Follower feed is said by the head of Instagram (and I guess thus the head of Threads) to be coming eventually. There doesn't seem like much to do but wait.
I remember when she first entered news headlines with the "Paris Hilton Sex Tape". Couldn't give a stuff so never read it, but for years I assumed this was some important business person or world leader who had been discovered having some illicit affair in a hotel in France.
This is a fools errand. Stop using it for a week. The product is a literal MVP right now and lots of stuff is in the pipeline. You’re spinning your wheels on this when shortly you’ll be able to see a different timeline.
Yeah, I used threads for a few minutes and quickly discovered that’s it’s just not a product that caters to me… yet. Right now I think it’s probably only great if you’re really into the e-celeb scene. But this is Meta/IG we’re talking about, I’m sure they’ll get their near-freaky level of algorithmic content targeting precision in there soon enough and my feed will become full of stuff I care about. I’ll check back in on it in a couple months.
I discovered that it doesn't cater to me before actually using it. Googled how to use it on desktop, found that there is no way other than emulating the mobile app. Not for me, I pass.
> But this is Meta/IG we’re talking about, I’m sure they’ll get their near-freaky level of algorithmic content targeting precision in there soon enough
I keep hearing this. "Oh! The Algorithm gets me so well! It's so freaky!" about TikTok, IG, everything really... But let me tell you how my IG feed goes:
I get 3 posts at the top, posted by my friends. I like all of them – even if I didn't like it. I'm just pleading to the algorithm to show me more from the people I care about. I then scroll for another 30 seconds through endless muck of golden retrievers, frat boys, etc. I'm hoping to see another post from my friends, but it just doesn't come. I leave the app for another week, until my friend shows me a post she made 2 weeks ago that was never shown to me.
The algorithm makes social media a painful experience I avoid. I've enjoyed Mastodon, Snapchat, and BeReal MAGNITUDES more... Platforms without one, platforms where I'm actually "social".
I primarily use Instagram to follow artists, but yeah, my experience is about the same as what you listed. Before I took a hiatus from it, I just started going directly to my friend's pages to see if they shared anything new, and directly to the artists' pages to see if they were selling prints. Better than being forced to look at ads for essential oils vape pens.
Same here. These days I only use Instagram to post art made and rendered during my commutes and consume similarly fashioned content. I haven't reached the point in "making prints available" nor have the desire to at this point in time.
Twitter unambiguously separates out the feed of people you're following and the algorithmic feed ("For you") in separate tabs (plus you can pin separate lists as tabs). It also opens up the feed you last used when you open a new session. Plus, the algorithm for the "For you" feed is open source[0]
exactly. the instagram algorithm is horrendous. until this thread I'd never heard a single person praise it. suspicious? I don't know
for example, a while ago a friend sent me 3 or 4 relationship memes. I didn't like the posts, I may, at most, have reacted to one or two in chat, but since then my suggested posts have been 20-30% relationship memes. no matter how many times I say "I am not interested in content like this" or after blocking about 30 of the most common relationship meme hashtags, I still get the same 20-30% of posts, just now they have no or unusual tags. and then more recently, seemingly appropros of nothing this time - bodybuilding/fitness memes! it's the opposite of freakily good
I’ve stopped using the algorithm on IG. Instead I use the “Following” feed (tap the Instagram logo in the top left on the home pane) which is a reverse chronological feed of only the people I follow.
Yeah. That's better, agreed. I've been muting lots of accounts I want to follow, just to get the feed down to a clean friends only feed. It's better, but I guess my big point is that algorithms suck, at least from a user's perspective (I'm sure 90% junk mixed with 10% content to keep users engaged does wonders for profits)
I just signed up for threads to hopefully help annoy Elon which is very petty and useless of course but I ended up following a bunch of nat geo photographers who are all over threads and really enjoy my feed at the moment. Nothing wrong with admiring beautiful pics of the world. That sounds like instagram and you're not wrong, but the photographers themselves are more present so you can ask questions which feels different enough. Also, now is the time to annoy anyone famous on their because even the big dogs only have a few thousand comments. lol
The algorithm on Instagram has never been freaky in how well it targets my interests. It cares not. It just wants me to look at ads. It's always freaky on how well it advertises stuff that would be the most annoying to me based on something I said a few days ago, though. However I haven't been on since April, so maybe they've changed it again.
