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Hey here's a novel idea Have social media websites be reverse chronological posts by friends/pages you follow instead of what AI thinks you're interested in (a

Hey here's a novel idea Have social media websites be reverse chronological posts by friends/pages you follow instead of what AI thinks you're interested in (and yet somehow not explicitly following, yet you get it in your feed anyway)

Groxx 2y ago
it'll never work. what's next? federation? insanity. impossibility.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
darth_avocado 2y ago
But think about the poor shareholders
wincy 2y ago
I’ve developed this tic where anytime I’m on Facebook I aggressively block all the non sponsored suggested content in my timeline. I’ve blocked literally thousands of pages at this point. So the recommendations have gotten really weird, last week it thought maybe I was gay, then I started recommending Chinese state sponsored pages, now it’s recommending all 50 National Geographic pages. It’s always pages over a million “likes” whatever that means. I'm curious what’ll happen if I manage to block all of them. Honestly probably something lame where the recommendations just get weirder and weirder (which I guess is happening now)
- koutetsu 2y ago
  What a coincidence! I have done the exact same thing but on Instagram instead of Facebook and have had similar results to yours. Since both belong to Meta, we can safely assume that they use the same or very similar backends to serve ads. I think it would be interesting to do a large scale experiment to see what can happen.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    I've been doing this for a couple years. My feed is better, but they still have plenty of garbage I'm not interested in. I make it a point to scroll until I have blocked two of these - that is my signal that it is time to read. Hopefully if more of us start that rule of two eventually it will be populate enough that they notice and add a mode for those like to better see our friends thus keeping us a little longer (I doubt it, but it would be nice).
- Symbiote 2y ago
  Do you get fewer junk posts in the feed, or are they just different?
  - wincy 2y ago
    They're just different, it seems. Seems like sometimes it shows my friends posts with 2 or 3 things in between, but now it's started recommending sports, it's like it switches topics every few days, sports, then maybe I'm gay, then maybe I'm African, it's just all over the place. Note I don't do this with sponsored, only with the junk that I didn't voluntarily follow in my feed. The stuff is definitely getting weirder and less promoted, like random pages about container houses and there's like apparently 50 of them, all with bad AI art, and tons of cooking stuff. I know people like to hate on X but the feed on there is hugely more interesting, topical, and relevant to my interests compared to what's getting interjected into my Facebook feed.
- parpfish 2y ago
  i have a burner fb account that i use to follow a local lost-pets group and check hours for restaurants that refuse to have normal webpages. this account has no friends and just the one group membership so my feed if 100% platform-promoted swill. and it is bad. the current fad is for there to be accounts that repost screenshots of successfull AITA reddit posts to engagement farm. the sad part is that it works. they get a ton of comments and likes
hapticmonkey 2y ago
You can access those simpler chronological feeds in Facebook under More > Feeds. They still insert sponsored posts in that feed, but you can block them with browser extensions. The annoying part is that if you load the feed url from a bookmark, at least on mobile, it reloads to the home page anyway. So you need to navigate to it manually each time. Never used to be this way. I guess they’ll remove the “feeds” feature soon enough anyway.
- Symbiote 2y ago
  That's wonderful! Thanks! On mobile the URL is just facebook.com so there's nothing to bookmark for me. It's still useful though.
vasco 2y ago
They want more engagement. It's like if you build a typewriter and give it to a few humans, they'll write on it a few times a week maybe, not that much. Sometimes a supermarket list or a letter to a friend. This is what I'd call "quality engagement". There's a person doing a valuable activity for themselves, where time using the thing isn't relevant. Then you give the same typewriter to a monkey and every time the monkey finishes a page he gets a banana. He'll stay there all day every day. Lots of engagement and just gibberish on every page. Advertisers are buying monkey engagement. And platforms don't care so right now all the typewriters are made for a monkey hand to type all day every day, and you can no longer write your normal letters without feeling annoyed at why it got better for the monkey instead of leaving it alone for you.
- alex1138 2y ago
  Yeah, but replace "they" with "Zuckerberg" and "platforms" with "Facebook"
  - _Algernon_ 2y ago
    It applies to much more than facebook though. For example, Tiktok, Youtube, Reddit, Instagram. Not sure why you want to single out Facebook.
    - alex1138 2y ago
      Because Zuckerberg has a generally weasely reputation and also I don't see the other platforms being nearly as scummy as Facebook has been (Instagram as you probably know is also owned by Facebook and people are similarly tired of the constant spam)
      - _Algernon_ 2y ago
        Focusing on one particular company distracts from the fact that this is a result of systemic incentives. It is the incentives that need to change, not any particular company. Facebook / Instagram is crap, but so is Tiktok, Youtube, Reddit, etc. The fundamental problem is the business model where money is parasitised from people's attention. You want change? Make these companies responsible for the negative externalities they impose on society, just like companies that pollute the commons are held responsible. We don't need another Tiktok ban; we need industry wide regulation. Shortsighted focus on single companies is simply a distraction from this fact, which only benefits these companies and allows most of them to continue as before.
_Algernon_ 2y ago
But how will that create value for shareholders?
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  The numbers are going up! What numbers? THE NUMBERS!
nradov 2y ago
Most users don't want reverse chronological feeds. They say they do but they really don't, and fail to appreciate how that would actually work. First, that would incentivize posting more low-value crap just to stay on the top of everyone else's feed. Second, if you don't log on for a while you're likely to miss some major life events (birth, death, marriage, divorce, move, new job) that people most want to see.
- mrweasel 2y ago
  > They say they do but they really don't, Probably depends on your usage pattern. I think most would prefer it, but "engagement" measurements will make it seem like they hate it, because they spend less time on the page. If companies like Facebook actually wanted to know, they'd make the setting "sticky" rather than constantly reset to algorithmic, then measure over 3 - 12 months how many switches to either one and stays there. The fact that you can set your feed to permanently be chronological tells me that Facebook REALLY doesn't want you do use this feature. "Power users" may prefer the algorithm, due to the volume of posts they'd see, while many casual users prefer reverse chronological and then just check in every other week. Seriously the last year I was on Facebook, that was my usage. Block everything not posted directly by a "friend", sort by date, read the five posts from the past two week and logoff. Took me just a few minutes a week to catch up. I just don't think that usage aligns with Facebooks business model.
  - nradov 2y ago
    Nah. It's mostly just the HN bubble that claims to want a chronological feed. The casual users are actually the ones who most prefer the algorithm so that they see posts about major life events at the top even when they haven't logged in for a while.
    - alex1138 2y ago
      In practice though that's not how it works People regularly miss posts
- 65 2y ago
toddmorey 2y ago
This is what makes bluesky so refreshing
- __loam 2y ago
  It's so nice over there.
fullshark 2y ago
Sounds like a good way to lose 50% of your revenue
BeFlatXIII 2y ago
Reverse chronological means the feeds get flooded by high-velocity posters and low-volume posters are buried.
- RobKohr 2y ago
  Well, you make it only the posters you follow, and then go through your posters and only show the most recent unread one from each of them before cycling back around.
- fzzzy 2y ago
  This is solveable. For every high frequency poster, show them in the feed at the time of their oldest of a batch of posts in duration X. Reveal all these posts with ui at that point in the timeline. Tune duration X.
r00fus 2y ago
Just move to Bluesky or Mastodon.
- alex1138 2y ago
  Facebook works because of network effects of people you know in real life For the vast majority of people, leaving is not an option, and no, the "you always have a choice" line is simply not correct

