7 ms·

It's kinda weird that it used to be a platform for people that you know in real life, that's no longer the case and nothing has taken It's place.

Thorentis 4y ago
I think people in the target demographics actually stopped caring about those around them to this level. Sad, but I think true.
generated 4y ago
I would pay a token amount to only show my friends' updates, all my friends updates, in reverse chronological order.
- MagnumOpus 4y ago
  Use the F.B.Purity browser extension.
- likeabbas 4y ago
  BeReal is pretty nice for this tbh. Snapchat Stories used to be nice but IG killed that and then Snapchat had to find other niches
- wkat4242 4y ago
  Yeah exactly, like Facebook used to do before this algorithmic feed was a thing. It was actually quite good back then. Now it's unusable and I left it long ago.
arkitaip 4y ago
Tons of people use Whatsapp, Imo and other chat to keep in touch with friends and families without the nonsense of social media.
- johannes1234321 4y ago
  Yes, chronological timeline and push! And that only¹ for people in the group. ¹) Yes, yes, Facebook/Meta hassome access and security issues might exist etc., but way different from public-by-default Facebook
- ffssffss 4y ago
  It's more about connections to acquaintances and mutual friends... maybe you just had to be there in ~2009 but there's really nothing like it today. For better or worse.
wussboy 4y ago
> people that you know in real life There's still, you know, real life. I recommend it.
bobbygoodlatte 4y ago
Yep. A very sad truth. It would be quite a challenge to re-create what FB circa 2006-2010 or so was like. Before influencers and engagement farming. Before it became "social media" and was just a "social utility" The problem is that even if you re-built that product, it would quickly get overrun by engagement optimizers. If the product is open, they'll rush in. Group chat apps somewhat fill this product void, but not completely. There was something magical about a social network being somewhat open & organic that group chats can't capture
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  It was already starting to go downhill in mid-2006 (when it became available to anyone). The golden age was 2004-2006. I remember after it opened to the public most college students already decided it wasn't that cool anymore.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Just limit the number of people that a person can follow.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  > The problem is that even if you re-built that product, it would quickly get overrun by engagement optimizers. If the product is open, they'll rush in. We need the Craigslist of friends and family social networks. A company that is just aggressively disinterested in bloat or hyper engagement. Something where "re-sharing" doesn't exist and links are deemphasized in the UX, so it's more focused on your content (hopefully you talking about your own life, thoughts, etc.). Especially text content, with photos/videos present, but a bit deemphasized. Absolutely no business or "influencer" pages, of course.
  - vxNsr 4y ago
    There is an app like that. It’s called mewe, when Facebook was being especially egregious in some privacy overreach a bunch of people I know checked it out, but we were so burned from all the other social networks that we weren’t willing to use it like we had used to use Facebook. I think that time has just passed.
frankthedog 4y ago
The group chat is the new social network. Chronological, you know who’s in there, photo sharing, reactions, reply’s. It has everything me and my close friends need.
- tzs 4y ago
  How does that handle overlapping friend groups? Each person in my friend group has their own friend group, and their friend groups often include people who I am not friends with. It would seem that we'd need multiple group chats to make it work reasonably. Is that what you do? If we wanted it done with only one group chat it would seem it would have to include the union of all the friend groups of people who are in the chat, which would result in there being for most people in the chat a bunch of people they don't know also in the chat. We'd probably then want some kind of filtering. I'd probably only want to see posts that are from my friends, and maybe posts that my friends have reacted or replied to. ...and then we are essentially back to a Facebook-like or Twitter-like thing except maybe with better filtering.
  - lolinder 4y ago
    I question the value of trying to combine multiple friend groups into one group chat. They may have overlapping friends in them, but the groups are distinct and have their own character and collective identity, and I present myself slightly differently to each group. What do I stand to gain by combining my interactions with these different groups into one "social network"?
    - noisenotsignal 4y ago
      If you are in multiple group chats and have something to say (e.g. a life update), do you post in each individually? Or do you pick and choose which groups get the update? If your groups overlap, now some people get the same update twice - are they supposed to react in both? Group chats are intimate by design and don’t seem like a good fit for “broadcast” style updates like “I bought a house”, “moved to CA”, etc. That’s the value in the Facebook feed of old. Something like that also helps you stay connected with more distant friends/acquaintances, people you might not talk to daily but you would still be happy to see how they are doing in life.
baby 4y ago
I find it annoying as well. I don’t check my fb anymore because of all the unrelated content. I just want to see how my friends are doing.
grishka 4y ago
I'm building a fediverse project that aims to fill this exact niche. It's basically a recreation of an early-ish version of VKontakte (Russian Facebook) but federated and in green instead of blue. It's not really ready yet, and there are lots of important features missing, but I do use it daily for my primary fediverse account. I, too, am sick of all the existing social media companies trying their damnest to cater to the entertainment use case no one ever asked for. https://github.com/grishka/Smithereen https://github.com/grishka/Smithereen
wallmountedtv 4y ago
My family has taken up Snapchat for its place. You got stories and family group chats where people send images that expire in 24 hours. No ads between posts, no "you might like" between posts, no "smart feeds" that ruin the order of posts. Works pretty well overall.
- isametry 4y ago
  As long as you stay in the left part of the app, where your chats and your people live. But then there’s the right section of Snapchat — “Discover” and “Spotlight”. We DON’T GO to the right half of Snapchat, because it’s just complete and utter garbage.
Liskni_si 4y ago
It still is though, isn't it? At least in my social circles. Where did your friends go, and why my friends haven't?

