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Yes it’s a negative feedback loop created by the very bad product decisions they made to optimize for local maxima of getting more ads revenue. You inject more

Yes it’s a negative feedback loop created by the very bad product decisions they made to optimize for local maxima of getting more ads revenue. You inject more and more ads followed by more and more suggested content, thereby reducing the in network content. The in network content doesn’t get as much of traction, therefore people stop posting. This in turn forces the feed to have more and more suggestions and a few stale in network posts from days ago. This drives engagement down from people who want to see in network content and they leave. So what is left is people who do engage with suggested content, pushing the product to make decisions to push even more suggested content. All of this continues till eventually fatigue sets in and a sudden rapid drop in engagement kicks in because your global maxima of a quality product was lost long time ago and your product dies.

voisin 4y ago
Sounds a lot like Google Search results. It’s almost as if advertising dollars are an addictive drug that ultimately kills the company.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Except Search volume and MAUs are still growing like a weed, whereas FB's growth has slowed dramatically. Search is not perfect, for sure. It has different problems.
- mtgx 4y ago
- scarmig 4y ago
  It actively makes the product worse. E.g. from yesterday, if I search for "high tc record," I'm not looking for the set of bedsheets with the greatest number of threads.
  - JustLurking2022 4y ago
    In fairness, reading your search term, I had no idea what you were talking about so it's not entirely surprising the organic content producers don't match those terms well. Looks like the SEO folks do though.
    - ericraio 4y ago
      Google is supposed to be able to understand this given how much data they collect on individuals and the web.
      - blowski 4y ago
        Perhaps there are multiple groups searching with the same terms, but expecting completely different results. Google takes its best guess at which group you're in. To get better at that they have to gather more info about you personally. I'd prefer to change my search query than give lots of extra personal data to Google.
    - jacobolus 4y ago
      Works fine in DDG: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22high+tc%22+record https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22high+tc%22+record Edit: and also Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22high%20tc%22%20record https://www.google.com/search?q=%22high%20tc%22%20record
      - ipaddr 4y ago
        What are we looking for here? The results seem equally as confusing as the query
        jacobolus 4y ago
        The other commenter was obviously interested in the record for high-temperature superconductors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconductivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconducti... Or perhaps more generally for materials with a high Curie temperature, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie_temperature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie_temperature Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about this field.
  - lizknope 4y ago
    I have no idea what you are expecting from "high tc record" I'm getting links about the highest temperature on earth and it is listing it in Fahrenheit so if the "tc" means "temperature celsius" it is failing for me. All the other links are about high temperature superconductors.
    - kidme5 4y ago
      https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie_temperature https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie_temperature
      - lizknope 4y ago
        These are the top 2 links I get https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest_temperature_recorded_on_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest_temperature_recorded_o... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconductivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconducti... "High-temperature superconductors (abbreviated high-Tc" Seems like google search is working quite well if the second link is what the person wanted.
  - mindcrime 4y ago
    if I search for "high tc record," I'm not looking for the set of bedsheets with the greatest number of threads. FWIW, I would also have no idea what that search is supposed to return.
    - reaperducer 4y ago
      But you don't have a 20-year dossier of almost every web site he's visited; a list of 90% of his credit card purchases; an AI scrutinizing every photo he's ever been in that's been in, or in the background of, on the internet; a list of his previous searches; and a list of the places he's brought his cell phone. To improve user experience.
      - nomat 4y ago
        Ken Liu's "The Perfect Match" is a sci-fi short story about this topic. https://gizmodo.com/lightspeed-presents-the-perfect-match-by-ken-liu-5966398 https://gizmodo.com/lightspeed-presents-the-perfect-match-by...
      - Arnt 4y ago
        Google says it spends about 0.3Wh per search, of which roughly one third is for scraping and two thirds for the search. I think you may be overestimating how much processing they could do with that budget (assuming they want to do that significant user-based tweaking, which is IMO not a given).
  - actually_a_dog 4y ago
    You know you spend/have spent too much time on Blind when you immediately think "TC" means "total compensation."
  - llbeansandrice 4y ago
    > high tc record I don't know what you are trying to search for. A record for total compensation? Something related to Tesla coils? Turing Complete? Thread Count is a totally valid interpretation.
  - drcongo 4y ago
    My next single, High TC, doesn't come out for another month. You'll be able to search for it then.
- Invictus0 4y ago
  But at least now a few MBAs can put "increased revenue at Meta by X%" on their resume!
- rolph 4y ago
