Yes it’s a negative feedback loop created by the very bad product decisions they made to optimize for local maxima of getting more ads revenue. You inject more and more ads followed by more and more suggested content, thereby reducing the in network content. The in network content doesn’t get as much of traction, therefore people stop posting. This in turn forces the feed to have more and more suggestions and a few stale in network posts from days ago. This drives engagement down from people who want to see in network content and they leave. So what is left is people who do engage with suggested content, pushing the product to make decisions to push even more suggested content. All of this continues till eventually fatigue sets in and a sudden rapid drop in engagement kicks in because your global maxima of a quality product was lost long time ago and your product dies.
Crazy idea: FB should stop trying to lure people back from Tiktok with weird features and just lean in to its one remaining strength, which is that among social media sites, it's the most generic and boring and ubiquitous. Being the default place for non-influencers to do quotidian stuff like hearing about school closings, joining the PTA or HOA, coordinating family gatherings, see your nephew's school photos, etc would be a pretty good little business. And they already have all of that functionality built, so they could run significantly leaner, and hence not have to drive their remaining users away with excessive ads.<p>This seems like a good idea to me. But I also think it's about as likely to happen as President Stallman.
Knowing the beast firsthand, there's no trace of doubt in my mind that the convergence to a junk product outcome involved a monotonous increase in ad revenue and likely, engagement metrics.<p>There's a tragic dimension that a system which connected so much of humanity to itself so well would be rendered so toxic as a product and as a community in just a few years.
I almost never log in to Facebook anymore, but the feed was hilariously bad the last time I checked it out. Almost entirely ads for random crap, eyecandy videos, exotic Asian street food videos, etc. Nothing even remotely related to my interests.<p>At least Facebook seems to have figured out that I'm not a Star Wars fan. For years, their algorithm somehow decided that I liked Star Wars and that I wanted my feed to be full of lame ass Star Wars memes. I haven't been even remotely interested in Star Wars since I was a boy, and as an adult I hardly even watch Star Trek or have an interest in any other sci-fi. Perhaps Disnay was paying Facebook to just blast their product at random people.<p>I suspect the even greater amount of suggested content in the FB feed is another symptom of the TikTokification of the internet. Facebook was already kind of doing this, but the feed becoming almost entirely suggested content definitely seems like a response to the fact that the 68th percentile of the public seems to have no problem scrolling through random eye-catching bullshit.
I suspect part of it is that Real People are posting less. Since the feed doesn't have a bottom anymore it makes up the difference with sponsored and suggested junk rather than going empty.
Use this URL[1] to open it in a browser <i>with adblock</i>. It gives your feed in reverse chronological order, with a 90%+ ratio of friends posts. (Just verified)<p>[1] <a href="https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr</a><p>[Update] If you click <i>anything</i> it takes you away from that feed... that's why I have it in my Bookmarks toolbar. If I find myself going "wait.. this feels different"... I look up and see the URL is now the generic one, and I've fallen off the path.<p>Also: I have 141 friends... not sure if that's a high or low number relative to others.. but there's always someone posting. I just read until I've seen it before, twice. (Some people repost other people's stuff)
I absolutely hate the unwanted recommendations and Reels, but I currently still find FB useful for staying in contact with extended family and friends, so I use this "Facebook Hide Recommendations and Reels" browser extension to keep FB useable:<p><a href="https://github.com/mrinc/Facebook-Hide-Recommendations-and-Reels/" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/mrinc/Facebook-Hide-Recommendations-and-R...</a><p>Even with recommendations and Reels disabled, other aspects of FB have also degraded significantly:<p>- Friends don't share original content there as much as they used to, a sign that FB's relevance is dwindling. I suspect people have also grown wary of Facebook's privacy practices like I have.<p>- FB's features lack taste. For example, its knock-off of Bitmoji looks terrible.<p>- Increasing prevalence of scammers. I tried to sell some things on FB Marketplace last week and was contacted by a dozen fake profiles trying to scam me with fake emails from Zelle. I also frequently get friend requests from profiles where scammers created a duplicate of a friend's profile, copying their exact name and pictures.<p>Taken together, my feeling is that facebook.com is (and has been) on a downward spiral toward irrelevance.