What is so bad about Instagram? It's my most used "normie" platform. I don't choose to have fake friends or follow awful creators, so I don't see that on the website.
I follow a few of my favorite bands and celebrities and my friends and it works well. I wish there was an easy way to filter all reels though. I don't like the tiktok type of experience.
Instagram is my most used platform. All my closest friends are there. All the top tier meme content is there. Group chat is lit.
It’s not a fake and vapid place. All social media are just vehicles to communicate with other people. If you feel it’s fake and vapid you’re just following the wrong crowd.
Muting like this is in my opinion dumb. Just move on, you don’t need to ‘purge’ their ability to reach your eyes. Threads is brand new, and the home feed is not meant to be only people you follow as of now.
Because Mastodon only has a linear feed, I don't even see the point, you're only going to see what you explicitly followed. It actually takes a lot of time just to build up interesting content to follow. One of the more frustrating things is when someone I find interesting goes crazy posting and the lack of algorithm just means I see way too many posts from them in a row. Maybe the mobile apps improve on this, I dunno.
The key to Mastodon is to follow hashtags so you instantly get any content relevant to your interests. I'm only following a few people because most people who have a similar interest to me will also post stuff not related to our common interest. By following hashtags, I get every post I want to see and none of the noise.
I haven't used threads, but I mute channels on youtube frequently. It only takes literally one second and I never have to scroll past that person's videos again. This is a lot easier than playing the 'manipulate the recommendation algorithm' game.
You know the Gell-Mann Amnesia meme? You realize somebody is full of shit after reading/watching their content, but then you move on and forget what you learned, falling for them again in the future. Well if you block their content, this problem goes away. The block system remember what you might otherwise forget.
I feel like Twitter has gotten worse for this lately too: I've had to use the mute button much more frequently than I used to. In the past, Twitter's feed was almost too smart/focused, and kept giving you basically only the same subjects and content over and over again.
Now day's it's broadened what you see, but also keeps giving random (and sometimes, offensive) nonsense that I have to mute.
It also doesn't seem to learn from mutes very well: shouldn't mute not only mean "I don't want to see tweets from this account", but also "I'm not interested in Tweets on this subject"?
Similar issue with Spotify. I feel like it used to be better at finding me NEW tracks based on what I'd liked in the past. But now it just mostly wants to play the same things I've listened to before, over and over?
Already deleted Threads… just a bunch of celebrity promoted garbage. Cannot search or sort by hashtags… just a stream of corporate promoted nonsense mixed with ads. Not sure I where this app fits in with Instagram and Facebook already overlapping.
The app is obviously an MVP. The force-fed feed makes a lot of sense when there's little content, plus helps set the intended style/atmosphere/topics they want on there.
They've probably underestimated how quickly people will rebuild their social graph.
For me, Reels has never been able to zero in on my interests in the way that TikTok has. Reels mostly shows stupid, low denominator content compared to TikTok which is showing me math videos, videos about ML, etc.
Algo-feed only Threads means trusting the same sort of algo behind Reels and I am not convinced that it will work. Twitter allows for much easier bootstrapping.
Already, I am pretty turned off by how inundated Threads is with celebrity content that I really could not care less about.
It's very possible that ranking will be a lot better for threads though, simply because NLP models are currently so much better than what exists for video
Yes, when you have no followers/new posts from followers the feed with fill itself with what it thinks you might like. It's not very good right now because it probably needs more data points, but if I can suggest one thing, it's this: Get More Friends. That way the feed has people you want instead. Algorithms can only help so much in that space. I can't believe this isn't obviously pointed out.
Meta is courting the risk of going full Orkut, where people come by to check out early hype on an unfinished product, find the feature set underwhelming, and head off elsewhere. The tradeoff with getting tens of millions of users at launch is that it will be harder to get a disappointed user to come back and try again than it was to get them to try the first time.
I'm sure for the dev team this is a busy time, and the work they need to do to accommodate so many new users creates a feeling of forward progress. But none of that work (from what I'm seeing in discussions) seems to involve adding basic functionality, while in the interim people are forming a durable first impression of the service.
Good insight. I think what might help them a little bit, however, is that the features they're sure to add in the coming weeks are known commodities at other networks, so people will already be aware of the value the features add, such as a timeline that only shows folks you're following.
If non-working product was the stuff they've ever cared about.
IG:
- reels were rolled/rerolled so many times with so many bugs.