  --that coupled with inability to realize that blasting ads at people doesnt make your product look better, it makes your product a source of frustration, and a daily/hourly annoyance, your product is associated with bad, and is avoided. the answer to the problem includes the concept of less is more.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    Not really since no one’s cares about the annoyances-if they did no company would run ads but the exact opposite is true
    - ManlyBread 4y ago
      >no one cares about the annoyances Then why is adblocking so popular?
- jqgatsby 4y ago
  I agree. More generally, any business model where your users and your customers are disjoint sets will cause a misalignment of interests that generates an ever-increasing negative feedback loop. It seems like it can take a long time to play out though.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  It’s the resource curse in corporate form
- duped 4y ago
  Which companies were killed by ads?
  - timr 4y ago
    Yahoo comes to mind.
  - bikson 4y ago
    Digg?
  - ycta2334209 4y ago
    Tumblr - banned 18+ content in 2018(?) in an attempt to make their site more advertiser-friendly and lost most of their userbase within a couple of months. Site was thriving before that.
    - edgyquant 4y ago
      This is a dishonest answer. Tumblr died because it’s niche was adult content. Banning your niche is choosing to fail.
      - monocasa 4y ago
        It doesn't seem dishonest to me; chasing those ad dollars are what led to the supremely stupid decision of banning one of their core niches.
        edgyquant 4y ago
        We are talking about platforms where the ads themselves caused users to leave. This is not what happened with Tumblr and it is not a good faith view to say so.
        monocasa 4y ago
        I only see you attempting to constrain the topic that far, rather than just the ways that advertising based models in general can pervert a company's incentives by turning away their core user base. Sometimes it's just changing the UX until your userbase no longer wants to show up. Sometimes it's literally just banning a huge chunk of your userbase for some reason.
- csw-001 4y ago
  I'm not sure it's the advertising dollars that are addictive as much as it is "growth". To keep the stock price up you have sustain a PE that reflects revenue growth, and once you are done signing up new users... Well... Something's got to give. I see the ads as a lot like cutting timber out of a finite forest - it's profitable, but potentially harmful to the ecosystem in a way that can make it unsustainable. As long as you don't cut too much, replant aggressively, then you can make a sustainable business out of it - but it doesn't scale past the point where your harm to the ecosystem causes collapse. Once people exit FB because it's all ads, then the network benefits begin to evaporate, a little bit at first, then all at once... Then again I don't run a social media company, so what do I know. ;-)
  - dylan604 4y ago
    >Then again I don't run a social media company, so what do I know. ;-) Maybe not a little as you think. Just because the social media companies are "runing", running into the ground is still running. They just have so much momentum that the ship is going to keep moving along.
  - nostromo 4y ago
    Amazon seems to have taken a different route. Keep margins low and don’t make too much money in order to starve any potential competitors of capital. Of course - you still need to grow revenue for this to work - just not profits.
    - danudey 4y ago
      Doesn't help that their recommendations are always "Oh, you bought an air conditioner? Come look at this wide variety of other air conditioners we have!" rather than, say, adapters for connecting air conditioners to different window types or home electricity usage monitoring or something.
      - nostromo 4y ago
        This is a common complaint. The reason they do it is because... it works! It can be counter-intuitive but this is often seen in recommendation systems. In music for example, the song most likely to be played after a song is... that same song again.
- in3d 4y ago
  Exactly. By adding more and more ads, their own widgets, and pushing down smaller sites in the search results to favor brands, Google made it very hard for smaller sites with user-generated content to grow and profit organically. And then fewer people searched for them or expected to find them. I’m kind of enjoying the fact that newer sites and apps like Discord don’t let Google index them after Google killed off a large part of the independent Internet. We’re missing out on a lot of good content that would be put up in an alternate universe with a less greedy and shortsighted Google.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - fullsend 4y ago
    Users click more on big brands. The average internet user doesn’t want to browse hobby websites, they use the top 10 sites and never leave them. Accept it. Some of them never leave only Reddit or TikTok.
    - mrtesthah 4y ago
      Cynical proclamations tend to sound authoritative, but that’s not the same as being true. Sources?
      - spiralx 4y ago
        I was interested as well, but couldn't find anything specifically answering the question. According to the link below social media, email and watching videos counts for about three-quarters of most people's internet usage, which could easily mean they spend most time on just three or four sites. The two smallest categories - searching and shopping - could also just mean Google and Amazon for the most part, so it's the "Surfing content (19%)" that's ambiguous... although even then I assume that Google is a big part of that, and otherwise surfing for content is pretty much the opposite of visiting a site regularly, although I guess it probably includes news websites, which probably are a regular visit. I'd guess that it is possible most people visit a dozen or fewer websites regularly, of which half a dozen or so are in the Top 10, and the rest include things like news/media sites that are most likely to be popular (if only nationally). Seems likely the older the person the narrower range of things they do online, apparently the most common activities for the over-60s are email and checking the weather lol. https://www.creditloan.com/blog/how-the-world-spends-its-time-online/ https://www.creditloan.com/blog/how-the-world-spends-its-tim...