The current FB is great for productivity!<p>No need to mourn the former FB. It's gone.<p>I've given up on FB as a social network a long time ago. I unfollowed all my friends and started following things that interest me. Followed the astronomical society so I can be informed when they have a public night. I get ads for everything I need for renovating my house: roof sealing services, AC repair, contractors, new windows, cabinets, countertops, tiles, custom woodworkers, and more! The comments teach you a thing or two too.<p>The other great things on FB are events, the marketplace, and groups. So much useful information out there if you tailor the platform to your needs.
Facebook is a fantastic product, as long as you use it properly and not remotely as Facebook wants you to.<p>- Most important step: <i>Unfollow every single person and page</i><p>- Follow entertaining groups like 'This cat is c h o n k y'<p>- Keep facebook messenger<p>- Use FB events for party planning<p>That's it, and it's easy: you get all the social graph functionality, all the event planning and chat stuff. The feed (if you even visit it, personally I might spend five minutes a week there) is fun and doesn't make you feel disappointed with your elderly family members.
The stickiest feature for me is Facebook groups. I go to Facebook to see what the people who share my interests are up to, where the next group bike ride is, etc. The recommended content (read: auto-playing reels) just distracts from that and literally any other content / media I'd rather be consuming. I'm really bummed that the platform is trending towards being a Tik-tok clone.<p>I remember at some point there were a bunch of Facebook ads about how it was a great platform for groups. What happened to that focus?<p>e.g. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88mIXSdF7nw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88mIXSdF7nw</a>
This is just an extreme form of my problem with both Facebook and Linkedin, both of which have become utterly unusable over the last year.<p>Linkedin is particularly aggressive with the "someone you know liked a comment by someone you don't know on a post by someone else you don't know, from three months ago about an even that has alredy happened...". Utterly irrelevant crap that it is convinced will get me to come back.<p>I actually like the basic idea of social media, I <i>want</i> to know what my friends and family have been up to, or the people I'm professionally connected with, it's a nice way to stay connected to people you might not get to see regularly.<p>The SM companies have all managed to utterly ruin their own products to the point where I don't/won't/can't use them.<p>I would love it if someone could make a site that helped me stay in contact with my wider social circle without trashing it in the deperate pursuit of ad dollars. Sadly I can't see something like that happening and not then being ruined.
Youtube is also turning into garbage. First 10 or so results are relevant vids, then it becomes a mishmash of <i>"people also watched"</i>, <i>"for you"</i>, shorts, and similar suggested vids.<p>EDIT: As for FB. The other day I watched three Studio Ghibli movies on Netflix. The last time I watched anything anime related, was Akira some 30 years ago.<p>Now the feed is being bombarded with anime and manga meme content. I click "hide all" from these random pages, but they just keep popping up.
Another anecdotal data point: I loved Facebook around 2010-2015.<p>I was in university, had lots of "friends" that I had met in person, was a user of the groups, events, everything. It was great to stay in touch with old and new people I knew.<p>As people finished university, they had less time for FB, posted less and so FB probably decided to fill up the blanks they had left with "XY liked this", ads, and "you could like this" posts.<p>As all our lives moved on, FB became worse and worse because we didn't feed it with our own content anymore.<p>At some point I just deleted it and didn't really look back.<p>Now I see the same thing happening with Instagram, where I see less and less content of old friends and more and more reels and "engaging" content.<p>Maybe I'm getting old, but I'd just love to see how my former classmates are doing with their children and families and jobs etc.
In my experience, what happened is that young people eventually stopped posting personal updates (this was a multi-year process), either because the novelty of it declined or because they entered a life phase change (e.g. leaving college) that made social updates less frequent or less shareable.<p>In my friend group, this happened around 2018, about a year after we left college and entered the working world. I'd guess something similar happened with many cohorts.
There might be some other people out there like me with school age kids. I find that my kids schools and the various PAC (parents advisory committee) groups all use Facebook to communicate. So I have to be on there if want info and to be connected with other parents. I hate Facebook but for this purpose it is actually quite useful. Similarly, I am in a neighbourhood group and there is a certain amount of nimby/busybody type posts but it can also be great for knowing what is going on in the neighbourhood. The main page feed is all junk posts/ads but if I stick to these group pages it's useful.
