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I suspect part of it is that Real People are posting less. Since the feed doesn't have a bottom anymore it makes up the difference with sponsored and suggested

I suspect part of it is that Real People are posting less. Since the feed doesn't have a bottom anymore it makes up the difference with sponsored and suggested junk rather than going empty.

laweijfmvo 4y ago
So ~3B people are now willingly going to Facebook to be served ads and (probably) bot farms that just repost/share junk articles (some of which are or will be computer generated). Can't wait for the metaverse /s
londons_explore 4y ago
This. Most people have ~300 friends. Most of those friends never post, and the 10% that do probably only post a couple of times a year now. That means whenever you log in, there is no content from your friends to see.
- wincy 4y ago
  I’m not so sure about that. My mom posts on Facebook and gets a few likes with pictures of Jesus with text in them, and my wife posts every day with political hot takes, literally just text posts and gets hundreds of likes on virtually every post she makes with tons of comments and engagement. My high school peers post pictures of their kids all the time. I like their pictures and they like mine. My grandparents all like my posts too, except grandpa who told me not to curse on Facebook so I blocked her. I’ll curse on Facebook if I want, damn it! Edit: You know, I haven’t even posted this but just to verify I went to Facebook and… 90% was suggested pages and barely any of my friends posts. I swear it wasn’t like this yesterday. Did someone push an algorithm change and screw everything up in prod for Facebook?
  - CuriouslyC 4y ago
    I have also noticed a lot more suggested pages recently, I think they pushed a junk algorithm change.
  - Tao3300 4y ago
    > My mom posts on Facebook and gets a few likes with pictures of Jesus with text in them, and my wife posts every day with political hot takes I'm so sorry. I hope you can get help.
    - wan_ala 4y ago
    - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
      Yea this comment really buried the personal lede. I think I literally raised an eyebrow.
- pkamb 4y ago
  People post liberally to private Groups you're a member of, and you don't need to be their friends. Group posts should be the majority of your newsfeed.
- antisthenes 4y ago
  That's an extremely liberal use of the word friend. A more accurate way to state it would be to say 'facebook connections'. If you don't regularly communicate with them, they aren't your friends.
  - cbozeman 4y ago
    > 'facebook connections' This is called an acquaintance.
  - hk__2 4y ago
    That’s nitpicking. These people are called "friends" on FB, not "connections".
    - bluebit 4y ago
      Can we all agree to call them FB friends, not friends.
    - antisthenes 4y ago
      It's not nitpicking. It's the correct use of a word with its established definitions. If you want to use the FB corporate meaning, go ahead, but label it appropriately.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    If they are only your friend because you talked to them recently they probably aren't your friend either.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    If they won't help you move a couch, they're not a friend.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- BeFlatXIII 4y ago
  And the 1% daily posters would actively drive you away from Facebook if their spam of posts showed up in your newsfeed.
- badwolf 4y ago
  You can see this by going to https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr This temporarily forces chronological feed by most recently posted. My feed of actual people turned into a ghost town.
BitwiseFool 4y ago
That's a really important consideration. I post virtually nothing and neither do the majority of my old friends from school. Maybe it is due to being older and generally less interesting, but I suspect it is also because my friends who are inclined to post prolifically have moved on to Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter.
drc500free 4y ago
Yup, it's in a death spiral. As each feed gets less real content, that person disengaged and posts less. So their friends' feeds get less real content.
- michaelhoffman 4y ago
  I still log into Facebook pretty often, but most of my posts are no longer actually shared with friends, so I hardly ever make them anymore. What's the point of posting something almost no one will see?
bombcar 4y ago
When they changed things to make it so businesses had to pay for "sponsored posts" to get their followers to see them, you could see the writing on the wall. If normal people's posts get seen by their friends and followers, what would a business be paying for? And so it starts a loop that ends in nothing but AI generated content for doomscrollers.
swatcoder 4y ago
