4 ms·

Meta just has nothing to offer. In fact, the only truly useful thing it provides is Whatsapp (which it acquired primarily to gain users); and there are good al

by z9znz 4y ago

Meta just has nothing to offer. In fact, the only truly useful thing it provides is Whatsapp (which it acquired primarily to gain users); and there are good alternatives to Whatsapp, so it's an "also". The actual human connection features of Facebook turned out to be a novelty as humans discovered that they don't really do enough interesting things often; so keeping up with one's friends doesn't require a live feed, but rather a weekly or monthly note will do. So once the friend status stuff became so blasé, and users were spending less attention on FB, FB amped up the suggested content. Now, as has been illustrated on some HN posts, the vast majority of what one sees on FB is just suggested content. Instagram is the same. People just aren't interesting enough to keep an entire platform alive. Sure, the influencers and posers will provide a lot of content, but within any given category there are hundreds of similar (and quickly boring) options. The grand business model of attracting people to a platform and then showing them lots of ads just cannot survive long term without real content; and there's less and less real content each year. Meta is so large and has so much marketshare already that no pivot could save them. Their only chance is to merge with a content company like Netflix (where the content machine is arguably already oversaturating the channels and leaving viewers bored despite many new series each year). In 10 years, Meta is likely to be just another AOL.

thraxil 4y ago
> So once the friend status stuff became so blasé, and users were spending less attention on FB, FB amped up the suggested content. Now, as has been illustrated on some HN posts, the vast majority of what one sees on FB is just suggested content. > > Instagram is the same. People just aren't interesting enough to keep an entire platform alive. Sure, the influencers and posers will provide a lot of content, but within any given category there are hundreds of similar (and quickly boring) options. The irony (for me, at least) is that it was Meta's attempts to drive more engagement that pushed me away from both platforms. When Facebook was just the actual activity of my friends, I enjoyed it. Once they started messing with things and it became more about "suggested content" than a useful way to keep in touch with my friends, I realized how much of a time waste it was and deleted my account. I haven't deleted my Instagram account yet, but it seems to be inevitable as Instagram turns more and more into a low-rent TikTok where the feed has been taken over by content suggested by the algorithm rather than just the photos posted by my contacts (and FWIW, I don't follow any "influencers", only people that I actually know or artists whose work I enjoy). I may be an outlier, but to me every "improvement" that they've made to try to increase the amount of content and engagement has made it less attractive because it feels less genuine and more generic. On the other side of it, it also makes me less likely to bother posting content because I know that the algorithm won't be showing it to anyone or will be prioritizing it lower than the stuff that's been carefully constructed to be "engaging".
- kuu 4y ago
  I think this has been the mayor difference between Facebook and Twitter (which still allows chronological sort, even if you have to "remind" the website to do so) and the explanation of why still use the second but not the first
bm3719 4y ago
I wonder if we've been hitting a lot of peaks in recent times and will continue to do so in the near future. Peak-social media, peak-influencer, peak-outrage, etc. The result will be a more boring, but hopefully saner, set of spaces we point our eyeballs at. At a high level, perhaps this was a necessary phase for human society to transition through in order to come to terms with these new technologies. Our relationship with them was always likely be chaotic at first, then settle into a more healthy and sustainable one. I'm personally looking forward to it. The past 10-15 years of this stuff has been tiring, to say the least.
floor2 4y ago
> People just aren't interesting enough to keep an entire platform alive This is a really interesting point, and probably mostly true. I'd add onto it, that even for people who are doing lots of interesting things, that Instagram soon becomes awkward to use for fear of "showing off" and that it's fundamentally set up as more of a broadcast-to-audience system rather than any sort of interact-with-friends system, which makes it worse. The parasocial influencer thing works, because it's supposed to be a hollow one-direction "watch me have fun doing X", but real friendships aren't a series of watching each other have fun, they're about actually doing things together and/or having deeper conversations about the experiences, and Instagram fundamentally pushes interactions into "Publisher-Subscriber" model rather than the "Peer-to-Peer" relationship of natural human friendship.
- babyoil 4y ago
  BeReal, for example, is still really tied to how we've been doing things for the past decade and a half, but it's actually a bit more boring and personal, so I enjoy it way more than current Meta offerings.
voisin 4y ago
> The actual human connection features of Facebook turned out to be a novelty as humans discovered that they don't really do enough interesting things often; so keeping up with one's friends doesn't require a live feed, but rather a weekly or monthly note will do. Oh gosh no. This is not what society has learned at all. See Instagram, Tik Tok. Not being interesting enough is not a barrier to posting incessantly.
xcavier 4y ago
>>The actual human connection features of Facebook turned out to be a novelty<< I don't agree. FB play(ed) an important role for me: helping me keep my extended family across the goings on in my child's life (they all live elsewhere). It was quite good at making grandparents/aunts/uncles feel connected etc. But that utility is largely buried beneath a growing list of 'features' with little appeal - I don't need prompts to add people I know. I don't need yet another marketplace. I don't need short-form videos from complete strangers. Today, 80%+ of my newsfeed feels like irrelevant content - and that's what's killing FB.
- tfandango 4y ago
  I agree with this. I moved across country when I was 16 and have been able to regain friendships that would have been lost otherwise. However lately it seems to be 80% adds and unrelated videos. Often if I seek someone out I find they have been putting a bunch of stuff up there that I missed. It has made me much less interested in the Facebook product. On the other hand, we have an Oculus and I'm quite enjoying some of the "metaverse" worlds in Horizons. I think I'm firmly in the minority there.