I first created a FB account in 2008. I amassed a huge number of so-called "friends", I posted a lot, I was active, and it was detrimental to my mental health, so I destroyed that account.<p>I crept back on last year or so with a blank slate. My "friends" list now consists of an eclectic mix of 100% people I will never meet in person. It's small and selective, so my actual feed is likewise small and runs out quickly. As a consequence, it's not possible for me to waste much time there. I like it that way.<p>I post very little and don't get too personal or dramatic. I had a good series of photos and blurbs about my home cooking projects for awhile, but it's always been sporadic output from here.
Facebook has a declining user count and a market cap which assumes growth. (Although the stock is down 60% from peak.) So, they've tried to increase revenue per user by adding more ads and promotional content. User count declined further.<p>This is sometimes called "pulling a Myspace".<p>Facebook/Meta is now on metaverse failure #3 (Oculus, Facebook Spaces, Horizon), has lost $10 billion in that space, and investors are not happy. They're not getting out that way. Facebook remains a viable business for now, but not a growth business.
My feeling/understanding: Because of the culture wars and privacy concerns, many regular people who used to be quite active on FB stopped posting things altogether on Facebook. The risk outweighed the benefit. So most people were left with a handful of people in their network who would crank out generally quite uninteresting posts.<p>This combined with FB's agenda to monetize the service... here we are.<p>I now only use FB to check in to a few very local groups (population of 7k) once in a while. The signal-to-noise ratio is really bad, even there.
It's called signal-to-noise ratio and it affects everything these days. We stopped reading newspapers and magazines when it became harder to find articles in-between all the ads. We stop watching broadcast TV when a typical 30 minute show has 18 minutes of commercials. We stop visiting websites when pop-up and flashing ads overwhelm the site.<p>Social media sites are no different. The question is will they wake up before all their users flee.
Sort of not related at all, but I decided to try FB marketplace for selling a couple of extra laptops. And oh-my-gawd, it's even worse than Craigslist. In first 24 hours this pattern with semi obvious fake accounts trying to buy the laptop has repeated already 3 times (and come on FB, I refuse to believe you cannot detect this crap if you actually wanted to, and at minimum WARN the seller that you're likely dealing with oredatory buyer):<p>Me: <lists the laptop at marketplace; pick up only>
Daryl: Is this still available?
Me: It's still available
Daryl: okay good. did you have an idea if what the shipment cost to Scotland?? I want to get it for my Scottish girlfriend. I'm currently in Scotland
Me: No dice. If you want it, come pick it up from Santana Row. I'll sell for cash only.<p>I don't know what's the actual scam here, but all these guys ask (in Spanish too btw) Is it available? If yes, they have some excuse for wanting it NOW, but not being able to pick it up, and then ask me to use a courier etc. Suckers!
What I'm wondering is why an alternative social network has not gained more wide spread adoption, at least in the nerd community(looking at you, HN reader).<p>It seems to me social media is ripe for disruption.
The way I use FB these days is to logon at most once per week or every other week. It gives your friends/groups some time to post. Most people aren't posting on a regular basis and oftentimes the ones who are you don't need to read 90% of their posts.
FB is complete trash and a joke.<p>I have issues seeing older FB comments. The UI doesn't work properly on my safari browser. Fb freezes, images fail to load. It is an extremely frustrating experience on safari on my phone.<p>The platform is dying and it cannot come soon enough.
I really miss having a way to talk to my friends online.<p>It was possible in the early 2000s with multi-network instant messaging clients, and then in the late 2000s to a few years ago with Facebook.<p>And then Facebook destroyed itself (as described in this thread) and now I honestly can't find a frictionless way to get in touch with people.<p>My most common use case was posting "hey I'm going climbing / surfing / caving, anyone want to join"? or "I'm in town X, anyone want to hang out" or "BBQ at mine." Facebook is useless for that now and there isn't a replacement. Hopefully, something with critical mass will rise from the ashes.