- whywhywhywhy 4y ago
  Never thought I’d see the day, but I actually use Yandex for image search now because they basically deliver the google image search experience of a decade ago. While Google Images has had no one with Vision in charge and been tweaked, buffed and downgraded to the point of uselessness. And you can tell no one on the team actually uses it. Google Search could honestly be dethroned if someone really wanted to. The usage at this point is habit, not because it’s still a good search engine.
  - krferriter 4y ago
    I've noticed recently Google image search has gotten surprisingly terrible for some things. I use Bing image search when the Google image search lets me down. Haven't tried Yandex.
    - whywhywhywhy 4y ago
      Yandex in particular is good with reverse image search is the main thing that won me over. It uses the same system Google used before they replaced it with machine learning and made it useless. Google Image search these days seems to be "Oh that image you sent me is an Apple, here are pictures of other Apples" rather than showing me other sizes of the same image, and other images that are very similar looking.
  - 6510 4y ago
    I still weekly make the mistake to try to find something that I know to exist. Sometimes I know there are hundreds of pages on the topic. I type query after query, again and again, nothing shows up. It's like in the 90's, I tell stories about.. I forget his name and the place, when it happened but it was something like this and that. pfft! edit: I just attempted to look up what kind of taxes on has to pay if one receives donations. I cant carve out a query that gives me anything other than tax deductible donations. The "receiving" part is completely ignored.
    - BridgetJones 4y ago
      I find it very fascinating: I'm in Switzerland, and the 4th result to [what kind of taxes on has to pay if one receives donations] links me to a good result: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/money-received-through-crowdfunding-may-be-taxable-taxpayers-should-understand-their-obligations-and-the-benefits-of-good-recordkeeping https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/money-received-through-crowdfun.... But when I connect to Google on VPN "from the US", I can't find it in the first 3 pages. Very strange.
- topaz0 4y ago
  Or maybe profit is an addictive drug that kills the company
- jpalomaki 4y ago
  For those annyoyed with ads on Google search, Kagi [1] is worth trying. It's not free, but does not show ads and uses the Google index behind the scenes. I've been using it on desktop for few months and have no complaints. [1] https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    > uses the Google index behind the scenes Does it give better results than Google? I find Google's results to be pretty horrible, and worry that if Kagi is using Google's index, then I wouldn't get better results with them.
    - Liquix 4y ago
      It does give better results. The filters can also be quite powerful. The problem is paying a steep fee to proxy Google's index... It benefits you and Kagi in the short term, but strengthens the Google/Bing/Yandex index oligopoly [0] long term. Bad search results are the symptom - scarcity and opaqueness of viable indices is the root cause https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes/ https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-...
      - freediver 4y ago
        > but strengthens the Google/Bing/Yandex index oligopoly The way we look at it as that it gives Google a non-ad based source of revenue, which is a good thing for the future of the web. If one day that revenue could displace all ad-based revenue, by Google selling data to providers like Kagi, we would reverse the current state of the web.
tootie 4y ago
I quit FB a few years ago when I realized the suggested posts were just way more interesting than anything my friends posted. Idk what that says about their algorithm. Or my friends.
- ericraio 4y ago
  Instagram turned into being what Facebook was supposed to be.
  - umeshunni 4y ago
    and now it's moving away from that and pushing more suggested content. The death spiral is: 1. Show friends content to attract users 2. Realize that friends don't product enough content to increase engagement. 3. Start introducing suggested content to increase engagement 4. Friend stop producing content since their content is deprioritized and not getting engagement 5. Now your feed is full of suggested content and isn't interesting any more 6. You leave and find another platform
    - edgyquant 4y ago
      Almost like building a business around “engagement” is a model that leads to a death spiral. Social media sites are basically giant MLM schemes that sell the idea that become real companies before the scheme runs out.
      - languageserver 4y ago
        ahhh,,... I would say billions in revenue makes it anything but. A short lived idea, maybe, a novelty, maybe
        edgyquant 4y ago
        Death spiral = short lived MLMs make billions, but they are still MLMs.
      - 4y ago
AlexC04 4y ago
I'd also add that the optimizing the timeline for engagement (including negative engagement & arguments) wound up making me quit the platform entirely. There were no positive interactions, just deeply unpleasant arguments with people spewing vitriol. Like ... why would I stay on a platform that was so deeply unpleasant to interact with all the time?
pen2l 4y ago
It's an interesting exercise to think about: suppose you're in the meeting room and you're the product guy and you'll make this case. Indeed let us not optimize for the presently advantageous local maxima lest it come back to swallow and end us. How is this communicated? And what does it take to convincingly persuade people, or investors of this -- to even bear through a temporary downward period with the understanding that fundamentals must be respected?
- max51 4y ago
  >And what does it take to convincingly persuade people, or investors of this As long as their top priority is next quarter's result, you can't. You may get small wins here and there, but nothing fundamental will change unless they have a long term vision. When I say "long term", I'm talking 10 - 20 years, not 1 year.
