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From the article: "The company, Zuckerberg said, has lately been involved in “the general idea of entertainment and learning about the world and discovering wh

From the article: "The company, Zuckerberg said, has lately been involved in “the general idea of entertainment and learning about the world and discovering what’s going on.” This under-recognized shift away from interpersonal communication has been measured by the company itself. During the defense’s opening statement, Meta displayed a chart showing that the “percent of time spent viewing content posted by ‘friends’ ” has declined in the past two years, from twenty-two per cent to seventeen per cent on Facebook, and from eleven per cent to seven per cent on Instagram." So they algorithmically force various other posts into your feed, and then observe that people are spending more time looking at that crap and less time actually connecting with real people and friends. Colour me unsurprised.

vseplet 2y ago
Yes, they themselves are making more and more efforts to isolate each individual user. Facebook or VK - but the essence is the same
d13z 2y ago
Very true and I think is part of their business model. A more lonely/isolated user is more likely to buy stuff to soothe themselves thus clicking in the advertisements they show.
- troupo 2y ago
  Not just theirs. The recent Switch 2 ad with Paul Rudd replaced friends coming to join him with tiny images on screen, leaving him utterly alone. Or the Apple "Intelligence" ads that insist on never having any human-to-human communication (let an AI send that letter to mom) etc.
CharlieDigital 2y ago
Yes, I read that quote in befuddlement. The only things I _want_ to see are my family and friends, but Zuck keeps shoving softcore porn into my feed.
- mnky9800n 2y ago
  you could just delete your accounts. i find that my family and friends still seek out connection and interactions with me, as i do them, even without some sort of computational facilitator like instagram.
  - CharlieDigital 2y ago
    Easy Asian countries still appear to be heavy FB users even among Millennials. Most of my family is there so it is how I keep tabs on them.
    - grugagag 2y ago
      Don’t be surprised if your family gets radicalized with some idea they were against just a generation ago. Facebook and social media is so many bad things at the same time: propaganda, surveilance, consumerism, deception, addiction, and complete isolation from one another. I find social media responsible for a lot of modern ills in our society.
    - tboyd47 2y ago
      Net neutrality is not a thing there and telcos usually offer free GBs of FB/TikTok access.
- chrisco255 2y ago
  IG has slowly become a gateway to OF hasn't it?
  - martin_a 2y ago
    My recommendations are _full_ of girls with very few clothes on doing sports, showcasing outfits and whatnot. IG is just broken at this point.
    - netsharc 2y ago
      But is it not observing what grabs your attention, and then serving you more of it? ;-) I get what you're getting too, also wall-of-texts multi-image posts, often content reposted from reddit, I guess the algorithm thinks "Oh, user is engaged for many seconds with all the images on posts like this, gotta serve them more of them!". I've programmed Tasker to kill Instagram after a minute of me opening it and I've made another Tasker script that asks me to input a 9-digit random number, makes me wait between 5-45 seconds and then allows me 10 minutes of the app before making me do the whole process again.
iamcalledrob 2y ago
I'd bet that this is ultimately about people's preferences for consuming content, unfortunately. People will say they only want content from friends, just as they say they want to eat healthily. But the desire and the reality end up looking very different. People at large will spend time in whatever surfaces are the most engaging (~addictive), and if a platform like Facebook removed those "other posts", it's likely that people would just spend time on another platform instead -- TikTok, Reddit, YouTube Shorts, etc... It's like if the #1 grocery chain removed all the addictive stuff. No junk food, no soda, no alcohol. In the short term, people might consume less bad stuff. But in the long run, the #2 chain would take over, and we'd be back where we started. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it's a very tricky problem to tackle at scale.
- idle_zealot 2y ago
  > It's like if the #1 grocery chain removed all the addictive stuff. No junk food, no soda, no alcohol. In the short term, people might consume less bad stuff. But in the long run, the #2 chain would take over, and we'd be back where we started. What you are observing is a case where market signals result in obviously undesirable outcomes. The problem cannot be solved from within the market, the market's signaling needs a tweak. In the case of this example, a tweak to bring purchasing behavior inline with what people want to be buying in the long term, what they know is good for them. This could be achieved by mandating some form of friction in buying unhealthy food. Banning outright tends to go poorly, but friction has seen great success, like with smoking. I'm not sure exactly what this looks like for social media, or if it's even a necessary form of action (would banning surveillance-based advertising kill feed-driven platforms as a side effect?) but as you say, the market will not resolve this even if an industry leader tries to do the right thing.
- rightbyte 2y ago
  There is a good reason I don't stock my freezer with microwave pizza.
- GuB-42 2y ago
  > People will say they only want content from friends I actually don't want content from friends, at least not in the way Facebook presented it before becoming another TikTok. Facebook showed me the worst of my friends: polarizing political opinions, viral marketing, etc... These come from really nice people in real life, but it looks like Facebook is trying its best to make me hate my friends, it almost succeeded at one point. Thankfully, we met some time later, didn't talk about all the crap he posted on Facebook, it and was all fine. I'd rather hate on public personalities and other "influencers", at least, no friendship is harmed doing that. The only thing I miss about Facebook is the "event" part. If you want to invite some friends for a party, you could just create an event and because almost everyone was on Facebook, it made knowing who came and who didn't, who brings what, etc...