- have you tried to open some old post from your grid? Scroll is soo broken and loads 1 page of images, freezes, loads another. So, to scroll 300 posts you need to spend 5 minutes. Never was fixed and probably never will.
- Chat for IG does not open images on desktop (or some images). Yea, I know desktop is not a priority anymore.
It feels like it is neverending AB testing or neverending beta.
This is Meta. In no time it will be the same old "tailored for you" experience. Soon his timeline will be spammed with tractor ads. He and other early adopters should just enjoy this wild-west phase, it will be tamed soon.
It is not even trendy.
FB literally killed Pages before and now is actively killing IG.
Many creators just don't really care about any new Meta products anymore.
If you have to put that kind of work into a platform to make it usable, I would suggest putting it into a platform that aligns with your values. I just can't understand why anyone, even "normals", would be so eager to jump into bed with Facebook again after the last decade.
I think in this case we —-the customers—- are the ice-cream and Facebook’s tongue licking all over us, as if they haven’t had enough taste of our metadata yet!
Except that the icecream place is run by a group known for extremely poor hygiene, manipulating customers and lacing their other food products with nicotine to ensure chemical dependency issues.
I agree with you and I have no plans to sign up for threads, but I have to admit that there's some part of my monkey brain that has softened on meta throughout all this. I am not saying that feeling is justified; only admitting it's there. I think the last decade has given us events and people who went out of their way to make "normal" levels of malevolence seem quaint or even charming.
I have a hard time giving up FB because so much family and old friends are on it, but intellectually I know it's awful. Probably worse than Musk's Twitter, TBH. Zuckerberg has personally done a better job of not being public-crazy than Musk (just cringey), but his platform has arguably net-effects worse on society.
They crossed the line last fall when they put me in FB jail for posting a picture of my son at the beach in his bathing suit as "violating community standards", and then extended my jail-time further when I appealed and complained. The implication being that I was posting .. CSAM... because their image detection algorithm & moderation sucks... that's awful.
Meanwhile they continually try to show me far right or climate change denial material presumably to try to get me to "engage"; yesterday was a meme encouraging people to run over cyclists, complete with a picture of a cyclist being hit by a car, and when I reported it as encouraging violence they rejected my report.
Meta depends on outrage-engagement to make $$. Zuck talks a big talk about creating online community, but he's actually kind of created the opposite. Even the active FB groups I've been in around niche topics have become kind of awful in tone recently, like they're doing the same outrage engagement algos in them, too. Or people are just bigger assholes after COVID, I dunno.
They really are the worst, in actuality, and getting worse. I think I will delete my account ... but it means losing contact with a lot of friends and family.
Facebook is even worse in other countries, where they promote outrage algorithmically then don't hire any moderators to even try and keep it in check. This way they're implicated in the genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/07/facebooks...
Perhaps the softening is related to the open sourcing of LLaMa? I softened a bit on Microsoft after it started embracing the open source approach in the 2010s... even if the motivate was being late to the party.
I've seen it too, I personally think it's a bit of the old "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" type of thing kicking in. But once you realize how far cyberdespotism can go... normal levels of exploitative do seen a little more chill in perspective.
I saw some posts urging people to “get in on the beginning” in order to take advantage of the primitive ranking and go viral. Everyone wants a chance at that. Just like the promise of pump and dump crypto’s or the still private startups that told me “you just don’t understand how equity works, we are about to IPO soon, take our lowball offer”
Yes? I don't really get it either, but for better or worse if you want to build something that caters to the kind of people that use Threads/Twitter, its obvious that it would be better to do it now rather than in 6 months.
I really tried to make Mastodon work for me, but the lack of discoverability killed it.
As somebody with trans people in my family, getting away from Musk's Twitter is a priority. But Twitter is where I get a lot of news and entertainment.
I would rather have seen Mastodon win, but their product just isn't good enough.
Mastodon seems like nice people, but it's not well designed. So far, it seems people are posting stuff in the void and creating little conversation because everything rolls past you unless you are looking continuously. Even notifications are poorly designed as it keeps posting your content repeatedly for favorites, etc., so you have little overview of your interactions. I think it could be designed better but apparently, few changes are made to make it more usable.
A network of users consuming and producing in real time. Weird feedback amplification effects.
A vast beast with a million heads, muttering to itself.
(Having your notifications turned on might be important for this to work. Remember that Black Mirror episode where having your notifications turned on was legally mandated.)
people love twitter. they want twitter run by "normals". zuck has said threads will be twitter run by "normals". this is what they want. this is what they will use.