- whywhywhywhy 4y ago
  Convince on vision, not data. They didn’t build the iPhone or even like Google Maps and Google Images by walking into the meeting room with data. They instead said “what if maps were as easy as we’ve made search” Of course it becomes a problem when no one even to the CEO level has lost vision. Never put the numbers guy in charge.
- lemmiwinks 4y ago
  From my comprehension of Mad Men? You hire a PR firm to convince those investors and decision people, to sell them an idea instead of KPIs. It can go both ways, of course: Mad Men is full of examples of stupid business ideas that went spectacularly wrong. And while it wasn’t the focus of Mad Men, the real world is full of examples of business that went the metrics way and were successful. But IMHO, if I was the CEO of a social media company, I sure wouldn’t focus on A/B testing and engagement metrics.
greatpostman 4y ago
This is basically the flaw in A/B testing
deleted 4y ago
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legitster 4y ago
It's not just the ad revenue or suggested content. FB's most sticky offerings are groups and pages. Well, FB actively hides posts in these to their own followers. You end up having to pay just sponsor messages to your own group.
fairity 4y ago
No, this isn't a consequence of the status quo newsfeed algorithm. This is a consequence of Facebook making a purposeful strategic shift away from in-network content to suggested content. This strategic shift was highlighted in their last earnings call as a way to compete with TikTok, whose success is partly explained by their focus on suggested content. On the earnings call, they signaled that they were shifting more to a mix of the two content styles in the coming quarters, but the OP is likely enrolled in some sort of test that is giving them 98%. See the below excerpt from Meta's Q2 earnings call: "One of the main transformations in our business right now is that social feeds are going from being driven primarily by the people and accounts you follow to increasingly also being driven by AI recommending content that you'll find interesting from across Facebook or Instagram, even if you don't follow those creators. Social content from people you know is going to remain an important part of the experience and some of our most differentiated content. But increasingly, we'll also be able to supplement that with other interesting content from across our networks. Reels is one part of this trend that focuses on the growth of short-form video as a content format."
- ghostoftesla 4y ago
  It makes sense tho for them to go for suggested content, because the can make you like stuff. That's their thing. It's no random thing they've been hiring psyops veterans of the afghanistan war. They can push things
- bazeblackwood 4y ago
  Bad strategy, imo. Sounds like they should have tried to answer why people used their product in the first place. “A competitor does it” isn’t a valid excuse—its like suggesting The French Laundry switch to fast food because McDonald’s is a competitor.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    I think your analogy is too generous. It’s more like putting an engine on your stapler because people buy cars more often than staplers at a higher margin despite having a monopoly in the stapler market.
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
This is easily solved by having 'suggested content' (ads) once every (eg.) 10 posts from friends. 28 ads in a row is a total overkill
benjaminwootton 4y ago
LinkedIn went through the same algorithm led spiral of decline. Initially, they seemed to stop pushing out good on topic content. Instead, they rewarded and promoted Facebook style posts and made up stories probably due to metrics and A/B tests. The good authentic posters then either stopped posting or had to feed the beast by pushing out the same crappy content in the house style which the algorithm rewards. Almost everyone on there now is writing purely for the algorithm and not their industry peers whether they realise that or not. They are just chasing the doamine hit of likes. The product is worse for it and I’m sure it ultimately kills the golden goose for social platforms despite a short term uplift. They become much less engaging and sticky when the social element is lost.
- projektfu 4y ago
  When LinkedIn arrived, it seemed like a good idea -- sort of a way for people who aren't great at networking to see how to expand their network. Then, like any dating site, you needed to buy credits to participate, and only "players" are willing to do that. Then, they erased any additional value brought by their thought leaders by promoting third-rate content with catchy headlines like you mentioned. Now, why would I trust them with my resume? And if I have no interest in them, likely anything else on there is either out of date or some sort of lie. Friendster, Myspace, Orkut, Facebook.... Similar things for social. Use the network to find more people to hang out with, feel less alone. But then, again, that is not actually a business and people aren't paying for it. So, you either show generic ads (not a bad idea) or you get people to pay to get their content in front of you. But then people stop caring about what they see there and move on. I agree with other posters -- I used to keep Facebook around because my family was there. Now I don't even see their posts when I'm on it. So, there's no value anymore.
  - selfhoster11 4y ago
    I treat LinkedIn as I treated Facebook: a way to keep in touch with people you know or once knew, as a way to keep track of a list of these people, and as an easily findable public handle. For Facebook, it was of course less oriented towards money making. Now LinkedIn still does the same job. As far as I’m concerned, while “thought leaders” and other spam is more prominent, dealing with egos is the price to pay for making it easier to find a job, and to be found as a candidate. It’s not materially different to IRL corporate world.
drc500free 4y ago
Slightly pedantic - this is a POSITIVE feedback loop, with an unwanted outcome. A negative feedback loop would be self correcting.

