50 ms·

It's... really not. Despite what some people seem to think, most of the 3 billion+ Facebook users are normal people who aren't just posting nonsense or memes.

• solardev 2y ago
  Their algorithm sure does a good job at filtering those normal people out...
  • squigz 2y ago
    Maybe that says more about you and how you engage with it than it does the platform though.
    • solardev 2y ago
      Does it? I deleted my Facebook back in 2016 or so when it got so bad. Before that, I used extensions to make it show posts from friends in chronological order instead of whatever it was optimizing for by default (engagement/controversy, I think?) It's just such a toxic, manipulated environment... I don't use social media anymore, just text some friends, and am much happier.
      • doublepg23 2y ago
        You don’t consider HN social media?
        • solardev 2y ago
          I guess it's a gray area? It's more like a forum to me, of the pre-Facebook sort, more like Slashdot than reddit. And there's extremely strong moderation here that does the opposite of Facebook: It optimizes against controversy and vitriol rather than encouraging it. We end up with a bunch of nerds mostly talking shop and sometimes complaining about the job market, but that's still far less ragebaitey than most social media.
          • dotancohen 2y ago
            > And there's extremely strong moderation here that does the opposite of Facebook: It optimizes against controversy and vitriol rather than encouraging it. Well, that and hot grits you insensitive clod.
            • solardev 2y ago
              Oh god, now I feel old :P
          • deleted 2y ago
            [deleted]
          • randomdata 2y ago
            > It optimizes against controversy and vitriol rather than encouraging it [...] a bunch of nerds mostly talking shop Something doesn't add up here. Nerds talking shop and controversy and vitriol about the their technical preferences is the same thing. Perhaps what you're saying is that controversy and vitriol is only apparent when you're an "innocent bystander" who doesn't have a passion for the subject? Which HN avoids by usually remaining focused on a fairly narrow set of subjects, to a user base generally passionate towards those subjects, so you don't notice? That is an astute observation, if that is what you're trying to say. Indeed, if you showed your non-technical grandmother HN, she would no doubt see it the way Facebook was talked about earlier.
            • solardev 2y ago
              OK, but I think there's a pretty big difference between "Next.js is too bloated, you should use HTMX" and "so and so group of people are all _____ and they should all be ________, and oh, your mom sucks". I don't think – I hope, at least – no one is going to start a shooting war over their framework of choice. You can't say the same about much of the content circulating around social media. (Edit: You added more to your post after I replied. To your point of "Which HN avoids by usually remaining focused on a fairly narrow set of subjects", that's not just my observation, that's the actual guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We self-select into a narrow slice of nerdtalk or we end up getting downvoted or banned from the site. To me that is the big difference between an interest-based forum that generally stays a functional monoculture vs a general social media site that brings diverse strangers together into shouting wars about whatever the controversy du jour is.)
    • exe34 2y ago
      it's true, I only have to reply to one stupid post and I'm flooded by similar nonsense. now I've taken to closing it if it shows me anything other than a nice house or a cat. i definitely see less dumb.
    • barbazoo 2y ago
      Even if you don't engage with the content that gets recommended/shown in your timeline gets weird real quick. I used to have an account for marketplace and our local neighborhood group and that's my experience.
  • marcosdumay 2y ago
    Yes, it does. But that doesn't invalidate the GP.
    • solardev 2y ago
      It just makes it less likely that these normal people will be able to see the other normal posts from other normal people. Early Facebook's Wall was like that, mostly just friends chatting with each other about cats and babies, but then the company purposely started to optimize the timeline for controversy instead and it all went downhill. It's not that there aren't normal people on there, it's that organic feel-good posts have a harder time gaining traction vs the sea of flamebait and sponsored ads and astroturfed spam. The signal to noise ratio was very, very low by the time I left. I don't know how it is these days...
      • SoftTalker 2y ago
        I mean technically they were optimizing for "engagement" but it turns out that things that get strong reactions from people tend to be controversy and rage-bait.
• romwell 2y ago
  >It's... really not. Despite what some people seem to think, most of the 3 billion+ Facebook users are normal people who aren't just posting nonsense or memes. Most users also don't post much. Most Facebook posts (as opposed to users) are nonsense and memes.
• glenstein 2y ago
  Right, the training isn't just reproducing the content, it's training on it to derive underlying themes for language and communication. And it can then effectively use those capabilities in dynamic ways.