I just uninstalled after 10 minutes of use because of this. Absolutely 0 interesting or organic content in the feed, just an endless stream of blue checkmark celebrity and corporation accounts making painfully cringy "hip with the kids" tweets.
Easily one of the most forced product launches I've seen in years.
I think there is a larger question about the role that celebrities, influencers, meme accounts, thirst trap accounts, or any other account that is incentivized to post play on social media.
You immediately saw the energy and positivity drop as these groups arrived to threads. Perhaps it was a mix of egotism, phoniness, and shallow attempts at engagement, but you also saw engagement and follows rise with that group.
The head of Instagram has said that news is going to be less of a priority for them, which coincides with Canadian legislation demanding pay for links and upcoming US legislation that is expected to be similar.
I would love to see them deprioritize these financially motivated accounts and try to focus more on local and more genuine interactions, otherwise they will just fall into the same trap Twitter has been stuck in for years.
Ultimately, these accounts drive engagement but perhaps there is a cost to the long-term health or viability of the platform when taking this approach. Given Meta has seemingly no need to monetize Threads, I hope they try new approaches that are healthier for the platform and better for their users rather than cheap engagement.
I'm interested in the contrast between the news producers, who want you to pay for content, and the flood of people desperate to attract your attention without anything of value.
It feels like there is a certain amount of worthwhile stuff, despite vast numbers of people seeking ways to create it. You'd think with billions of people trying we'd get more things worth actually looking at.
Is is because a lot of people just really have nothing to contribute to the world?
There are plenty of things to look at, though it seems to be a constant maw that is never satisfied.
And on the other hand there are "influencers" and "content producers" and "digital marketers" who want to slip into that gap, but know full well that their contribution is not of any value. They're trying to be middle men in a world that's overconnected already. They plagiarize and copy and SEO and use generated content in the hopes of snagging a fraction of a cent simply by being in the way.
I don't mean that as personally derogatory as it sounds. I don't know them or their story. But I've seen many thousands of human lives spent in quiet desperation and wish that there was a better way to use the mind they were born with.
'Is because a lot of people just really have nothing to contribute to the world?'
We all have something to contribute but, like a single ant in a column of ants moving from one hole to another, that thing may be minor and not newsworthy.
> It feels like there is a certain amount of worthwhile stuff, despite vast numbers of people seeking ways to create it. You'd think with billions of people trying we'd get more things worth actually looking at.
Have thought that this was a problem so have been working on a solution. At some point intend to announce on HN. I'm supposed to do a "Show HN"?
Why should contribution to “the world”, the gargantua of global culture, history, and economy, be the yardstick of worth? I believe almost everyone has something valuable to contribute to their friends, family, neighborhood, or community. We can step away from the chaotic, nebulous global village and focus on the tangible human connections of actual village systems, where “the defining trait of a village is that it’s group of people where the average interaction over time is with people you’ve seen before.”
In this case I'm thinking of people who are trying to make a living. If it were up to me everyone would automatically receive enough money to stay alive, and nobody would have to grasp at straws like that. It would be interesting to see what they would create.
Meantime I am distressed by that grasping, which I understand to be necessary, or at least desperate. I wonder if they could do better creating something, anything, more useful than vast quantities of the lowest possible effort.
Employment, housing, and healthcare should not be inexorably interlinked. Losing your job puts your housing and healthcare at immediate risk, and activism can look like unprofessional behavior or a brand risk. Chilling effect.
> I would love to see them deprioritize these financially motivated accounts and try to focus more on local and more genuine interactions, otherwise they will just fall into the same trap Twitter has been stuck in for years.
Meta goes farther than Twitter ever did, as they actually deprioritize the more news-like content.
After all, why pay for less engaging content when you have users tripping over themselves to game engagement for free? Ignoring long term health (and the health of the society they inhabit) seems to have worked out for Meta so far.
> Meta goes farther than Twitter ever did, as they actually deprioritize the more news-like content.
I think an interesting experiment would be to also prioritize some "news-ish" "good news" of the type that wouldn't quite make major TV news broadcasts. The type of stuff that John Krasinski was doing with Some Good News during the pandemic.
Threads is literally just textual Instagram and TikTok. I don’t get the feeling Twitter users ever really used those, and Threads is much closer to those
> and try to focus more on local and more genuine interactions
It's amazing to me that people expect one of the largest companies on the planet to be capable of doing this with any measure of success.