voisin 4y ago

Sounds a lot like Google Search results. It’s almost as if advertising dollars are an addictive drug that ultimately kills the company.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
Except Search volume and MAUs are still growing like a weed, whereas FB's growth has slowed dramatically. Search is not perfect, for sure. It has different problems.
mtgx 4y ago
scarmig 4y ago
It actively makes the product worse. E.g. from yesterday, if I search for "high tc record," I'm not looking for the set of bedsheets with the greatest number of threads.
- JustLurking2022 4y ago
  In fairness, reading your search term, I had no idea what you were talking about so it's not entirely surprising the organic content producers don't match those terms well. Looks like the SEO folks do though.
  - ericraio 4y ago
    Google is supposed to be able to understand this given how much data they collect on individuals and the web.
    - blowski 4y ago
      Perhaps there are multiple groups searching with the same terms, but expecting completely different results. Google takes its best guess at which group you're in. To get better at that they have to gather more info about you personally. I'd prefer to change my search query than give lots of extra personal data to Google.
  - jacobolus 4y ago
    Works fine in DDG: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22high+tc%22+record https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22high+tc%22+record Edit: and also Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22high%20tc%22%20record https://www.google.com/search?q=%22high%20tc%22%20record
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      What are we looking for here? The results seem equally as confusing as the query
      - jacobolus 4y ago
        The other commenter was obviously interested in the record for high-temperature superconductors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconductivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconducti... Or perhaps more generally for materials with a high Curie temperature, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie_temperature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie_temperature Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about this field.
- lizknope 4y ago
  I have no idea what you are expecting from "high tc record" I'm getting links about the highest temperature on earth and it is listing it in Fahrenheit so if the "tc" means "temperature celsius" it is failing for me. All the other links are about high temperature superconductors.
  - kidme5 4y ago
    https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie_temperature https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Curie_temperature
    - lizknope 4y ago
      These are the top 2 links I get https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest_temperature_recorded_on_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest_temperature_recorded_o... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconductivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconducti... "High-temperature superconductors (abbreviated high-Tc" Seems like google search is working quite well if the second link is what the person wanted.
- mindcrime 4y ago
  if I search for "high tc record," I'm not looking for the set of bedsheets with the greatest number of threads. FWIW, I would also have no idea what that search is supposed to return.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    But you don't have a 20-year dossier of almost every web site he's visited; a list of 90% of his credit card purchases; an AI scrutinizing every photo he's ever been in that's been in, or in the background of, on the internet; a list of his previous searches; and a list of the places he's brought his cell phone. To improve user experience.
    - nomat 4y ago
      Ken Liu's "The Perfect Match" is a sci-fi short story about this topic. https://gizmodo.com/lightspeed-presents-the-perfect-match-by-ken-liu-5966398 https://gizmodo.com/lightspeed-presents-the-perfect-match-by...
    - Arnt 4y ago
      Google says it spends about 0.3Wh per search, of which roughly one third is for scraping and two thirds for the search. I think you may be overestimating how much processing they could do with that budget (assuming they want to do that significant user-based tweaking, which is IMO not a given).
- actually_a_dog 4y ago
  You know you spend/have spent too much time on Blind when you immediately think "TC" means "total compensation."
- llbeansandrice 4y ago
  > high tc record I don't know what you are trying to search for. A record for total compensation? Something related to Tesla coils? Turing Complete? Thread Count is a totally valid interpretation.
- drcongo 4y ago
  My next single, High TC, doesn't come out for another month. You'll be able to search for it then.
Invictus0 4y ago
But at least now a few MBAs can put "increased revenue at Meta by X%" on their resume!
rolph 4y ago
--that coupled with inability to realize that blasting ads at people doesnt make your product look better, it makes your product a source of frustration, and a daily/hourly annoyance, your product is associated with bad, and is avoided. the answer to the problem includes the concept of less is more.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  Not really since no one’s cares about the annoyances-if they did no company would run ads but the exact opposite is true
  - ManlyBread 4y ago
    >no one cares about the annoyances Then why is adblocking so popular?
jqgatsby 4y ago
I agree. More generally, any business model where your users and your customers are disjoint sets will cause a misalignment of interests that generates an ever-increasing negative feedback loop. It seems like it can take a long time to play out though.
edgyquant 4y ago
It’s the resource curse in corporate form
duped 4y ago
Which companies were killed by ads?
- timr 4y ago
  Yahoo comes to mind.
- bikson 4y ago
  Digg?
- ycta2334209 4y ago
  Tumblr - banned 18+ content in 2018(?) in an attempt to make their site more advertiser-friendly and lost most of their userbase within a couple of months. Site was thriving before that.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    This is a dishonest answer. Tumblr died because it’s niche was adult content. Banning your niche is choosing to fail.
    - monocasa 4y ago
      It doesn't seem dishonest to me; chasing those ad dollars are what led to the supremely stupid decision of banning one of their core niches.
      - edgyquant 4y ago
        We are talking about platforms where the ads themselves caused users to leave. This is not what happened with Tumblr and it is not a good faith view to say so.
        monocasa 4y ago
        I only see you attempting to constrain the topic that far, rather than just the ways that advertising based models in general can pervert a company's incentives by turning away their core user base. Sometimes it's just changing the UX until your userbase no longer wants to show up. Sometimes it's literally just banning a huge chunk of your userbase for some reason.
csw-001 4y ago
I'm not sure it's the advertising dollars that are addictive as much as it is "growth". To keep the stock price up you have sustain a PE that reflects revenue growth, and once you are done signing up new users... Well... Something's got to give. I see the ads as a lot like cutting timber out of a finite forest - it's profitable, but potentially harmful to the ecosystem in a way that can make it unsustainable. As long as you don't cut too much, replant aggressively, then you can make a sustainable business out of it - but it doesn't scale past the point where your harm to the ecosystem causes collapse. Once people exit FB because it's all ads, then the network benefits begin to evaporate, a little bit at first, then all at once... Then again I don't run a social media company, so what do I know. ;-)
