8 ms·

So in other words TikTok has made them have to pause and switch to prioritize Reels (which are in every way worse than TikTok BTW) and that means less eyeballs

So in other words TikTok has made them have to pause and switch to prioritize Reels (which are in every way worse than TikTok BTW) and that means less eyeballs on ads. Honestly Facebook at this point is entirely unusable. My feed is full of shit I don’t want (and I block ads at DNS level so I can’t even imagine what it looks like for most people): Reels, half baked “memes” that are just really random thoughts from people I don’t know that someone I do know shared, and the rest I can’t even classify but it’s utter garbage. The only useful piece of FB was Marketplace but they managed to cram it so full of paid content and the rest is clearly online stores pretending to be local sellers that are this point I have zero use for that as well. I am sure they’ll continue to be printing money with their “generate outrage => show ads” core loop but how long will that actually last?

GekkePrutser 5y ago
Wow I left it around the time of the Cambridge analytica thing. Sounds like I haven't missed anything...
jliptzin 5y ago
I felt that way about 8 years ago and stopped using it then
kdtsh 5y ago
By the time I deactivated my account all I had in my newsfeed were posts from groups I joined when I was a teenager and the occasional news channel post. Friends had steadily dropped off over the years, which made it very easy to pull the pin in the end. There one or two days where you get the little ping in your brain to check the app (as an ex-smoker the sensation is not at all dissimilar to cravings), and after that you wonder why you spent time there in the first place. I can’t leave WhatsApp or Messenger because I have too many people I have on both, but that’s a different issue as far as I’m concerned. Now I am spending some time on TikTok - but I’m get content from there that I actually generally enjoy, so that’s a net win as far as I’m concerned.
michaelmcdonald 5y ago
I’m assuming you are using a Pi-hole to block the ads? From my understanding that is becoming less effective with companies like YouTube and Facebook since they serve ads directly from their domain.
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  I use NextDNS which works pretty well but yes it does seem like ads on platforms like this are creeping back in.
- unmole 5y ago
  Obviously not feasible for everyone but you can solve this by: 1. Subscribing to YouTube premium 2. Not using Facebook
eloisius 5y ago
Somewhere in the A/B test slurry there is sometimes a menu item that sorts your news feed chronologically. It really lays bare what a ghost town Facebook is. In my default feed there is all the garbage that you described perfectly, and a burst of content like a friend’s wedding. That little nugget gets replayed over and over so that it feels like that’s what’s “going on.” Chronologically, it’s old news and no one I’m friends with has posted anything for over a week, just random garbage.
- Auracle 5y ago
  Ironically I feel like the change away from chronological order is what started the slow decline of my feed. I used to see things from people I cared about but didn’t interact with much. Now all I see are things from the same 10 people that I’m closest with, and I don’t care to scroll further.
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    I guess it’s hard to make ads look organic when it’s chronological?
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> My feed is full of shit I don’t want I don't log in to Facebook very often, but when I do it's not bad at all. I scroll through a few updates from friends and family and catch up with a few people, then I close it for another week or two. There isn't just one "Facebook" that we all see, obviously. Your feed is going to be a reflection of the groups you've joined and the friends you keep (and haven't muted). If you've just accumulated groups and connections for a decade without doing anything to shape your feed, I could see how it wouldn't be very interesting. But if you take a few seconds here and there to "like" things you want to see more of, hide things you want to see less of, mute the obnoxious people you don't want to hear from at all, and leave groups you're not interested in, it's not bad at all.
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  Or I could just go follow different groups I care about on Reddit. I don’t really care that much what Karen from high school thinks of her morning latte and spending the time to improve my feed is just not worth it to me.
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
    > I don’t really care that much what Karen from high school thinks of her morning latte and spending the time to improve my feed is just not worth it to me. If you're not interested in content from people in your social network, then I don't understand what you're expecting to get out of a social network anyway. Facebook isn't a bad way to keep up with friends and family, but if you don't like your friends on any platform then you're probably not going to have a good time. In other words: You're not their target customer. As with any business, trying to extrapolate your own use case on to the general public is going to be very misleading.
    - IgorPartola 5y ago
      I have meaningful conversation with people on other social networks. Discord, Instagram, Twitter, even TikTok. Facebook is the exception: it throws content at me that I explicitly don’t want and as its user base ages the content becomes less and less interesting. Topic-based groups are good but other networks simply do them better. And the idea of keeping up with what Karen from high school is doing isn’t all that fun at least to me.
sbrother 5y ago
I'm still a Facebook user (over 30, with kids, friends all over the world, and lots of groups that I care about), but the Reels thing is making me seriously consider leaving for good. It's awful, cringeworthy intrusive clickbaity videos from random kids I've never heard of every few posts on my feed. I clicked the X to make it go away but surprise, it's back. At this point their demographic is not the TikTok demographic, and they're just going to drive their remaining users away trying to force that.
- PKop 5y ago
  >their demographic is not the TikTok demographic In other words, not the youth, which is an existential problem for a growth oriented social media company no?
  - sbrother 5y ago
    Yep, hence the loss of 25% of their market cap today haha.
- snek_case 5y ago
  I feel like they might have had better luck starting a new Reels app, just like messenger is available as a standalone app. They're cramming too much functionality into a single app/webpage and trying to force people to use things they're not interested in. Why not just make a tiktok clone and keep it separate?
lhorie 5y ago
The overarching theme I'm seeing is one of FB jumping into whatever format bored people turn to, then slowly cramming it w/ ads until those eyeballs drift to the next fad, rinse and repeat. Regardless of how one might dislike it, the "generate outrage => show ads" thing has been working just peachy for Fox and friends. So my cynical take is that FB will continue to do just fine even as people shift to different consumption formats, and even if tiktok took over the world, because fundamentally, bored people will always exist and fads come and go.
alasdair_ 5y ago
> I block ads at DNS level so I can’t even imagine what it looks like for most people As a random aside, there is a Facebook ‘experiment’ (a/b test basically) that disables all ads for your account permanently. It was customary, for a while at least, to opt your user id (and that of a few friends) into that particular experiment on your last day of working at the company. Best leaving gift ever!
balaji1 5y ago
For me, Facebook used to be a place to connect with people as I met them IRL. Now LinkedIn has taken over this purpose of being a digital address book. But sometimes I get stuck scrolling forever. Maybe that ad revenue is enough for them. I still go to FB for groups and business' pages.
colordrops 5y ago
I've been blocked twice from using Facebook. The first time was when I tried to register with Oculus to unlock my Oculus Go. I only check Facebook once a week, but still keep in touch with some people, so I went through the process of submitting my ID and phone number and recovered my account. It happened again, because I used a non-standard browser, and this time they can shove it. If they want to keep users they shouldn't block them from using their product. It's abject stupidity.
CurrentB 5y ago
Totally agree wrt marketplace. For awhile it was great, the only reason to sign on to Facebook. You could sell anything locally easily and quickly. It really pulled off being a better craigslist which is no easy feat and not something I ever would have thought Facebook would do. Then maybe a year ago they started focusing on non local/commercial sales and it rapidly degraded to the point where it's not worth using now. It seems like they have diverted all traffic to paid listings so my cheap yardsale-esque deals on stuff I'm trying to get rid of get no views (where a year ago I would get ten messages a day for the same item)
- pixl97 5y ago
  Even better is when your yard sale gets blocked because its generating too much traffic/too many messages. Wife had that happen when we moved last year.
rcpt 5y ago
I don't think DNS ad blocking will do much wrt your feed. Sure you won't be able to click into the ads but they're likely all served from the FB domain
- tim333 5y ago
  https://www.fbpurity.com/ https://www.fbpurity.com/ is good. Blocks ads and sponsored stuff. You can customize what you want. Web only I think, not the app.
whiplash451 5y ago
> My feed is full of shit I don’t want (and I block ads at DNS level Maybe A is a consequence of B? If you don't let them track you, you get random advertising. And random advertising is painful to watch. I'm not advocating for targeted advertising, just stating a simple fact.
gw67 5y ago
What do you use to block ads at DNS-level?

