> So once the friend status stuff became so blasé, and users were spending less attention on FB, FB amped up the suggested content. Now, as has been illustrated on some HN posts, the vast majority of what one sees on FB is just suggested content. > > Instagram is the same. People just aren't interesting enough to keep an entire platform alive. Sure, the influencers and posers will provide a lot of content, but within any given category there are hundreds of similar (and quickly boring) options.

The irony (for me, at least) is that it was Meta's attempts to drive more engagement that pushed me away from both platforms. When Facebook was just the actual activity of my friends, I enjoyed it. Once they started messing with things and it became more about "suggested content" than a useful way to keep in touch with my friends, I realized how much of a time waste it was and deleted my account. I haven't deleted my Instagram account yet, but it seems to be inevitable as Instagram turns more and more into a low-rent TikTok where the feed has been taken over by content suggested by the algorithm rather than just the photos posted by my contacts (and FWIW, I don't follow any "influencers", only people that I actually know or artists whose work I enjoy).

I may be an outlier, but to me every "improvement" that they've made to try to increase the amount of content and engagement has made it less attractive because it feels less genuine and more generic. On the other side of it, it also makes me less likely to bother posting content because I know that the algorithm won't be showing it to anyone or will be prioritizing it lower than the stuff that's been carefully constructed to be "engaging".