vseplet 2y ago

Yes, they themselves are making more and more efforts to isolate each individual user. Facebook or VK - but the essence is the same

d13z 2y ago

Very true and I think is part of their business model. A more lonely/isolated user is more likely to buy stuff to soothe themselves thus clicking in the advertisements they show.

troupo 2y ago
Not just theirs. The recent Switch 2 ad with Paul Rudd replaced friends coming to join him with tiny images on screen, leaving him utterly alone. Or the Apple "Intelligence" ads that insist on never having any human-to-human communication (let an AI send that letter to mom) etc.

CharlieDigital 2y ago

Yes, I read that quote in befuddlement. The only things I _want_ to see are my family and friends, but Zuck keeps shoving softcore porn into my feed.

mnky9800n 2y ago
you could just delete your accounts. i find that my family and friends still seek out connection and interactions with me, as i do them, even without some sort of computational facilitator like instagram.
- CharlieDigital 2y ago
  Easy Asian countries still appear to be heavy FB users even among Millennials. Most of my family is there so it is how I keep tabs on them.
  - grugagag 2y ago
    Don’t be surprised if your family gets radicalized with some idea they were against just a generation ago. Facebook and social media is so many bad things at the same time: propaganda, surveilance, consumerism, deception, addiction, and complete isolation from one another. I find social media responsible for a lot of modern ills in our society.
  - tboyd47 2y ago
    Net neutrality is not a thing there and telcos usually offer free GBs of FB/TikTok access.
chrisco255 2y ago
IG has slowly become a gateway to OF hasn't it?
- martin_a 2y ago
  My recommendations are _full_ of girls with very few clothes on doing sports, showcasing outfits and whatnot. IG is just broken at this point.
  - netsharc 2y ago
    But is it not observing what grabs your attention, and then serving you more of it? ;-) I get what you're getting too, also wall-of-texts multi-image posts, often content reposted from reddit, I guess the algorithm thinks "Oh, user is engaged for many seconds with all the images on posts like this, gotta serve them more of them!". I've programmed Tasker to kill Instagram after a minute of me opening it and I've made another Tasker script that asks me to input a 9-digit random number, makes me wait between 5-45 seconds and then allows me 10 minutes of the app before making me do the whole process again.

iamcalledrob 2y ago

I'd bet that this is ultimately about people's preferences for consuming content, unfortunately. People will say they only want content from friends, just as they say they want to eat healthily. But the desire and the reality end up looking very different. People at large will spend time in whatever surfaces are the most engaging (~addictive), and if a platform like Facebook removed those "other posts", it's likely that people would just spend time on another platform instead -- TikTok, Reddit, YouTube Shorts, etc... It's like if the #1 grocery chain removed all the addictive stuff. No junk food, no soda, no alcohol. In the short term, people might consume less bad stuff. But in the long run, the #2 chain would take over, and we'd be back where we started. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it's a very tricky problem to tackle at scale.

idle_zealot 2y ago
> It's like if the #1 grocery chain removed all the addictive stuff. No junk food, no soda, no alcohol. In the short term, people might consume less bad stuff. But in the long run, the #2 chain would take over, and we'd be back where we started. What you are observing is a case where market signals result in obviously undesirable outcomes. The problem cannot be solved from within the market, the market's signaling needs a tweak. In the case of this example, a tweak to bring purchasing behavior inline with what people want to be buying in the long term, what they know is good for them. This could be achieved by mandating some form of friction in buying unhealthy food. Banning outright tends to go poorly, but friction has seen great success, like with smoking. I'm not sure exactly what this looks like for social media, or if it's even a necessary form of action (would banning surveillance-based advertising kill feed-driven platforms as a side effect?) but as you say, the market will not resolve this even if an industry leader tries to do the right thing.
rightbyte 2y ago
There is a good reason I don't stock my freezer with microwave pizza.
GuB-42 2y ago
> People will say they only want content from friends I actually don't want content from friends, at least not in the way Facebook presented it before becoming another TikTok. Facebook showed me the worst of my friends: polarizing political opinions, viral marketing, etc... These come from really nice people in real life, but it looks like Facebook is trying its best to make me hate my friends, it almost succeeded at one point. Thankfully, we met some time later, didn't talk about all the crap he posted on Facebook, it and was all fine. I'd rather hate on public personalities and other "influencers", at least, no friendship is harmed doing that. The only thing I miss about Facebook is the "event" part. If you want to invite some friends for a party, you could just create an event and because almost everyone was on Facebook, it made knowing who came and who didn't, who brings what, etc...