Groxx 2y ago

it'll never work. what's next? federation? insanity. impossibility.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

darth_avocado 2y ago

But think about the poor shareholders

wincy 2y ago

I’ve developed this tic where anytime I’m on Facebook I aggressively block all the non sponsored suggested content in my timeline. I’ve blocked literally thousands of pages at this point. So the recommendations have gotten really weird, last week it thought maybe I was gay, then I started recommending Chinese state sponsored pages, now it’s recommending all 50 National Geographic pages. It’s always pages over a million “likes” whatever that means. I'm curious what’ll happen if I manage to block all of them. Honestly probably something lame where the recommendations just get weirder and weirder (which I guess is happening now)

koutetsu 2y ago
What a coincidence! I have done the exact same thing but on Instagram instead of Facebook and have had similar results to yours. Since both belong to Meta, we can safely assume that they use the same or very similar backends to serve ads. I think it would be interesting to do a large scale experiment to see what can happen.
- bluGill 2y ago
  I've been doing this for a couple years. My feed is better, but they still have plenty of garbage I'm not interested in. I make it a point to scroll until I have blocked two of these - that is my signal that it is time to read. Hopefully if more of us start that rule of two eventually it will be populate enough that they notice and add a mode for those like to better see our friends thus keeping us a little longer (I doubt it, but it would be nice).
Symbiote 2y ago
Do you get fewer junk posts in the feed, or are they just different?
- wincy 2y ago
  They're just different, it seems. Seems like sometimes it shows my friends posts with 2 or 3 things in between, but now it's started recommending sports, it's like it switches topics every few days, sports, then maybe I'm gay, then maybe I'm African, it's just all over the place. Note I don't do this with sponsored, only with the junk that I didn't voluntarily follow in my feed. The stuff is definitely getting weirder and less promoted, like random pages about container houses and there's like apparently 50 of them, all with bad AI art, and tons of cooking stuff. I know people like to hate on X but the feed on there is hugely more interesting, topical, and relevant to my interests compared to what's getting interjected into my Facebook feed.
parpfish 2y ago
i have a burner fb account that i use to follow a local lost-pets group and check hours for restaurants that refuse to have normal webpages. this account has no friends and just the one group membership so my feed if 100% platform-promoted swill. and it is bad. the current fad is for there to be accounts that repost screenshots of successfull AITA reddit posts to engagement farm. the sad part is that it works. they get a ton of comments and likes

hapticmonkey 2y ago

You can access those simpler chronological feeds in Facebook under More > Feeds. They still insert sponsored posts in that feed, but you can block them with browser extensions. The annoying part is that if you load the feed url from a bookmark, at least on mobile, it reloads to the home page anyway. So you need to navigate to it manually each time. Never used to be this way. I guess they’ll remove the “feeds” feature soon enough anyway.

