Comment by BeFlatXIII

Comment by BeFlatXIII 4 days ago

> people were moving interactions to private channels, reducing the available "friend" content. IMO, the causal factor here is that people became wary of public oversharing and the result was FB pivoting away from "social network" (OG Facebook) to "social media" (2010-2015 FB) and eventually just "media" (Instagram, Reels).

Adding to that, the people who kept posting as if nothing changed typically were extremely low-value posters. Political ranters, zero-commentary meme reposts, etc…

hinkley 4 days ago

Like a large room full of people talking until an event starts, and that moment when half the crowd has realized that someone has gone on stage while the other half has gotten sucked into an argument/discussion and forgotten why we were all here in the first place.

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BeFlatXIII 3 days ago

I never thought of it this way before, but that's a brilliant analogy. Now, if only we knew what the analog for the keynote speaker is.

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sillyfluke 3 days ago

Hilariously, this is kind of how I felt reading the comments here. I thought every commet would start of by saying this is such a pathetic superficial ploy for the trial in question that it's idiotic to respond to it in earnest outside of a courtroom. But then obviously the comment would go on to explain why that's the case.
Whatever sort of business Facebook, Insta, TikTok and Twitter are called now, it's pretty clear they co-evolved into it near identically by watching the others' product. If fb isn't social media, then neither are the rest. If fb is a purple cow then so are the others. The point is they were called "social media" at the time FB purchased Insta.
If Zuck is going to show a graph illustrating how force fed cows in a cage were unable to walk by themselves as time progressed, then someone should put up a graph tracking the number of Whatsapp groups that were created as time went by. If that number was going up, what is left to talk about for fuck's sake.

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DyslexicAtheist 4 days ago

>> people who kept posting as if nothing changed typically were extremely low-value posters

absolutely not, ... these were (and are) always there. instead it was Facebook management decisions choosing to amplify exactly this. Let's not blame a minority of (misguided) content creators for the shortcomings of Zuck and his sycophant senior managers.

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johnnyanmac 4 days ago

As anti-Zuck as I am, I argue this is simply human nature. I've seen the same effect all across internet interactions, from Gamefaqs to 4 chan to Tumblr to Tiktok. controversial content will simply draw in more discussion (i.e. flamewars) than any other kind of contnet. sad content, happy content, funny content; it all falls to rage bait.
The only blame on Facebook's end is a failure to moderate and mitigate it. But at that point you ask if that would have simply pointed the controversy to the moderators (something also commonly seen).

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- yencabulator 3 days ago
  
  > The only blame on Facebook's end is a failure to moderate and mitigate it.
  Facebook actively amplified ragebait content, for the engagement it drove. That is utterly their fault.
  
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  Ajedi32 25 minutes ago
  
  They actively amplified any content that got high engagement, not ragebait specifically. That's why you see this trend across nearly all social media, not just Facebook. There's a strong financial incentive to get people to engage with your service, and amplifying the content that is already getting the most engagement is a simple way to do that.
  You could blame this on advertising, but I think even if Facebook were a paid service (ignoring for a minute that that would have killed any chance it had of being successful in the first place) there'd still be an incentive to prioritize content that people's revealed preferences indicate they want to see more of.
  Countering this natural human tendency requires a significant, thoughtful, concerted effort on the part of everyone involved.
  
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- nopelynopington 3 days ago
  
  Sadly true. I saw the same thing happen in real-time as Imgur transitioned from being image hosting for Reddit to an independent network.
  It went from people posting silly memes and cute dogs to angry political stuff dominating the front page every day.
  
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  DrScientist 3 days ago
  
  I think you under estimate how much of the angry political stuff is driven by paid for content by people with an agenda - and companies like Meta have just taken the money.
  Sure in the end it sweeps up indviduals but money and professional narrative shapers are often behind these things.
  There are a cadre of highly competance professionals in the advertising/PR area that were massively enabled by the tools that Meta et al provided ( for money ) - suddenly you could run campaigns that were highly effective, relatively cheap, and almost invisible.
  This has been ruthlessly exploited by people and organisations with more money that morals.
  Goverments have in part been asleep at the wheel, but also too keen to use such tools for their own ends.
  
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  nopelynopington 2 days ago
  
  In Imgurs case it's all left leaning. Lots of scaremongering about what project 2025 and how close we are to dictatorship and lots of alarmist ragebait.
  I saw a post just over a week ago from a user who predicted that Trump would declare martial law on April 20th because that was the day such and such report would advise him to do so.
  It made the front page with hundreds of upvotes and comments agreeing. it's an extreme example but the site is full of this kind of stuff, most often bringing your attention to some obscure ruling or decision, some new political depth plumbed that will mean x,y, and z will now happen.
  
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BeFlatXIII 3 days ago

The aspect of real people posting worthwhile stuff stopped regardless of Zuck's decision to amplify engagement bait. IMO, it was because many of them had their life stage progress beyond college and had better things to do than post to social media.

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