What products are poised to pick up if and when FB nosedives?<p>Craigslist is a clear fallback for marketplace (although there was evidently a reason people started using markplace in favor of craigslist).<p>Nextdoor/Reddit are just as much cesspools as FB groups...is there room for an oldster friendly groups replacement that somehow solves the cesspool problem? At least in my area these fill the void of not having local news - but instead it's a local bitchy gossip stream.<p>Social feed is the big one. Obviously insta for photos, if they don't screw it up. Do whatsapp/telegram/signal fill the void otherwise?
I'm going to buck the trend here and say that I'm actually using Facebook more than in the past. I am member of a few groups, which are quite niche, but genuinely interest me. I always browse by Most Recent and by checking every day I know I don't have to browse past posts which are more than a day old. FB does a decent job of notifying me when my friends post, so I can see all of those via notifications.<p>While I do get ads and suggested pages, these don't seem intrusive with the above approach. Maybe its just me?!?!
This period is best understood as a brutal hangover from several years of market subsidized growth. We had cheap Ubers, cheap meal delivery, and free web services all paid for by a speculative bubble which is in the process of popping.<p>Meta can't just admit that they don't have a viable business model or their stocks will truly crash, so they have no choice but to cannibalize their remaining customers, like how phone and cable companies screw the remaining people with landline phone service and traditional cable packages.
Same. This also stems from the fact that no one I know (outside of my Boomer parents) even uses Facebook anymore, so Facebook has next to no "real" data to use like they used to. I've even started noticing this on Instagram, as well. Back in the prime of Facebook there was so much content to use from friends they could fill a feed and even "curate" it, but now I think majority of my friends post AT MOST 1 time a YEAR on Facebook. With the lack of data, they have to just fill it with nonsense to make it look "interesting", but my guess is that it fools very little people.
Facebook has lots of good corners of their products. Marketplace is ok-ish. Events is OK. Even Messenger is an ok sub-app of Facebook.<p>The one app that’s unusably bad is the “feed” (or whatever it’s called these days). I use Facebook almost daily but can’t understand why anyone would use the feed bit. Even back when it was friends’ posts it was bad. Now that it’s half commercial half TikTok rabbit hole why does anyone even use it?
Pretty much same here, and that's why I don't log on as my much anymore. Most of my active social network is primarily on Instagram. However there is an aspect of growing out of social networks, especially when you have kids.<p>The more surprising thing is that Facebook still has a lot of current information on me with out me ever logging on with off_facebook_activity. And of course there were a few HN posts on it.<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/</a>
Open the link below to see your third party data and opt out if you want to.
I noticed I saw way less information about shows in my area, the only thing I used facebook for. I missed nearly two months of shows at my local venues due to relying on facebook before I realized something had changed. Maybe they increased how much you had to pay to advertise or increase reach? No idea!<p>Looks like I'll be writing my own scraper, fun times are here.
It wouldn't be that hard to write a bookmarklet that scrolls through your feed, removes posts from people you don't follow and sorts the rest by time.<p>A good portion of people here on HN would be capable of writing it.<p>That nobody does shows that there is not really a strong preference for this type of experience over the current suggested/ads/friends mix.
Everyone knows FB is dying (including FB). Doesn't mean a dying product can't make money. They'll squeeze it until it bleeds, then do the same with Instagram while they figure out the next big thing.<p>It's a very similar business as malls and amusement parks, you can't just keep doing the same stuff cause people's taste change.
Not really related, but the last time I was on Facebook, its ads were so wrong I actually tried to improve it. It targeted me for endless hip hop ads. I don't like hip hop; nothing I've ever liked on FB had anything to do with hip hop. So, I told it I don't like these ads. Instead of trying to show me things that I might actually be even mildly interested in, it fed ever more hip hop ads to me. It was so aggravating, that I just closed FB out and I don't think I've ever logged in again.
If you use FB on a computer instead of a phone, the FB Purity browser extension will let you block whatever you like. I haven't seen an ad or suggested post in years. I came here because today FB started putting posts from the groups I belong to in my feed, even though I had notifications off for all of them. So I was able to filter them back out by blocking posts containing the full name of each group (you can block by any string), so my feed is back to only posts from my friends.