Thorentis 4y ago

I think people in the target demographics actually stopped caring about those around them to this level. Sad, but I think true.

generated 4y ago

I would pay a token amount to only show my friends' updates, all my friends updates, in reverse chronological order.

MagnumOpus 4y ago
Use the F.B.Purity browser extension.
likeabbas 4y ago
BeReal is pretty nice for this tbh. Snapchat Stories used to be nice but IG killed that and then Snapchat had to find other niches
wkat4242 4y ago
Yeah exactly, like Facebook used to do before this algorithmic feed was a thing. It was actually quite good back then. Now it's unusable and I left it long ago.

arkitaip 4y ago

Tons of people use Whatsapp, Imo and other chat to keep in touch with friends and families without the nonsense of social media.

johannes1234321 4y ago
Yes, chronological timeline and push! And that only¹ for people in the group. ¹) Yes, yes, Facebook/Meta hassome access and security issues might exist etc., but way different from public-by-default Facebook
ffssffss 4y ago
It's more about connections to acquaintances and mutual friends... maybe you just had to be there in ~2009 but there's really nothing like it today. For better or worse.

wussboy 4y ago

> people that you know in real life There's still, you know, real life. I recommend it.

bobbygoodlatte 4y ago

Yep. A very sad truth. It would be quite a challenge to re-create what FB circa 2006-2010 or so was like. Before influencers and engagement farming. Before it became "social media" and was just a "social utility" The problem is that even if you re-built that product, it would quickly get overrun by engagement optimizers. If the product is open, they'll rush in. Group chat apps somewhat fill this product void, but not completely. There was something magical about a social network being somewhat open & organic that group chats can't capture

zeroonetwothree 4y ago
It was already starting to go downhill in mid-2006 (when it became available to anyone). The golden age was 2004-2006. I remember after it opened to the public most college students already decided it wasn't that cool anymore.
jacquesm 4y ago
Just limit the number of people that a person can follow.
TulliusCicero 4y ago
> The problem is that even if you re-built that product, it would quickly get overrun by engagement optimizers. If the product is open, they'll rush in. We need the Craigslist of friends and family social networks. A company that is just aggressively disinterested in bloat or hyper engagement. Something where "re-sharing" doesn't exist and links are deemphasized in the UX, so it's more focused on your content (hopefully you talking about your own life, thoughts, etc.). Especially text content, with photos/videos present, but a bit deemphasized. Absolutely no business or "influencer" pages, of course.
- vxNsr 4y ago
  There is an app like that. It’s called mewe, when Facebook was being especially egregious in some privacy overreach a bunch of people I know checked it out, but we were so burned from all the other social networks that we weren’t willing to use it like we had used to use Facebook. I think that time has just passed.

frankthedog 4y ago

The group chat is the new social network. Chronological, you know who’s in there, photo sharing, reactions, reply’s. It has everything me and my close friends need.

tzs 4y ago
How does that handle overlapping friend groups? Each person in my friend group has their own friend group, and their friend groups often include people who I am not friends with. It would seem that we'd need multiple group chats to make it work reasonably. Is that what you do? If we wanted it done with only one group chat it would seem it would have to include the union of all the friend groups of people who are in the chat, which would result in there being for most people in the chat a bunch of people they don't know also in the chat. We'd probably then want some kind of filtering. I'd probably only want to see posts that are from my friends, and maybe posts that my friends have reacted or replied to. ...and then we are essentially back to a Facebook-like or Twitter-like thing except maybe with better filtering.
- lolinder 4y ago
  I question the value of trying to combine multiple friend groups into one group chat. They may have overlapping friends in them, but the groups are distinct and have their own character and collective identity, and I present myself slightly differently to each group. What do I stand to gain by combining my interactions with these different groups into one "social network"?
  - noisenotsignal 4y ago
    If you are in multiple group chats and have something to say (e.g. a life update), do you post in each individually? Or do you pick and choose which groups get the update? If your groups overlap, now some people get the same update twice - are they supposed to react in both? Group chats are intimate by design and don’t seem like a good fit for “broadcast” style updates like “I bought a house”, “moved to CA”, etc. That’s the value in the Facebook feed of old. Something like that also helps you stay connected with more distant friends/acquaintances, people you might not talk to daily but you would still be happy to see how they are doing in life.

baby 4y ago

I find it annoying as well. I don’t check my fb anymore because of all the unrelated content. I just want to see how my friends are doing.

grishka 4y ago

I'm building a fediverse project that aims to fill this exact niche. It's basically a recreation of an early-ish version of VKontakte (Russian Facebook) but federated and in green instead of blue. It's not really ready yet, and there are lots of important features missing, but I do use it daily for my primary fediverse account. I, too, am sick of all the existing social media companies trying their damnest to cater to the entertainment use case no one ever asked for. https://github.com/grishka/Smithereen https://github.com/grishka/Smithereen

wallmountedtv 4y ago

My family has taken up Snapchat for its place. You got stories and family group chats where people send images that expire in 24 hours. No ads between posts, no "you might like" between posts, no "smart feeds" that ruin the order of posts. Works pretty well overall.

isametry 4y ago
As long as you stay in the left part of the app, where your chats and your people live. But then there’s the right section of Snapchat — “Discover” and “Spotlight”. We DON’T GO to the right half of Snapchat, because it’s just complete and utter garbage.

Liskni_si 4y ago

It still is though, isn't it? At least in my social circles. Where did your friends go, and why my friends haven't?