If they want people to make better content, they need to start figuring out why people feel like their better content gets no audience.
IIRC they looked through his feed and there had been basically cries for help, but no one had seem them because Facebook was prioritizing engagement and not personal content.
How many other people are trying to reach out on Facebook, thinking that no one cares, when the reality is that no one even sees?
> IIRC they looked through his feed and there had been basically cries for help, but no one had seem them because Facebook was prioritizing engagement and not personal content.
Don't worry! Facebook is working on an AI to detect such posts and refer the suicidal users to help! No need to bring his friends down with his negativity and decrease their engagement! /s
I wish I was joking: https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/28/16709224/facebook-suicid.... Social networks like Facebook have contributed to a big rise in depression, but instead of course correcting, we get buzzword tech band-aids.
I’ve hidden friends before who I have close relationships with, simply because the content they post is trash:
- reshares of “inspirational” and “motivational” memes - post frequency too high - constantly posting pictures of their kids - unfortunately a close aunt is into MLM and I can’t just unfriend her without causing drama - generally only posting things I don’t care for enough to see like guns, cars, etc
Like, just because we are friends, doesn’t mean we have to share the same interests nor does it mean I want to hear everything you have to say on every topic.
The wall was never a good way to do this. It's neither as powerful nor as flexible as pretty much any competing way for a small group of people to communicate, including chat programs, email, txt, snapchat, etc.
Facebook's deprioritization of the wall and buy-in on messenger/whatsapp, instagram, and the newsfeed was very smart. I suspect they are ok with people moving off posting on facebook to posting on instagram and chatting privately.
The similarity between snooping around facebook and seeing all the open chats going on with people you'd never usually talk to and watching reality TV were striking to me.
Thought admittedly, I do not know if it was one of the driving factors to FB success or not, so it may well have been past its use by date rather than the news feeds killing it.
Personally I enjoyed those days more as my feed was more of a chronological account of people chatting rather than reshares articles, videos and memes.
Unfortunately, some people and some topics tend to attract a lot of those sorts of uninvited rebuttals - in other words, harassment - driving some to make their accounts private. In that case, only approved followers can see your tweets, ever. There’s no “friends of friends”-like middle ground, or any other more flexible filtering options.
On the other hand, for most people, Twitter’s system seems to work pretty well. It works for me, and I really enjoy the spontaneity of it.
But Instagram I love. I check it a couple of times a week. I love seeing images from my friends and having comments barely visible is exactly what I like. My only problem with it is the increasing frequency of ads. It's sucking a lot of the joy out of the platform for me.
And yet people used it--even after the news feed and well into the reign of IM and email. I'm not sure how it's smart to remove a feature that was creating engagement just because FB didn't understand why.
When chat and then messenger came along there was no need to do that anymore.
I think Facebook wants people to log on and post things like "It's a tough day at work but I'm looking forward to watching Black Panther" instead of just posting another link about "check out how the primaries were rigged!11". And I think the way the Newsfeed works with highly-specific posts and comments is part of the problem. There's less opportunity for laid back semi-public chatter.
Facebook wall conversations were not used as a poor imitation of private chat, but a separate form of quasi-public communication.
But, on the wall-to-wall thing: it still happens, but it’s generally associated with elderly or candid people who might not grasp the visibility of their post.
One thing that I feel you should be able to do is pick an audience when you write on someone’s wall. De facto, people often do that for birthdays and those rarely appear much.
I see a lot of the same casual conversations in Groups -- assuming you have groups of friends there. Those are cool and generally where the banter happens for me.
This is what I perceive as well.
While we're complaining, the Javascript associated with this is particularly slow. On clicking into the text entry box, I find that if I start typing immediately it can result in the letters coming out in the wrong order when it resets the caret.
Thus their Newsfeed changes de-prioritizing articles, and thus (I figure) their experiments such as showing short posts in large font sizes, and enabling MySpace-like gradient backgrounds on text posts...
This dynamic makes me recall something: Anyone remember how back in the day (like 2006) Facebook had a feature called 'Wall-to-Wall' conversations? You would go to a friend's profile and just write a message, they would go to your 'wall' and reply, and mutual friends could see the conversation.
These days between the Newsfeed, comments on posts, and Messenger, the only reason I would post on another friend's profile is to wish them a happy birthday. That whole ethos of just having informal personal conversations with college friends on Facebook is gone.