Meanwhile, there's tons of groups of people who meet under the banner of shared interest, probably right now, right in the town you live in. You can just go do that if that's what you _actually_ want.
I was surprised by having no option and forcing everybody to their algorithm when their other platform either show you content from accounts you follow first and tell you when you're done (instagram) or have an option to show you content from your friends only or friends + group (Facebook's "your feed" and "friends").
I personally don't mind ads, somebody needs to pay for the service and I prefer ada over forced paid for content wasting my time.
I suspect they will launch "Following/Friend" soon. Part of me thinks they pushed the launch when Elon was limiting tweets.
I don't mind ads either if they are obvious and targeted (no more penis ads like the early days of the internet). I suspect Meta won't turn on ads for awhile, but when they do, they have one of the biggest ad markets to tap into. I suspect soon enough advertisers will see an additional button in their preferences. Run ads on Instagram and Threads.
AFAIK originally he said it was 100 AI companies using it for training data and then eventually morphed that to this line of reasoning, but why would Meta possibly need to scrape Twitter and, even if they did, why would they be so hamfisted about it given that they already have the `facebookexternalhit` scraper which hasn't been causing issues. I'd take Musk's statement with a big grain of salt.
The other theory is that they can't pay their cloud computing bill and therefore had to restrict traffic. Jives with the reports they aren't paying rent at certain offices.
If you have to put in that much effort to fine-tune the machinery that is supposed to trickle-feed your brain with short-lived dopamine hits, maybe you should try a different product. Not all junkies are the same. You may not be the target audience.
Tongue-in-cheek response aside, when YouTube managed to trick me into wasting a couple hours with YouTube shorts, my reaction after reflecting on what I just did wasn't to try and make it even better by curating it - instead I blocked YouTube shorts recommendations with my adblocker.
Not yet! I agree that as of right now, scientific or ML discourse seems to be something that is happening in an ad hoc way. It certainly hasn't been designed for it.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 276 ms ] threadhttps://mashable.com/article/threads-following-feed-feature
I keep hearing this. "Oh! The Algorithm gets me so well! It's so freaky!" about TikTok, IG, everything really... But let me tell you how my IG feed goes:
I get 3 posts at the top, posted by my friends. I like all of them – even if I didn't like it. I'm just pleading to the algorithm to show me more from the people I care about. I then scroll for another 30 seconds through endless muck of golden retrievers, frat boys, etc. I'm hoping to see another post from my friends, but it just doesn't come. I leave the app for another week, until my friend shows me a post she made 2 weeks ago that was never shown to me.
The algorithm makes social media a painful experience I avoid. I've enjoyed Mastodon, Snapchat, and BeReal MAGNITUDES more... Platforms without one, platforms where I'm actually "social".
0. https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm
for example, a while ago a friend sent me 3 or 4 relationship memes. I didn't like the posts, I may, at most, have reacted to one or two in chat, but since then my suggested posts have been 20-30% relationship memes. no matter how many times I say "I am not interested in content like this" or after blocking about 30 of the most common relationship meme hashtags, I still get the same 20-30% of posts, just now they have no or unusual tags. and then more recently, seemingly appropros of nothing this time - bodybuilding/fitness memes! it's the opposite of freakily good
* natgeo : Then you'll start seeing that account replying to its photgraphers and you can build your own list.
* michaelgeorge
* reuben
* cosmic_background (I don't think he's natgeo but still neat)
* benashtonart (Also not natgeo but fun)
It’s Instagram in words, and Instagram by and large is an awful, fake and vapid place.
Threads might be decent software, but the content is horrible.
I love it, it’s great for workout and vacation pics and seeing what people you know are up to. I get the feeling Twitter powerusers hate it
It’s not a fake and vapid place. All social media are just vehicles to communicate with other people. If you feel it’s fake and vapid you’re just following the wrong crowd.
LOL at the clown trying to mute accounts, that's like trying to attack waves in the sea.
Why not? Why shouldn't I? I don't get it
Of course, you run the risk of enclosing yourself into an echo chamber, but that's up to each individual user to consider.
You know the Gell-Mann Amnesia meme? You realize somebody is full of shit after reading/watching their content, but then you move on and forget what you learned, falling for them again in the future. Well if you block their content, this problem goes away. The block system remember what you might otherwise forget.