Deleted Facebook years ago and turns out if you have actual friends who you care about, you'll just send each other life/status updates via direct messages (whatsapp, sadly also owned by Meta).
I noticed this as well and as a result I use Facebook a whole lot less. one big problem that I've encountered is that it's suggesting borderline NSFW content from the plague of OnlyFans "creators" that have flooded onto literally every social media platform out there.<p>I've tried the "suggest less" and liking literally everything else I can but I continue to get a flood of borderline content. You click "Like" on one reel by accident and IG thinks that's all you want to see.<p>less Meta usage for me. No TikTok either.
I did this on purpose. I muted almost every actual person from my feed and all that remained were a handful of pages I chose to follow. Mostly tv/media related pages and retro video game groups, plus some local groups. Now, instead of looking at the random crap people I barely know decide to post, including their ample complaints about anything and everything, I mostly just see relevant content I'm actually happy to see! This change got me checking FB again regularly for the first time in years.
Yeah, but the original FB did not even have a "feed". Hence these complaints are about an uncontrollable "feature" (a so-called "feed") that no one asked for.<p>The idea that someone starts using some software or website because it looks useful (original FB had no advertising) and then later the software or website unilaterally decides to morph into something else (FB did this very early on with the addition of a "feed") reminds me of the phrase "bait and switch".
Yeah I'm seeing this happen on Instagram also, which I used to actually use but every 3rd post is an ad followed by a sponsored post and some account I don't follow.
I'm seeing a few posts here that basically they have to do this because it's an ad service, it's for shareholders, etc. When are we going to blame Zuck and his unique brand of dishonesty and lying to everyone? They've misled their own investors and advertisers, at what point do we stop saying "with anyone else at the helm it would be the same" and recognize his character issues?
I pitched to an engineer that worked on Facebook newsfeed ranking that they make a setting to let me hide all reposts because my feed was entirely political links and meme images. He didn’t buy that life updates from friends was what I wanted to see, very adamant that if I used the “I don’t like this” button, eventually it would find content I liked.
It can't show you content that doesn't exist.<p>My FB feed is pretty much a ghost town aside from a few people that somehow didn't get the memo
Agree, FB is trashing the place. But will say that, currently, putting feed in chronological order (<a href="https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr</a>) reduces the number of suggesteds considerably; usually there is some (non-obvious) way to organize the feed in one of the menus too.
I just spent 20 mins hiding all the Ad, Sponsored and Sugges content and now my feed is clean upon refresh. I do that from time to time and it stays fine for a bit but that type of content starts creeping up again. Lately it has been insane though, for example this morning after seeing this post my feed was everything but content I follow.
I wish FB had a way for me to disable posts from companies, pages, "shared" content etc.. I only want to see photos and status updates from friends. That is all. I don't want memes or reels. It's sad that in the first 10 items on my FB Home, only 1 is from a friend and its just a shared meme.
I never use FB but checked it just now and the mix seems fine. Out of the first 10 panels on my page 7 were friends or pages I follow. Remaining were 2 ads and one suggested post. I'm guessing it's worse if you use FB frequently and have seen all of your friends recent content already.
FBPurity is a web browser plugin that will hide whatever you don't want to see in your FB feed. If a sponsored post shows up you can click the 3 dots menu to flag it.<p>I have it set to not show Likes or Comments my friends make on other people's posts or shares. All I see is what my friends post.
I don't post often on Facebook these days, but I find my posts either get zero likes or in the 30-40 like range with almost nothing in between.<p>This leads me to believe that no one is being shown roughly half my posts, though it's arguably possible half of what I post is total garbage.
I go on Facebook once a week and browse the 'bell'. My family and friends' posts are generally there. Facebook seems to only show the joke feeds and such when I browse 'home'. So if I really want to be focused I begin and end with the bell.
Same for me. I checked in a few times this year, and it's utterly unusable. If I want to argue about clickbait on the internet, Facebook is the last place I want to do that.<p>But I'm sure some PM's really proud of the engagement metrics they've generated.