I gave up visiting Facebook a long time ago, so can't speak to whatever current algorithm, but even a few years ago, my feed was already flooded with outside content while only presenting a small fraction of my friends' content. If I wanted to see most of the friend-content I had "subscribed" to, I had to do a manual tour of their profiles. I'm sure people do post even less now, but I'm skeptical that's the root cause of what's being reported. The explicit bias towards political/commercial/promoted/engagementbait content over "subscribed" content has been there for years.
jerlam 4y ago
By comparison, Instagram - the other part of Facebook - still puts a "no new posts" item in the feed, so there's a clear indicator that you can put Instagram away and you won't miss out on anything. However, Facebook has been slowly chipping away at it, by putting suggested posts afterwards (instead of accounts you actually follow) so if you're not paying attention, you'll still get ads / engagement. I expect the "no new posts" indicator will be made smaller and smaller, and eventually disappear.
- ufmace 4y ago
  Funny, I see the opposite on Instagram - it's loaded with "suggested posts" based on things you liked, other accounts you follow, or apparently just things that you stopped scrolling for a second or two on, which I guess it detects. It even switches you to an endless list of suggested posts to scroll through once you have seen all of the posts from people you actually follow since the last time you opened the app - you have to click to an alternate screen/feed if you want to see an "old" post again.
kevstev 4y ago
I was actually going to post vacation photos a few months ago, after my first real trip post Covid. But... it just felt really awkard to do so all of a sudden. My feed is just stuffed with shared content and other crap, it no longer felt like something I would be welcome doing. Its been making me wonder if its time to sell my shares, which I have held since the IPO. It just feels like FB errr "Meta" is really losing its way, and this Metaverse stuff just seems like its going to be a furnace into which billions of dollars are going to be thrown into. My gut says its time, but I just can't quite pull the trigger yet.
- rconti 4y ago
  I don't understand your hesitation to share your photos (or at least, not based on that criteria). "[wouldn't] be welcome"? By whom? Facebook? Or your friends? Would that imply they'd rather see ads and shared crap content than original content? IMO Facebook needs an "original content only" setting. I block every single page that some idiot shares, but I'm not sure how much it helps. I will literally never want to see something shared from another page. It seems like this would be a good thing for FB too. Keep engagement up, keep inserting ads. Hell, they could insert MORE ads if the content I saw from my friends had a greater signal:noise ratio. Anyway, I recently shared some vacation pictures and quite enjoyed it. So much better than a bullshit "story" that lasts 24h and nobody can engage with except via DM. Such a weird impulse for an app. (okay, I get that they want you to use it constantly so you have FOMO about missing content that disappears after 24h, but I don't get why they don't want any real user engagement on the content).
  - yakovsi 4y ago
    I totally get what he says. If your feed no longer feels like it's your feed, more like some bazar on your phone, than why post anything private?
    - drc500free 4y ago
      Exactly this, it's gone from a something like a yahoo listserve with your friends to nextdoor with the whole world. And this repositioning happened completely behind the scenes seemingly as a side effect of pushing monetization too hard.
thomastjeffery 4y ago
If the average person's feed has less engagement from their friends, then they are probably less likely to post. There's probably a threshold where this problem starts feeding itself, and a threshold where it stops.
Vrondi 4y ago
Nah. People are posting, and then it doesn't show up in their friends' feeds, sometimes not for days. You can see this easily if you talk to people IRL. "I posted those photos two days ago, didn't you see?" and then the photos show up in your feed a few days later. Or never.
- nicbou 4y ago
  Only 3-5 people I knew posted on Facebook, and it still hid those posts from me. If I can't see my own mother's content, that website is worthless to me.
ipqk 4y ago
I'm a relatively old person that still has lots of friends that use FB (and not instagram or tiktok) and 100% of my feed (except for ads) was stuff from my friends.
foobarbecue 4y ago
Agree, but I think this is an effect rather than a cause. They made the feed un-friendly and un-cool, and as a result, Real People stopped posting.
jmugan 4y ago
I don't know. There's plenty of posts from my friends. I just don't see them because I'm not willing to wade through all of the junk ads and sponsored stuff.

