make more money from their current user hostile design.
angott 6y ago
Sure, very good idea, but it will never happen. It would lead to a dramatic drop in user engagement, and ultimately a decrease in revenue.
- dr_dshiv 6y ago
  Why would it drop engagement?
  - asdff 6y ago
    Your aunt might post a photo of their kid once a week that you take 5 seconds to see, and you only spend 5 seconds on facebook catching up on the new content for the week rather than spend 5 hours reading your aunt's crazy shared right ring news stories and debating with geriatrics in the comments section.
saltedonion 6y ago
The reason fb wont do this is because there is so little to show on the friends and family front, it will do nothing but drive users away and solidify its market positioning as a political news reader. To pull off separate feed fb needs to fix trust so people actually posts friends and family content as much as before.
- evolve2k 6y ago
  Anyone have references to this effect occurring? My sense was that friends and family personal posts were down but I’ve never seen any research or articles on it specifically.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  I thought I remembered Zuckerberg announcing they would be deemphasizing news over personal content a few years ago.
  - 0x5f3759df-i 6y ago
    They even did a cute commercial they played in movie theaters about it.
deleted 6y ago
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janeshmane 6y ago
Or better yet take the family photo sharing out of Facebook. I don't consider it a safe place for that. I just use Facebook for groups and events now. Family stuff goes through vzg.me or shared albums. But I agree within Facebook it would be cool to have them classify post types and let you filter: Family, Flamewar, Humblebrag, Meta
- Marsymars 6y ago
  Oooh, vzg.me looks promising, thanks for the tip. (Also got a tip about gath.io on HN a while ago, which has worked pretty well for a couple smallish, informal events I've hosted.)
fwn 6y ago
They had that some time ago somewhat implicitly. Users were able to subscribe to their friends posts based on post type (image, text, link, etc.) Back then I was an active Facebook user and selected to subscribe only to image content. It worked great for a while but got obsolete both by Facebook removing those subscription options and (earlier) the users emerging habit to add pictures to every post to increase reach, no matter the content.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Super_Jambo 6y ago

Why would they do that? Thanks to network effects they have an effective monopoly & clearly they make more money from their current user hostile design.

angott 6y ago

Sure, very good idea, but it will never happen. It would lead to a dramatic drop in user engagement, and ultimately a decrease in revenue.

dr_dshiv 6y ago
Why would it drop engagement?
- asdff 6y ago
  Your aunt might post a photo of their kid once a week that you take 5 seconds to see, and you only spend 5 seconds on facebook catching up on the new content for the week rather than spend 5 hours reading your aunt's crazy shared right ring news stories and debating with geriatrics in the comments section.

saltedonion 6y ago

The reason fb wont do this is because there is so little to show on the friends and family front, it will do nothing but drive users away and solidify its market positioning as a political news reader. To pull off separate feed fb needs to fix trust so people actually posts friends and family content as much as before.

evolve2k 6y ago
Anyone have references to this effect occurring? My sense was that friends and family personal posts were down but I’ve never seen any research or articles on it specifically.
jjeaff 6y ago
I thought I remembered Zuckerberg announcing they would be deemphasizing news over personal content a few years ago.
- 0x5f3759df-i 6y ago
  They even did a cute commercial they played in movie theaters about it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

janeshmane 6y ago

Or better yet take the family photo sharing out of Facebook. I don't consider it a safe place for that. I just use Facebook for groups and events now. Family stuff goes through vzg.me or shared albums. But I agree within Facebook it would be cool to have them classify post types and let you filter: Family, Flamewar, Humblebrag, Meta

Marsymars 6y ago
Oooh, vzg.me looks promising, thanks for the tip. (Also got a tip about gath.io on HN a while ago, which has worked pretty well for a couple smallish, informal events I've hosted.)

fwn 6y ago

They had that some time ago somewhat implicitly. Users were able to subscribe to their friends posts based on post type (image, text, link, etc.) Back then I was an active Facebook user and selected to subscribe only to image content. It worked great for a while but got obsolete both by Facebook removing those subscription options and (earlier) the users emerging habit to add pictures to every post to increase reach, no matter the content.