15 ms·

To your point about business decisions, Facebook's recent ban of the Unfollow Everything extension is exemplary of everything that's wrong with ad-driven social

To your point about business decisions, Facebook's recent ban of the Unfollow Everything extension is exemplary of everything that's wrong with ad-driven social media. The problem is not too much choice, but too little: - I can't easily delete old posts - I can't easily control who or what I am exposed to - In some cases, I have no control at all. For example, on the rare occasion I go to FB, the red dot on the video icon is still begging me to watch FB's 4th-rate YouTube full of random terrible videos. There is no way for me to turn this off, to my knowledge. - Everything is defaulted to the most intrusive, attention-sucking settings. I am never asked if I want something new. It is shoved in my face and then I have to go figure out how to turn it off. As a willful, tech-savvy person I can manage this, but I imagine that many people just go with the flow and get swept into unhealthy patterns by the relentless tide of nudges. I don't know if it's feasible or desirable to ban a service like FB categorically, but imposing minimal standards of user control could be a step up from where we are now. And if FB/Twitter/etc can't be profitable when users are in control... well, maybe that tells us everything we need to know about the true human value of today's social media matrix.

Pomade 5y ago
Atleast on windows and linux you can block these sites. Try doing it on Android.
Damogran6 5y ago
But that's precisely the point...they -don't-want-you- to have control or moderate the stream. They want to sell your attention and getting more of your attention makes them more money. Letting you turn off the annoying stuff is antithetical to their business model. And things like Youtube have honed it to a fine degree. They're a single source for certain kinds of content and using a roku, you CAN'T skip some adds. The Ad delivery is 'well, you can skip some, but you have to watch this Liberty commercial, and hey, skip now skips both ads, but since you've done that, now you're doing to sit through both of the next ads. Not to mention the video producers have sponsors, and the small ones are forced to shill theirselves through patreon to stand a chance of making a living at it...or at least breaking even on the costs of the content.
RandallBrown 5y ago
You can actually turn off the notification dots, at least in the iPhone app. If you go to the "Menu" tab you can long press on any of the categories and you'll get the option to turn off notification dots. I didn't know about this until reading your post and poking around in the app to see if it was possible.

Pomade 5y ago

Atleast on windows and linux you can block these sites. Try doing it on Android.

Damogran6 5y ago

But that's precisely the point...they -don't-want-you- to have control or moderate the stream. They want to sell your attention and getting more of your attention makes them more money. Letting you turn off the annoying stuff is antithetical to their business model. And things like Youtube have honed it to a fine degree. They're a single source for certain kinds of content and using a roku, you CAN'T skip some adds. The Ad delivery is 'well, you can skip some, but you have to watch this Liberty commercial, and hey, skip now skips both ads, but since you've done that, now you're doing to sit through both of the next ads. Not to mention the video producers have sponsors, and the small ones are forced to shill theirselves through patreon to stand a chance of making a living at it...or at least breaking even on the costs of the content.

RandallBrown 5y ago

You can actually turn off the notification dots, at least in the iPhone app. If you go to the "Menu" tab you can long press on any of the categories and you'll get the option to turn off notification dots. I didn't know about this until reading your post and poking around in the app to see if it was possible.