I suspect part of it is that Real People are posting less. Since the feed doesn't have a bottom anymore it makes up the difference with sponsored and suggested junk rather than going empty.

laweijfmvo 4y ago

So ~3B people are now willingly going to Facebook to be served ads and (probably) bot farms that just repost/share junk articles (some of which are or will be computer generated). Can't wait for the metaverse /s

londons_explore 4y ago

This. Most people have ~300 friends. Most of those friends never post, and the 10% that do probably only post a couple of times a year now. That means whenever you log in, there is no content from your friends to see.

wincy 4y ago
I’m not so sure about that. My mom posts on Facebook and gets a few likes with pictures of Jesus with text in them, and my wife posts every day with political hot takes, literally just text posts and gets hundreds of likes on virtually every post she makes with tons of comments and engagement. My high school peers post pictures of their kids all the time. I like their pictures and they like mine. My grandparents all like my posts too, except grandpa who told me not to curse on Facebook so I blocked her. I’ll curse on Facebook if I want, damn it! Edit: You know, I haven’t even posted this but just to verify I went to Facebook and… 90% was suggested pages and barely any of my friends posts. I swear it wasn’t like this yesterday. Did someone push an algorithm change and screw everything up in prod for Facebook?
- CuriouslyC 4y ago
  I have also noticed a lot more suggested pages recently, I think they pushed a junk algorithm change.
- Tao3300 4y ago
  > My mom posts on Facebook and gets a few likes with pictures of Jesus with text in them, and my wife posts every day with political hot takes I'm so sorry. I hope you can get help.
  - wan_ala 4y ago
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    Yea this comment really buried the personal lede. I think I literally raised an eyebrow.
pkamb 4y ago
People post liberally to private Groups you're a member of, and you don't need to be their friends. Group posts should be the majority of your newsfeed.
antisthenes 4y ago
That's an extremely liberal use of the word friend. A more accurate way to state it would be to say 'facebook connections'. If you don't regularly communicate with them, they aren't your friends.
- cbozeman 4y ago
  > 'facebook connections' This is called an acquaintance.
- hk__2 4y ago
  That’s nitpicking. These people are called "friends" on FB, not "connections".
  - bluebit 4y ago
    Can we all agree to call them FB friends, not friends.
  - antisthenes 4y ago
    It's not nitpicking. It's the correct use of a word with its established definitions. If you want to use the FB corporate meaning, go ahead, but label it appropriately.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  If they are only your friend because you talked to them recently they probably aren't your friend either.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  If they won't help you move a couch, they're not a friend.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
BeFlatXIII 4y ago
And the 1% daily posters would actively drive you away from Facebook if their spam of posts showed up in your newsfeed.
badwolf 4y ago
You can see this by going to https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr This temporarily forces chronological feed by most recently posted. My feed of actual people turned into a ghost town.

BitwiseFool 4y ago

That's a really important consideration. I post virtually nothing and neither do the majority of my old friends from school. Maybe it is due to being older and generally less interesting, but I suspect it is also because my friends who are inclined to post prolifically have moved on to Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter.

drc500free 4y ago

Yup, it's in a death spiral. As each feed gets less real content, that person disengaged and posts less. So their friends' feeds get less real content.

michaelhoffman 4y ago
I still log into Facebook pretty often, but most of my posts are no longer actually shared with friends, so I hardly ever make them anymore. What's the point of posting something almost no one will see?

bombcar 4y ago

When they changed things to make it so businesses had to pay for "sponsored posts" to get their followers to see them, you could see the writing on the wall. If normal people's posts get seen by their friends and followers, what would a business be paying for? And so it starts a loop that ends in nothing but AI generated content for doomscrollers.