- dylan604 4y ago
  >Then again I don't run a social media company, so what do I know. ;-) Maybe not a little as you think. Just because the social media companies are "runing", running into the ground is still running. They just have so much momentum that the ship is going to keep moving along.
- nostromo 4y ago
  Amazon seems to have taken a different route. Keep margins low and don’t make too much money in order to starve any potential competitors of capital. Of course - you still need to grow revenue for this to work - just not profits.
  - danudey 4y ago
    Doesn't help that their recommendations are always "Oh, you bought an air conditioner? Come look at this wide variety of other air conditioners we have!" rather than, say, adapters for connecting air conditioners to different window types or home electricity usage monitoring or something.
    - nostromo 4y ago
      This is a common complaint. The reason they do it is because... it works! It can be counter-intuitive but this is often seen in recommendation systems. In music for example, the song most likely to be played after a song is... that same song again.
in3d 4y ago
Exactly. By adding more and more ads, their own widgets, and pushing down smaller sites in the search results to favor brands, Google made it very hard for smaller sites with user-generated content to grow and profit organically. And then fewer people searched for them or expected to find them. I’m kind of enjoying the fact that newer sites and apps like Discord don’t let Google index them after Google killed off a large part of the independent Internet. We’re missing out on a lot of good content that would be put up in an alternate universe with a less greedy and shortsighted Google.
- deleted 4y ago
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- fullsend 4y ago
  Users click more on big brands. The average internet user doesn’t want to browse hobby websites, they use the top 10 sites and never leave them. Accept it. Some of them never leave only Reddit or TikTok.
  - mrtesthah 4y ago
    Cynical proclamations tend to sound authoritative, but that’s not the same as being true. Sources?
    - spiralx 4y ago
      I was interested as well, but couldn't find anything specifically answering the question. According to the link below social media, email and watching videos counts for about three-quarters of most people's internet usage, which could easily mean they spend most time on just three or four sites. The two smallest categories - searching and shopping - could also just mean Google and Amazon for the most part, so it's the "Surfing content (19%)" that's ambiguous... although even then I assume that Google is a big part of that, and otherwise surfing for content is pretty much the opposite of visiting a site regularly, although I guess it probably includes news websites, which probably are a regular visit. I'd guess that it is possible most people visit a dozen or fewer websites regularly, of which half a dozen or so are in the Top 10, and the rest include things like news/media sites that are most likely to be popular (if only nationally). Seems likely the older the person the narrower range of things they do online, apparently the most common activities for the over-60s are email and checking the weather lol. https://www.creditloan.com/blog/how-the-world-spends-its-time-online/ https://www.creditloan.com/blog/how-the-world-spends-its-tim...
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
Never thought I’d see the day, but I actually use Yandex for image search now because they basically deliver the google image search experience of a decade ago. While Google Images has had no one with Vision in charge and been tweaked, buffed and downgraded to the point of uselessness. And you can tell no one on the team actually uses it. Google Search could honestly be dethroned if someone really wanted to. The usage at this point is habit, not because it’s still a good search engine.
- krferriter 4y ago
  I've noticed recently Google image search has gotten surprisingly terrible for some things. I use Bing image search when the Google image search lets me down. Haven't tried Yandex.
  - whywhywhywhy 4y ago
    Yandex in particular is good with reverse image search is the main thing that won me over. It uses the same system Google used before they replaced it with machine learning and made it useless. Google Image search these days seems to be "Oh that image you sent me is an Apple, here are pictures of other Apples" rather than showing me other sizes of the same image, and other images that are very similar looking.
- 6510 4y ago
  I still weekly make the mistake to try to find something that I know to exist. Sometimes I know there are hundreds of pages on the topic. I type query after query, again and again, nothing shows up. It's like in the 90's, I tell stories about.. I forget his name and the place, when it happened but it was something like this and that. pfft! edit: I just attempted to look up what kind of taxes on has to pay if one receives donations. I cant carve out a query that gives me anything other than tax deductible donations. The "receiving" part is completely ignored.
  - BridgetJones 4y ago
    I find it very fascinating: I'm in Switzerland, and the 4th result to [what kind of taxes on has to pay if one receives donations] links me to a good result: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/money-received-through-crowdfunding-may-be-taxable-taxpayers-should-understand-their-obligations-and-the-benefits-of-good-recordkeeping https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/money-received-through-crowdfun.... But when I connect to Google on VPN "from the US", I can't find it in the first 3 pages. Very strange.
topaz0 4y ago
Or maybe profit is an addictive drug that kills the company
jpalomaki 4y ago
For those annyoyed with ads on Google search, Kagi [1] is worth trying. It's not free, but does not show ads and uses the Google index behind the scenes. I've been using it on desktop for few months and have no complaints. [1] https://kagi.com/ https://kagi.com/
- JohnFen 4y ago
  > uses the Google index behind the scenes Does it give better results than Google? I find Google's results to be pretty horrible, and worry that if Kagi is using Google's index, then I wouldn't get better results with them.
  - Liquix 4y ago
    It does give better results. The filters can also be quite powerful. The problem is paying a steep fee to proxy Google's index... It benefits you and Kagi in the short term, but strengthens the Google/Bing/Yandex index oligopoly [0] long term. Bad search results are the symptom - scarcity and opaqueness of viable indices is the root cause https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-indexes/ https://seirdy.one/posts/2021/03/10/search-engines-with-own-...
    - freediver 4y ago
      > but strengthens the Google/Bing/Yandex index oligopoly The way we look at it as that it gives Google a non-ad based source of revenue, which is a good thing for the future of the web. If one day that revenue could displace all ad-based revenue, by Google selling data to providers like Kagi, we would reverse the current state of the web.

