I noticed last year that FB did some change to their recommendations engine, that they’ll show posts by random people based things you’ve searched. A friend was diagnosed with cancer last year, I searched extensively, and now I’m exclusively getting posts from random people with cancer on my feed.
No, it used to be a shuffled timeline of the posts and likes your connections/friends have made but I guess when half your platform are bots, you don’t want to store that metadata anymore.
Back to 2015, I stopped posting on Facebook when I noticed that it’s no longer about connecting with my friends, but a never ending stream of boring posts from groups and people that I don’t know or care to follow.
All my “social” life just moved to direct communication in WhatsApp (meta owned as well)
2015 for me too. I wonder if there was some early day over juicing of the attention mechanism that put people off in that year, before they tuned it to reduce churn…
To keep people engaged, social media platforms have shifted from showing you content from people you know to prioritizing viral content. The algorithms know viral content offers an endless stream of entertainment that keeps people scrolling longer.
Like the writer I'm also a 'boomer' still keeping connected to an older friend group using Facebook and Instagram. For Facebook, I use the plugin "FB Purity" to filter out the generated cr*p posts and force chronological order. It's shocking too see how few posts are left, by agressive algorithm filtering and FB then deciding that "You're all caught up", refusing to show more posts. So my FB time is about 20 seconds every day...
Not sure if I see a bad thing in this. I'd like too know what old friends are currently up to and checking their social media has been a way to do so during the golden age of facebook.
Lately I feel more value in connecting with them personally, talking and letting them now, that I am still interested in what's going on for them.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. At the very least, it should be used occasionally to post things as a kind of "public memory," not to expose your entire life just for likes and exhibitionism.
I wonder what would happen if: if I post 2 pieces of content, my friend would have to comment on the first one to see the next one.
I suppose the app will then mostly be full of throwaway comments in the form of "Cool" or "Wow". But maybe add a modifier that if the poster doesn't have any meaningful reply to a commenter's (let's name him Elon) comment, then the poster's next content will not be shared with Elon next time.
Social media mostly polarise people (both women and men, in different ways) and generally speaking what you post will be used against you at some point.
So yeah, no wonder that social media is dying. People are just catching up to the fact that the best way not to lose is to just not play the game.
I noticed last year that FB did some change to their recommendations engine, that they’ll show posts by random people based things you’ve searched. A friend was diagnosed with cancer last year, I searched extensively, and now I’m exclusively getting posts from random people with cancer on my feed.
Isn't that how it has been?
No, it used to be a shuffled timeline of the posts and likes your connections/friends have made but I guess when half your platform are bots, you don’t want to store that metadata anymore.
Back to 2015, I stopped posting on Facebook when I noticed that it’s no longer about connecting with my friends, but a never ending stream of boring posts from groups and people that I don’t know or care to follow.
All my “social” life just moved to direct communication in WhatsApp (meta owned as well)
2015 for me too. I wonder if there was some early day over juicing of the attention mechanism that put people off in that year, before they tuned it to reduce churn…
To keep people engaged, social media platforms have shifted from showing you content from people you know to prioritizing viral content. The algorithms know viral content offers an endless stream of entertainment that keeps people scrolling longer.
Like the writer I'm also a 'boomer' still keeping connected to an older friend group using Facebook and Instagram. For Facebook, I use the plugin "FB Purity" to filter out the generated cr*p posts and force chronological order. It's shocking too see how few posts are left, by agressive algorithm filtering and FB then deciding that "You're all caught up", refusing to show more posts. So my FB time is about 20 seconds every day...
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Like every pcmag article, there’s a corporate sponsor
Not sure if I see a bad thing in this. I'd like too know what old friends are currently up to and checking their social media has been a way to do so during the golden age of facebook.
Lately I feel more value in connecting with them personally, talking and letting them now, that I am still interested in what's going on for them.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. At the very least, it should be used occasionally to post things as a kind of "public memory," not to expose your entire life just for likes and exhibitionism.
I wonder what would happen if: if I post 2 pieces of content, my friend would have to comment on the first one to see the next one.
I suppose the app will then mostly be full of throwaway comments in the form of "Cool" or "Wow". But maybe add a modifier that if the poster doesn't have any meaningful reply to a commenter's (let's name him Elon) comment, then the poster's next content will not be shared with Elon next time.
It seems like so much of social media is just individuals shouting into the void.
It's stochastic communication, sometimes other random voices come back from the void.
Social media mostly polarise people (both women and men, in different ways) and generally speaking what you post will be used against you at some point.
So yeah, no wonder that social media is dying. People are just catching up to the fact that the best way not to lose is to just not play the game.