My extended family has been the major reason I've held onto my facebook account. Nieces, nephews, cousins. Baby & puppy pics. Weddings, funerals, milestones, well wishes.<p>Apple's Messages now largely serves that role.<p>Feature Req: Make Messages savvy about Contact groups.
FB is dinosaur, it's where yahoo was 15 years ago. Taking into account how horrible the product is, and all the studies that show how unhappy and polarized it makes you, it's surprising to me people are not leaving in mass at this point.
For FB's entire existence the economy has only gone up. Now we're going to see if social media as a business can survive a crash. The 2008 mortgage crisis killed MySpace, so I'm not optimistic. At least they have VR.
There are many browser add-ons that completely removes feed from FB. Since I use FB exclusively for adding links to my personal portfolio, thise plugins are handy and keep me away from distraction everytime I need to share anything.
I recall discussions of this problem years ago. I did a measure of what percentage of my feed was actual content with friends and it was roughly the same as this current measure. I'll have to go through my comments and find it.
I’ve found the same thing but for Instagram, though I think it might be similar on Facebook too. It’s just that when I’m on Facebook it’s only to check out some things in a few hobby related groups I’m in so I’m never on home feed.
Same here.<p>Not only that, but the random suggested pages are completely irrelevant to me. Facebook knows where I live and at least a few details of what I'm into, and the suggested pages have no connection to any of those whatsoever.
New social media appeared -> people flock -> monetization -> people leave<p>The implication of this is that social media is expected to make a lot of money from the number of users, but in the end it doesn't?
Looks like this is using the FB app, which the users has little control over.<p>I don't use FB or Instagram anymore, but when I did, I used Firefox, so I could at least use uBlock or a Tampermoney script.
Disclaimer: I haven’t used Facebook in forever.<p>I just thought I’d point out this Reddit post is from nearly six months ago. I’d imagine there have been numerous tweaks to what users are shown since then.
I have noticed this also, I got around it by clicking “feeds” instead of browsing my default feed via “home”. The “feeds” tab doesn’t seem to give me any of these suggested pages.
I wish I could delete my FB account. I only keep it around to manage app social logins and keep in touch with a few family members who haven't gone to Telegram yet.
Long ago when I felt like I couldn't just find all my friends posts I gave up on Facebook and logged off forever.<p>That was the value to me and Facebook seemed to not want me to see it...
Is this because no one is using Facebook anymore besides updating their profile picture every year or so?
Everyone I know only uses Facebook for messenger
I deleted my 15 year old account because of that.....it was tough, but it was so far gone from what it was that it wasn't really a loss to say goodbye.....
If I posted something no one I know these days would see it as it's become non-trendy to add people on facebook, it's just people from 10 years ago
From the Reddit thread: In the app, click on the Feeds icon (top for Android, bottom for iOS) then select Friends. I’m now seeing a lot more relevant stuff.
Just get rid of things you don't want. "FBP" gives you find granular control over what information is displayed in the Facebook interface.
this is what my latest interaction with instagram looked like before i deactivated the account:<p>1. i'm consciously opening instagram to see what people/pages i'm following have to offer<p>2. i'm watching some random "suggested" reel of lion saving baby giraffe from two crocks<p>3. ads<p>4. closing the app and asking myself of what am i doing out of my life?
and it's all crap. Very low quality content... especially on video. Terrible recommendations. YouTube has the same problem. Whoever is leading recs is doing a terrible job.
This is a good opportunity to reflect on how irrelevant and vacuous is the omnipresent "It's a private company, they can do whatever they want." We also have a right to criticize them for whatever reason.
I got back on FB after having given up on it for years and now my feed is nearly all leftist memes (not exaggerating - super left-wing pro-marxist/pro-communist stuff), no matter how many times I try to "hide post", they just keep coming. I'm starting to remember why I left Facebook in the first place.
My FB feed absolutely sucks. All I get anymore are Disney memes and low effort socialist propaganda - content I have no interest in no matter how much I try to hide it.<p>I used to keep a fairly curated feed of news and groups and businesses I followed, for some reason FB has decided to throw out all of that out to feed me this garbage.