tootie 4y ago

I quit FB a few years ago when I realized the suggested posts were just way more interesting than anything my friends posted. Idk what that says about their algorithm. Or my friends.

ericraio 4y ago
Instagram turned into being what Facebook was supposed to be.
- umeshunni 4y ago
  and now it's moving away from that and pushing more suggested content. The death spiral is: 1. Show friends content to attract users 2. Realize that friends don't product enough content to increase engagement. 3. Start introducing suggested content to increase engagement 4. Friend stop producing content since their content is deprioritized and not getting engagement 5. Now your feed is full of suggested content and isn't interesting any more 6. You leave and find another platform
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    Almost like building a business around “engagement” is a model that leads to a death spiral. Social media sites are basically giant MLM schemes that sell the idea that become real companies before the scheme runs out.
    - languageserver 4y ago
      ahhh,,... I would say billions in revenue makes it anything but. A short lived idea, maybe, a novelty, maybe
      - edgyquant 4y ago
        Death spiral = short lived MLMs make billions, but they are still MLMs.
    - 4y ago

AlexC04 4y ago

I'd also add that the optimizing the timeline for engagement (including negative engagement & arguments) wound up making me quit the platform entirely. There were no positive interactions, just deeply unpleasant arguments with people spewing vitriol. Like ... why would I stay on a platform that was so deeply unpleasant to interact with all the time?

pen2l 4y ago

It's an interesting exercise to think about: suppose you're in the meeting room and you're the product guy and you'll make this case. Indeed let us not optimize for the presently advantageous local maxima lest it come back to swallow and end us. How is this communicated? And what does it take to convincingly persuade people, or investors of this -- to even bear through a temporary downward period with the understanding that fundamentals must be respected?

