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That's enough angry Facebooking for you:
Late on Thursday, Facebook announced a plan to emphasize more "meaningful" interactions on the platform. Posts are considered meaningful when they generate lots of comments, likes, and shares. Facebook's researchers have found that when people are actively commenting on posts, they tend to feel better about using social networks — and feel better about themselves in general.
The change may sound relatively small, but it's likely to have significant consequences for the broad subset of Facebook users that aren't individual people: media companies, small businesses, big brands, and everyone else who has come to see Facebook's News Feed as an essential way to reach audiences and customers. In a post yesterday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the pages managed by those businesses are likely to reach far fewer people in 2018.
"As we roll this out, you'll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media," he wrote. "And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard -- it should encourage meaningful interactions between people."
He added: "Now, I want to be clear: by making these changes, I expect the time people spend on Facebook and some measures of engagement will go down. But I also expect the time you do spend on Facebook will be more valuable. And if we do the right thing, I believe that will be good for our community and our business over the long term too."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Justin Case on Tuesday January 16 2018, @11:34PM (12 children)
This shrinkage is insufficient. I want facebook gone from the planet.
Of course some asshat would promptly replace it with something worse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 16 2018, @11:49PM (1 child)
Agree, Fakebook needs to die. Why is it every time I hear that website mentioned in conversation, it's some fake drama or insignificant interpersonal bullshit? I know precisely why; Fakebook is "the internet" for narcissistic imbeciles who appear unaware that most of their bullshit is legally actionable. If said legal action (defamation, stalking, harassment) were to start happening, the platform would die. Not a moment too soon!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:24AM
Maybe because you're hanging with the wrong crowd? Why not join a nice Facebook group and discover what you've been missing. Facebook, because resistance is futile.
(Score: 1) by Apparition on Tuesday January 16 2018, @11:52PM (3 children)
Hopefully it would take Twitter down with it.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @12:54AM (2 children)
Twitter wasn't that bad, never had an account but did read a handful of accounts for the news. Recently, they just lost the plot - neoliberals trying to buy or censor their way to "absolute truth" to support a dead and bankrupt ideology.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:28AM
Damn liberals always getting in the way of good people trying to spread their hate. One of these days one of our kind will create a social media platform the helps push hate to the next level so we won't be so dependent on these idiotic private companies with their own rules and terms of service.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday January 17 2018, @01:38PM
"Neoliberals" does not mean liberals the way you think it does. It describes a school of thought in economics where markets are self-correcting and should be allowed to do that without government intervention.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Wednesday January 17 2018, @12:36AM (1 child)
And since those are the only people PAYING for facebook, you can tell immediately none of this is going to happen.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @05:35AM
And those businesses paid for those ads.
While businesses paying for unprofitable ads is good for Facebook in the short term it's not necessarily good in the long term - since more businesses may just give up on paying Facebook for anything. Or worse more people would start building and using stuff to block such Facebook ads.
There are people who actually buy after seeing some ads, or might correctly inform friends who would be interested. With some work Facebook probably can figure out who and what ads.
If I was advertising and Facebook gave me more $$$ for the ad money I spend, I wouldn't care if I reached fewer people especially if it meant not "spamming" people who don't want to hear about my stuff (I would like to pay less for ads too but I doubt Facebook will want to significantly reduce their total income ;) ). I know some idiots actually think all 7 billion people in the world would want to buy their product or should at least hear about it, but all that does it make more people try to block such ads.
Even Google is making moves to block some ads with their browser. They've realized that "less is more".
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday January 17 2018, @02:21AM (2 children)
He can't figure out how to use email
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @06:55AM
Chuck rocks at chuck? That's communication of some form.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday January 17 2018, @01:43PM
Talk to Chuck's mother, Aunt Molly. Or get his address from his sister Jan.
That's how we did it in the old days, and it still works.
Facebook is a parasite on our natural human interpersonal networks. It does not create them, as much as they'd like to. It was briefly interesting to find out what a couple classmates are up to now, but after those twenty seconds had elapsed I realised they were different people and had different lives and good for them, but I'm gonna go to work now.
People remain people, with our instincts hard-wired, and we can go out and create new interpersonal networks through shared experience, any time we like.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @12:28PM
This.
Of course, Facebook itself is the something worse that some asshat replaced AOL with.