During testimony at Meta’s antitrust trial, the Facebook founder’s argument was, in so many words, that platforms like his are not what they used to be.
  • Vanth@reddthat.com
    English
    1·
    2 months ago

    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.

    Yeah. By their design. If they would allow user control over what shows up in their feed, mine would prioritize friends’ content. I’m not the one choosing to turn my feed jnto AI slop based on my alleged interest in the topic.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      One of the appeals of Bluesky (for now) is the Followimg feed that presents comments exclusively from people I follow, in chronological order.

      Crazy that Facebook can’t deliver this anymore

    • Libra00@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Right? ‘ZOMG users aren’t viewing the contents of their friends!’, yeah, because you hide that shit behind ads and promoted content, dumb-ass.

    • AlecSadler@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      This. I have to go out of my way to even see my wife’s posts (well, before I deleted Facebook).

      2/3rds of my feed are ads.

      This metric is bullshit because they fucked up the waters.

    • mctoasterson@reddthat.comEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      This is ironic because all the 40 year old chicks who are career users of FB since college, all cite the same justification for continuing to use it: “But all my photos and the current happenings of my friends”.

      If you showed them epirical data that only 17% of what they consume on the platform is actually even tangentially related to their friends and family, maybe they’d finally decouple themselves from FB.

      • Cousin Mose@lemmy.hogru.chEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        And all the photos look like shit because they’ve been recompressed in JPEG, and all the metadata is just gone.

      • duckworthy36@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        It’s worse with instagram. I debated switching to Pixelfed at first because no one I know is on it. But then I realized I barely see friends content on insta, so it’s not really different, at least on Pixelfed I don’t see adds and only see posts from people I follow.

    • LordOfLocksley@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      I just scrolled Facebook, and out of the 44 posts I came across 10 were from friends or pages I had liked. The rest was sponsored slop, or “you should follow this person” type posts.

      No wonder the social interaction is down, when less than a quarter of posts I come across are from the reason to have Facebook.

      I’m not friends with corporations, so don’t push me their shit.

      Prime Facebook was 2007 - 2011/12. When they started algorithm-ing friends posts, that heralded the end. I don’t care that I haven’t interacted with friend XYZ for a long while, I’m still interested in seeing their stuff equally as much as friend ABC who I interact with daily

  • pHr34kY@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    It’s such an easy fix too. Create a separate wall that only contains your friends’ OC (not reshared garbage).

    It’s about 3 posts per day for someone with 200 friends, but I’d take it.

    • boonhet@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Too late for that. We have TikTok now. Everyone needs a new dopamine hit every 3 seconds and god forbid you run out of new things in your feed.

      The era of social media IS over. Even if you make a good one.

            • bender223@lemmy.todayEnglish
              0·
              2 months ago

              Agree. Lemmy doesn’t need to have as many users as other platforms to be good.

              If ppl can’t understand what’s so good about Lemmy then they are just suckers who deserve to be taken advantage of by corporations.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        I’m amazed that’s not what FB still is. I apparently bailed before the worst of it because I don’t recall seeing random people’s posts on my feed.

        • kingthrillgore@lemmy.mlEnglish
          0·
          2 months ago

          Last time I logged into Facebook I noticed a lot of the recommends included feeds of attractive women. I mean, I like women with gyatts, butt clearly their algos have been fine tuned on what kind of content they serve: sexual content and alt-right garbage

          I miss the good old days when it was just updates from friends.

    • limelight79@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      You actually can nearly do that. Facebook inexplicably showed me how a few weeks ago. If a friend reshares something, you’ll see it, but it removes all groups, etc. It was stunning how little content actually comes from friends.

      On the Facebook site (I’m sure it can be done via app, too, but I didn’t look), click on the menu near the top right, then click Feeds (under Social). Then click on Friends on the left.

  • bender223@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    It’s shitty ass hats like zuck that makes me appreciate Lemmy even more. Its the right amount of social media for me.

    • merdaverse@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      “How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us?”

    • MagicShel@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Exactly this. “We have maxed out the amount of money we can extract from people and have reached diminishing returns on profitability.”

      Why can’t anyone just create a billion dollar company that makes something people like and then be happy they can consistently earn $200m per year? Maybe ask the people what kinds of features they want and improve the service to increase the value to users once you need something for your staff to do when the product is complete.

      • nyan@lemmy.cafeEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        Because modest returns don’t attract investment, so whoever set it up would have to fund the startup out of pocket and never go public or sell the company off. Not quite impossible, but very unlikely (unless the world changes and investors start getting more sensible about profits).

    • el_puercoespin@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      Right. They got greedy and made it more shitty for profit. Users left and now its one of these free weekly papers with ads and classified ads. Now they are considering filling the gap of missing user content with AI so it will be a circular system without humans at one point.