max51 4y ago
>And what does it take to convincingly persuade people, or investors of this As long as their top priority is next quarter's result, you can't. You may get small wins here and there, but nothing fundamental will change unless they have a long term vision. When I say "long term", I'm talking 10 - 20 years, not 1 year.
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
Convince on vision, not data. They didn’t build the iPhone or even like Google Maps and Google Images by walking into the meeting room with data. They instead said “what if maps were as easy as we’ve made search” Of course it becomes a problem when no one even to the CEO level has lost vision. Never put the numbers guy in charge.
lemmiwinks 4y ago
From my comprehension of Mad Men? You hire a PR firm to convince those investors and decision people, to sell them an idea instead of KPIs. It can go both ways, of course: Mad Men is full of examples of stupid business ideas that went spectacularly wrong. And while it wasn’t the focus of Mad Men, the real world is full of examples of business that went the metrics way and were successful. But IMHO, if I was the CEO of a social media company, I sure wouldn’t focus on A/B testing and engagement metrics.

greatpostman 4y ago

This is basically the flaw in A/B testing

deleted 4y ago

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legitster 4y ago

It's not just the ad revenue or suggested content. FB's most sticky offerings are groups and pages. Well, FB actively hides posts in these to their own followers. You end up having to pay just sponsor messages to your own group.

fairity 4y ago

No, this isn't a consequence of the status quo newsfeed algorithm. This is a consequence of Facebook making a purposeful strategic shift away from in-network content to suggested content. This strategic shift was highlighted in their last earnings call as a way to compete with TikTok, whose success is partly explained by their focus on suggested content. On the earnings call, they signaled that they were shifting more to a mix of the two content styles in the coming quarters, but the OP is likely enrolled in some sort of test that is giving them 98%. See the below excerpt from Meta's Q2 earnings call: "One of the main transformations in our business right now is that social feeds are going from being driven primarily by the people and accounts you follow to increasingly also being driven by AI recommending content that you'll find interesting from across Facebook or Instagram, even if you don't follow those creators. Social content from people you know is going to remain an important part of the experience and some of our most differentiated content. But increasingly, we'll also be able to supplement that with other interesting content from across our networks. Reels is one part of this trend that focuses on the growth of short-form video as a content format."

ghostoftesla 4y ago
It makes sense tho for them to go for suggested content, because the can make you like stuff. That's their thing. It's no random thing they've been hiring psyops veterans of the afghanistan war. They can push things
bazeblackwood 4y ago
Bad strategy, imo. Sounds like they should have tried to answer why people used their product in the first place. “A competitor does it” isn’t a valid excuse—its like suggesting The French Laundry switch to fast food because McDonald’s is a competitor.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  I think your analogy is too generous. It’s more like putting an engine on your stapler because people buy cars more often than staplers at a higher margin despite having a monopoly in the stapler market.

ajsnigrutin 4y ago

This is easily solved by having 'suggested content' (ads) once every (eg.) 10 posts from friends. 28 ads in a row is a total overkill

benjaminwootton 4y ago

LinkedIn went through the same algorithm led spiral of decline. Initially, they seemed to stop pushing out good on topic content. Instead, they rewarded and promoted Facebook style posts and made up stories probably due to metrics and A/B tests. The good authentic posters then either stopped posting or had to feed the beast by pushing out the same crappy content in the house style which the algorithm rewards. Almost everyone on there now is writing purely for the algorithm and not their industry peers whether they realise that or not. They are just chasing the doamine hit of likes. The product is worse for it and I’m sure it ultimately kills the golden goose for social platforms despite a short term uplift. They become much less engaging and sticky when the social element is lost.

projektfu 4y ago
When LinkedIn arrived, it seemed like a good idea -- sort of a way for people who aren't great at networking to see how to expand their network. Then, like any dating site, you needed to buy credits to participate, and only "players" are willing to do that. Then, they erased any additional value brought by their thought leaders by promoting third-rate content with catchy headlines like you mentioned. Now, why would I trust them with my resume? And if I have no interest in them, likely anything else on there is either out of date or some sort of lie. Friendster, Myspace, Orkut, Facebook.... Similar things for social. Use the network to find more people to hang out with, feel less alone. But then, again, that is not actually a business and people aren't paying for it. So, you either show generic ads (not a bad idea) or you get people to pay to get their content in front of you. But then people stop caring about what they see there and move on. I agree with other posters -- I used to keep Facebook around because my family was there. Now I don't even see their posts when I'm on it. So, there's no value anymore.
- selfhoster11 4y ago
  I treat LinkedIn as I treated Facebook: a way to keep in touch with people you know or once knew, as a way to keep track of a list of these people, and as an easily findable public handle. For Facebook, it was of course less oriented towards money making. Now LinkedIn still does the same job. As far as I’m concerned, while “thought leaders” and other spam is more prominent, dealing with egos is the price to pay for making it easier to find a job, and to be found as a candidate. It’s not materially different to IRL corporate world.

drc500free 4y ago

Slightly pedantic - this is a POSITIVE feedback loop, with an unwanted outcome. A negative feedback loop would be self correcting.