swatcoder 4y ago

I gave up visiting Facebook a long time ago, so can't speak to whatever current algorithm, but even a few years ago, my feed was already flooded with outside content while only presenting a small fraction of my friends' content. If I wanted to see most of the friend-content I had "subscribed" to, I had to do a manual tour of their profiles. I'm sure people do post even less now, but I'm skeptical that's the root cause of what's being reported. The explicit bias towards political/commercial/promoted/engagementbait content over "subscribed" content has been there for years.

jerlam 4y ago

By comparison, Instagram - the other part of Facebook - still puts a "no new posts" item in the feed, so there's a clear indicator that you can put Instagram away and you won't miss out on anything. However, Facebook has been slowly chipping away at it, by putting suggested posts afterwards (instead of accounts you actually follow) so if you're not paying attention, you'll still get ads / engagement. I expect the "no new posts" indicator will be made smaller and smaller, and eventually disappear.

ufmace 4y ago
Funny, I see the opposite on Instagram - it's loaded with "suggested posts" based on things you liked, other accounts you follow, or apparently just things that you stopped scrolling for a second or two on, which I guess it detects. It even switches you to an endless list of suggested posts to scroll through once you have seen all of the posts from people you actually follow since the last time you opened the app - you have to click to an alternate screen/feed if you want to see an "old" post again.

kevstev 4y ago

I was actually going to post vacation photos a few months ago, after my first real trip post Covid. But... it just felt really awkard to do so all of a sudden. My feed is just stuffed with shared content and other crap, it no longer felt like something I would be welcome doing. Its been making me wonder if its time to sell my shares, which I have held since the IPO. It just feels like FB errr "Meta" is really losing its way, and this Metaverse stuff just seems like its going to be a furnace into which billions of dollars are going to be thrown into. My gut says its time, but I just can't quite pull the trigger yet.

rconti 4y ago
I don't understand your hesitation to share your photos (or at least, not based on that criteria). "[wouldn't] be welcome"? By whom? Facebook? Or your friends? Would that imply they'd rather see ads and shared crap content than original content? IMO Facebook needs an "original content only" setting. I block every single page that some idiot shares, but I'm not sure how much it helps. I will literally never want to see something shared from another page. It seems like this would be a good thing for FB too. Keep engagement up, keep inserting ads. Hell, they could insert MORE ads if the content I saw from my friends had a greater signal:noise ratio. Anyway, I recently shared some vacation pictures and quite enjoyed it. So much better than a bullshit "story" that lasts 24h and nobody can engage with except via DM. Such a weird impulse for an app. (okay, I get that they want you to use it constantly so you have FOMO about missing content that disappears after 24h, but I don't get why they don't want any real user engagement on the content).
- yakovsi 4y ago
  I totally get what he says. If your feed no longer feels like it's your feed, more like some bazar on your phone, than why post anything private?
  - drc500free 4y ago
    Exactly this, it's gone from a something like a yahoo listserve with your friends to nextdoor with the whole world. And this repositioning happened completely behind the scenes seemingly as a side effect of pushing monetization too hard.

thomastjeffery 4y ago

If the average person's feed has less engagement from their friends, then they are probably less likely to post. There's probably a threshold where this problem starts feeding itself, and a threshold where it stops.

Vrondi 4y ago

Nah. People are posting, and then it doesn't show up in their friends' feeds, sometimes not for days. You can see this easily if you talk to people IRL. "I posted those photos two days ago, didn't you see?" and then the photos show up in your feed a few days later. Or never.

nicbou 4y ago
Only 3-5 people I knew posted on Facebook, and it still hid those posts from me. If I can't see my own mother's content, that website is worthless to me.

ipqk 4y ago

I'm a relatively old person that still has lots of friends that use FB (and not instagram or tiktok) and 100% of my feed (except for ads) was stuff from my friends.

foobarbecue 4y ago

Agree, but I think this is an effect rather than a cause. They made the feed un-friendly and un-cool, and as a result, Real People stopped posting.

jmugan 4y ago

I don't know. There's plenty of posts from my friends. I just don't see them because I'm not willing to wade through all of the junk ads and sponsored stuff.