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Wow I left it around the time of the Cambridge analytica thing. Sounds like I haven't missed anything...

jliptzin 5y ago

I felt that way about 8 years ago and stopped using it then

kdtsh 5y ago

By the time I deactivated my account all I had in my newsfeed were posts from groups I joined when I was a teenager and the occasional news channel post. Friends had steadily dropped off over the years, which made it very easy to pull the pin in the end. There one or two days where you get the little ping in your brain to check the app (as an ex-smoker the sensation is not at all dissimilar to cravings), and after that you wonder why you spent time there in the first place. I can’t leave WhatsApp or Messenger because I have too many people I have on both, but that’s a different issue as far as I’m concerned. Now I am spending some time on TikTok - but I’m get content from there that I actually generally enjoy, so that’s a net win as far as I’m concerned.

michaelmcdonald 5y ago

I’m assuming you are using a Pi-hole to block the ads? From my understanding that is becoming less effective with companies like YouTube and Facebook since they serve ads directly from their domain.

IgorPartola 5y ago
I use NextDNS which works pretty well but yes it does seem like ads on platforms like this are creeping back in.
unmole 5y ago
Obviously not feasible for everyone but you can solve this by: 1. Subscribing to YouTube premium 2. Not using Facebook

eloisius 5y ago

Somewhere in the A/B test slurry there is sometimes a menu item that sorts your news feed chronologically. It really lays bare what a ghost town Facebook is. In my default feed there is all the garbage that you described perfectly, and a burst of content like a friend’s wedding. That little nugget gets replayed over and over so that it feels like that’s what’s “going on.” Chronologically, it’s old news and no one I’m friends with has posted anything for over a week, just random garbage.

Auracle 5y ago
Ironically I feel like the change away from chronological order is what started the slow decline of my feed. I used to see things from people I cared about but didn’t interact with much. Now all I see are things from the same 10 people that I’m closest with, and I don’t care to scroll further.
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  I guess it’s hard to make ads look organic when it’s chronological?

