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> Does it really just unleash too much power in the hands of the users and make these companies afraid what might happen? Social media companies spend incredib

> Does it really just unleash too much power in the hands of the users and make these companies afraid what might happen? Social media companies spend incredible resources trying to continuously improve the stickiness of the app so users keep coming back to it. Giving users total control over curation creates two big problems for this. 1) if I can cut out all of the BS in the feed, I can utilize the app more passively which likely reduces overall usage. I would try to get my social media into a weekly feed, which is not compatible with the business social media companies are trying to run. It's all about DAU's. 2) total curation makes researching and optimizing the UX for eyeballs more difficult because you introduce an entirely new set of variables into the equation. This increases the likelihood that behavioral research draws erroneous conclusions based on the patterns being observed. By controlling the drip of the content to the users, the company can control for this much more easily.

jimkleiber 5y ago
> 1) if I can cut out all of the BS in the feed, I can utilize the app more passively which likely reduces overall usage. I would try to get my social media into a weekly feed, which is not compatible with the business social media companies are trying to run. It's all about DAU's. Fair point, some may use it much less. Ironically, I might use it even more, because now I can explore more. Being given only one path can bore me at times. Sometimes I want to choose my own path. I absolutely loved the Facebook Graph Search, but then it vanished and I'm back to just hoping that Facebook gives me what I want instead of letting me dive deeper. In other words, I spend a ton of time on Wikipedia rabbit holes even without an algorithm that tries to predict what I want. > 2) total curation makes researching and optimizing the UX for eyeballs more difficult because you introduce an entirely new set of variables into the equation. Ah, yeah, I agree with this. Fewer variables make it easier to run social experiments and behavioral research.

jimkleiber 5y ago

> 1) if I can cut out all of the BS in the feed, I can utilize the app more passively which likely reduces overall usage. I would try to get my social media into a weekly feed, which is not compatible with the business social media companies are trying to run. It's all about DAU's. Fair point, some may use it much less. Ironically, I might use it even more, because now I can explore more. Being given only one path can bore me at times. Sometimes I want to choose my own path. I absolutely loved the Facebook Graph Search, but then it vanished and I'm back to just hoping that Facebook gives me what I want instead of letting me dive deeper. In other words, I spend a ton of time on Wikipedia rabbit holes even without an algorithm that tries to predict what I want. > 2) total curation makes researching and optimizing the UX for eyeballs more difficult because you introduce an entirely new set of variables into the equation. Ah, yeah, I agree with this. Fewer variables make it easier to run social experiments and behavioral research.