Symbiote 2y ago
That's wonderful! Thanks! On mobile the URL is just facebook.com so there's nothing to bookmark for me. It's still useful though.

vasco 2y ago

They want more engagement. It's like if you build a typewriter and give it to a few humans, they'll write on it a few times a week maybe, not that much. Sometimes a supermarket list or a letter to a friend. This is what I'd call "quality engagement". There's a person doing a valuable activity for themselves, where time using the thing isn't relevant. Then you give the same typewriter to a monkey and every time the monkey finishes a page he gets a banana. He'll stay there all day every day. Lots of engagement and just gibberish on every page. Advertisers are buying monkey engagement. And platforms don't care so right now all the typewriters are made for a monkey hand to type all day every day, and you can no longer write your normal letters without feeling annoyed at why it got better for the monkey instead of leaving it alone for you.

alex1138 2y ago
Yeah, but replace "they" with "Zuckerberg" and "platforms" with "Facebook"
- _Algernon_ 2y ago
  It applies to much more than facebook though. For example, Tiktok, Youtube, Reddit, Instagram. Not sure why you want to single out Facebook.
  - alex1138 2y ago
    Because Zuckerberg has a generally weasely reputation and also I don't see the other platforms being nearly as scummy as Facebook has been (Instagram as you probably know is also owned by Facebook and people are similarly tired of the constant spam)
    - _Algernon_ 2y ago
      Focusing on one particular company distracts from the fact that this is a result of systemic incentives. It is the incentives that need to change, not any particular company. Facebook / Instagram is crap, but so is Tiktok, Youtube, Reddit, etc. The fundamental problem is the business model where money is parasitised from people's attention. You want change? Make these companies responsible for the negative externalities they impose on society, just like companies that pollute the commons are held responsible. We don't need another Tiktok ban; we need industry wide regulation. Shortsighted focus on single companies is simply a distraction from this fact, which only benefits these companies and allows most of them to continue as before.

_Algernon_ 2y ago

But how will that create value for shareholders?

InsideOutSanta 2y ago
The numbers are going up! What numbers? THE NUMBERS!

nradov 2y ago

Most users don't want reverse chronological feeds. They say they do but they really don't, and fail to appreciate how that would actually work. First, that would incentivize posting more low-value crap just to stay on the top of everyone else's feed. Second, if you don't log on for a while you're likely to miss some major life events (birth, death, marriage, divorce, move, new job) that people most want to see.

mrweasel 2y ago
> They say they do but they really don't, Probably depends on your usage pattern. I think most would prefer it, but "engagement" measurements will make it seem like they hate it, because they spend less time on the page. If companies like Facebook actually wanted to know, they'd make the setting "sticky" rather than constantly reset to algorithmic, then measure over 3 - 12 months how many switches to either one and stays there. The fact that you can set your feed to permanently be chronological tells me that Facebook REALLY doesn't want you do use this feature. "Power users" may prefer the algorithm, due to the volume of posts they'd see, while many casual users prefer reverse chronological and then just check in every other week. Seriously the last year I was on Facebook, that was my usage. Block everything not posted directly by a "friend", sort by date, read the five posts from the past two week and logoff. Took me just a few minutes a week to catch up. I just don't think that usage aligns with Facebooks business model.
- nradov 2y ago
  Nah. It's mostly just the HN bubble that claims to want a chronological feed. The casual users are actually the ones who most prefer the algorithm so that they see posts about major life events at the top even when they haven't logged in for a while.
  - alex1138 2y ago
    In practice though that's not how it works People regularly miss posts
65 2y ago

toddmorey 2y ago

This is what makes bluesky so refreshing

__loam 2y ago
It's so nice over there.

fullshark 2y ago

Sounds like a good way to lose 50% of your revenue

BeFlatXIII 2y ago

Reverse chronological means the feeds get flooded by high-velocity posters and low-volume posters are buried.

RobKohr 2y ago
Well, you make it only the posters you follow, and then go through your posters and only show the most recent unread one from each of them before cycling back around.
fzzzy 2y ago
This is solveable. For every high frequency poster, show them in the feed at the time of their oldest of a batch of posts in duration X. Reveal all these posts with ui at that point in the timeline. Tune duration X.

r00fus 2y ago

Just move to Bluesky or Mastodon.

alex1138 2y ago
Facebook works because of network effects of people you know in real life For the vast majority of people, leaving is not an option, and no, the "you always have a choice" line is simply not correct