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> My feed is full of shit I don’t want I don't log in to Facebook very often, but when I do it's not bad at all. I scroll through a few updates from friends and family and catch up with a few people, then I close it for another week or two. There isn't just one "Facebook" that we all see, obviously. Your feed is going to be a reflection of the groups you've joined and the friends you keep (and haven't muted). If you've just accumulated groups and connections for a decade without doing anything to shape your feed, I could see how it wouldn't be very interesting. But if you take a few seconds here and there to "like" things you want to see more of, hide things you want to see less of, mute the obnoxious people you don't want to hear from at all, and leave groups you're not interested in, it's not bad at all.

IgorPartola 5y ago
Or I could just go follow different groups I care about on Reddit. I don’t really care that much what Karen from high school thinks of her morning latte and spending the time to improve my feed is just not worth it to me.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > I don’t really care that much what Karen from high school thinks of her morning latte and spending the time to improve my feed is just not worth it to me. If you're not interested in content from people in your social network, then I don't understand what you're expecting to get out of a social network anyway. Facebook isn't a bad way to keep up with friends and family, but if you don't like your friends on any platform then you're probably not going to have a good time. In other words: You're not their target customer. As with any business, trying to extrapolate your own use case on to the general public is going to be very misleading.
  - IgorPartola 5y ago
    I have meaningful conversation with people on other social networks. Discord, Instagram, Twitter, even TikTok. Facebook is the exception: it throws content at me that I explicitly don’t want and as its user base ages the content becomes less and less interesting. Topic-based groups are good but other networks simply do them better. And the idea of keeping up with what Karen from high school is doing isn’t all that fun at least to me.

sbrother 5y ago

I'm still a Facebook user (over 30, with kids, friends all over the world, and lots of groups that I care about), but the Reels thing is making me seriously consider leaving for good. It's awful, cringeworthy intrusive clickbaity videos from random kids I've never heard of every few posts on my feed. I clicked the X to make it go away but surprise, it's back. At this point their demographic is not the TikTok demographic, and they're just going to drive their remaining users away trying to force that.

PKop 5y ago
>their demographic is not the TikTok demographic In other words, not the youth, which is an existential problem for a growth oriented social media company no?
- sbrother 5y ago
  Yep, hence the loss of 25% of their market cap today haha.
snek_case 5y ago
I feel like they might have had better luck starting a new Reels app, just like messenger is available as a standalone app. They're cramming too much functionality into a single app/webpage and trying to force people to use things they're not interested in. Why not just make a tiktok clone and keep it separate?

lhorie 5y ago

The overarching theme I'm seeing is one of FB jumping into whatever format bored people turn to, then slowly cramming it w/ ads until those eyeballs drift to the next fad, rinse and repeat. Regardless of how one might dislike it, the "generate outrage => show ads" thing has been working just peachy for Fox and friends. So my cynical take is that FB will continue to do just fine even as people shift to different consumption formats, and even if tiktok took over the world, because fundamentally, bored people will always exist and fads come and go.

alasdair_ 5y ago

> I block ads at DNS level so I can’t even imagine what it looks like for most people As a random aside, there is a Facebook ‘experiment’ (a/b test basically) that disables all ads for your account permanently. It was customary, for a while at least, to opt your user id (and that of a few friends) into that particular experiment on your last day of working at the company. Best leaving gift ever!

balaji1 5y ago

For me, Facebook used to be a place to connect with people as I met them IRL. Now LinkedIn has taken over this purpose of being a digital address book. But sometimes I get stuck scrolling forever. Maybe that ad revenue is enough for them. I still go to FB for groups and business' pages.

colordrops 5y ago

I've been blocked twice from using Facebook. The first time was when I tried to register with Oculus to unlock my Oculus Go. I only check Facebook once a week, but still keep in touch with some people, so I went through the process of submitting my ID and phone number and recovered my account. It happened again, because I used a non-standard browser, and this time they can shove it. If they want to keep users they shouldn't block them from using their product. It's abject stupidity.

CurrentB 5y ago

Totally agree wrt marketplace. For awhile it was great, the only reason to sign on to Facebook. You could sell anything locally easily and quickly. It really pulled off being a better craigslist which is no easy feat and not something I ever would have thought Facebook would do. Then maybe a year ago they started focusing on non local/commercial sales and it rapidly degraded to the point where it's not worth using now. It seems like they have diverted all traffic to paid listings so my cheap yardsale-esque deals on stuff I'm trying to get rid of get no views (where a year ago I would get ten messages a day for the same item)

pixl97 5y ago
Even better is when your yard sale gets blocked because its generating too much traffic/too many messages. Wife had that happen when we moved last year.

rcpt 5y ago

I don't think DNS ad blocking will do much wrt your feed. Sure you won't be able to click into the ads but they're likely all served from the FB domain

tim333 5y ago
https://www.fbpurity.com/ https://www.fbpurity.com/ is good. Blocks ads and sponsored stuff. You can customize what you want. Web only I think, not the app.

whiplash451 5y ago

> My feed is full of shit I don’t want (and I block ads at DNS level Maybe A is a consequence of B? If you don't let them track you, you get random advertising. And random advertising is painful to watch. I'm not advocating for targeted advertising, just stating a simple fact.

gw67 5y ago

What do you use to block ads at DNS-level?