by z9znz 4y ago

thraxil 4y ago

> So once the friend status stuff became so blasé, and users were spending less attention on FB, FB amped up the suggested content. Now, as has been illustrated on some HN posts, the vast majority of what one sees on FB is just suggested content. > > Instagram is the same. People just aren't interesting enough to keep an entire platform alive. Sure, the influencers and posers will provide a lot of content, but within any given category there are hundreds of similar (and quickly boring) options. The irony (for me, at least) is that it was Meta's attempts to drive more engagement that pushed me away from both platforms. When Facebook was just the actual activity of my friends, I enjoyed it. Once they started messing with things and it became more about "suggested content" than a useful way to keep in touch with my friends, I realized how much of a time waste it was and deleted my account. I haven't deleted my Instagram account yet, but it seems to be inevitable as Instagram turns more and more into a low-rent TikTok where the feed has been taken over by content suggested by the algorithm rather than just the photos posted by my contacts (and FWIW, I don't follow any "influencers", only people that I actually know or artists whose work I enjoy). I may be an outlier, but to me every "improvement" that they've made to try to increase the amount of content and engagement has made it less attractive because it feels less genuine and more generic. On the other side of it, it also makes me less likely to bother posting content because I know that the algorithm won't be showing it to anyone or will be prioritizing it lower than the stuff that's been carefully constructed to be "engaging".

kuu 4y ago
I think this has been the mayor difference between Facebook and Twitter (which still allows chronological sort, even if you have to "remind" the website to do so) and the explanation of why still use the second but not the first

bm3719 4y ago

I wonder if we've been hitting a lot of peaks in recent times and will continue to do so in the near future. Peak-social media, peak-influencer, peak-outrage, etc. The result will be a more boring, but hopefully saner, set of spaces we point our eyeballs at. At a high level, perhaps this was a necessary phase for human society to transition through in order to come to terms with these new technologies. Our relationship with them was always likely be chaotic at first, then settle into a more healthy and sustainable one. I'm personally looking forward to it. The past 10-15 years of this stuff has been tiring, to say the least.

floor2 4y ago

> People just aren't interesting enough to keep an entire platform alive This is a really interesting point, and probably mostly true. I'd add onto it, that even for people who are doing lots of interesting things, that Instagram soon becomes awkward to use for fear of "showing off" and that it's fundamentally set up as more of a broadcast-to-audience system rather than any sort of interact-with-friends system, which makes it worse. The parasocial influencer thing works, because it's supposed to be a hollow one-direction "watch me have fun doing X", but real friendships aren't a series of watching each other have fun, they're about actually doing things together and/or having deeper conversations about the experiences, and Instagram fundamentally pushes interactions into "Publisher-Subscriber" model rather than the "Peer-to-Peer" relationship of natural human friendship.

babyoil 4y ago
BeReal, for example, is still really tied to how we've been doing things for the past decade and a half, but it's actually a bit more boring and personal, so I enjoy it way more than current Meta offerings.

voisin 4y ago

> The actual human connection features of Facebook turned out to be a novelty as humans discovered that they don't really do enough interesting things often; so keeping up with one's friends doesn't require a live feed, but rather a weekly or monthly note will do. Oh gosh no. This is not what society has learned at all. See Instagram, Tik Tok. Not being interesting enough is not a barrier to posting incessantly.

xcavier 4y ago

>>The actual human connection features of Facebook turned out to be a novelty<< I don't agree. FB play(ed) an important role for me: helping me keep my extended family across the goings on in my child's life (they all live elsewhere). It was quite good at making grandparents/aunts/uncles feel connected etc. But that utility is largely buried beneath a growing list of 'features' with little appeal - I don't need prompts to add people I know. I don't need yet another marketplace. I don't need short-form videos from complete strangers. Today, 80%+ of my newsfeed feels like irrelevant content - and that's what's killing FB.

tfandango 4y ago
I agree with this. I moved across country when I was 16 and have been able to regain friendships that would have been lost otherwise. However lately it seems to be 80% adds and unrelated videos. Often if I seek someone out I find they have been putting a bunch of stuff up there that I missed. It has made me much less interested in the Facebook product. On the other hand, we have an Oculus and I'm quite enjoying some of the "metaverse" worlds in Horizons. I think I'm firmly in the minority there.