Now day's it's broadened what you see, but also keeps giving random (and sometimes, offensive) nonsense that I have to mute.
It also doesn't seem to learn from mutes very well: shouldn't mute not only mean "I don't want to see tweets from this account", but also "I'm not interested in Tweets on this subject"?
Similar issue with Spotify. I feel like it used to be better at finding me NEW tracks based on what I'd liked in the past. But now it just mostly wants to play the same things I've listened to before, over and over?
They've probably underestimated how quickly people will rebuild their social graph.
Algo-feed only Threads means trusting the same sort of algo behind Reels and I am not convinced that it will work. Twitter allows for much easier bootstrapping.
Already, I am pretty turned off by how inundated Threads is with celebrity content that I really could not care less about.
I get too distracted and end-up wasting too much time doom-scrolling. I've deleted all my accounts.
I'm sure for the dev team this is a busy time, and the work they need to do to accommodate so many new users creates a feeling of forward progress. But none of that work (from what I'm seeing in discussions) seems to involve adding basic functionality, while in the interim people are forming a durable first impression of the service.
It feels like it is neverending AB testing or neverending beta.
Except that the icecream place is run by a group known for extremely poor hygiene, manipulating customers and lacing their other food products with nicotine to ensure chemical dependency issues.
They crossed the line last fall when they put me in FB jail for posting a picture of my son at the beach in his bathing suit as "violating community standards", and then extended my jail-time further when I appealed and complained. The implication being that I was posting .. CSAM... because their image detection algorithm & moderation sucks... that's awful.
Meanwhile they continually try to show me far right or climate change denial material presumably to try to get me to "engage"; yesterday was a meme encouraging people to run over cyclists, complete with a picture of a cyclist being hit by a car, and when I reported it as encouraging violence they rejected my report.
Meta depends on outrage-engagement to make $$. Zuck talks a big talk about creating online community, but he's actually kind of created the opposite. Even the active FB groups I've been in around niche topics have become kind of awful in tone recently, like they're doing the same outrage engagement algos in them, too. Or people are just bigger assholes after COVID, I dunno.
They really are the worst, in actuality, and getting worse. I think I will delete my account ... but it means losing contact with a lot of friends and family.
1. You are a celebrity or influencer and you are trying to “colonize” the place
2. You have a business that sells products or services to this people: celebs and influencers are your primary target
I really tried to make Mastodon work for me, but the lack of discoverability killed it.
As somebody with trans people in my family, getting away from Musk's Twitter is a priority. But Twitter is where I get a lot of news and entertainment.
I would rather have seen Mastodon win, but their product just isn't good enough.
Ahhh! That is the key to the design.
A network of users consuming and producing in real time. Weird feedback amplification effects.
A vast beast with a million heads, muttering to itself.
(Having your notifications turned on might be important for this to work. Remember that Black Mirror episode where having your notifications turned on was legally mandated.)
I want a tree of threads. Posts and replies. Like reddit and hn. It's the only way that makes sense.
Boggling that they do it this way.
Easily one of the most forced product launches I've seen in years.
You immediately saw the energy and positivity drop as these groups arrived to threads. Perhaps it was a mix of egotism, phoniness, and shallow attempts at engagement, but you also saw engagement and follows rise with that group.
The head of Instagram has said that news is going to be less of a priority for them, which coincides with Canadian legislation demanding pay for links and upcoming US legislation that is expected to be similar.
I would love to see them deprioritize these financially motivated accounts and try to focus more on local and more genuine interactions, otherwise they will just fall into the same trap Twitter has been stuck in for years.
Ultimately, these accounts drive engagement but perhaps there is a cost to the long-term health or viability of the platform when taking this approach. Given Meta has seemingly no need to monetize Threads, I hope they try new approaches that are healthier for the platform and better for their users rather than cheap engagement.
It feels like there is a certain amount of worthwhile stuff, despite vast numbers of people seeking ways to create it. You'd think with billions of people trying we'd get more things worth actually looking at.
Is is because a lot of people just really have nothing to contribute to the world?
Perhaps they simply have a different definition of “contribute”?
Seems there are plenty of things for other people to look at given the download and signup data.
And on the other hand there are "influencers" and "content producers" and "digital marketers" who want to slip into that gap, but know full well that their contribution is not of any value. They're trying to be middle men in a world that's overconnected already. They plagiarize and copy and SEO and use generated content in the hopes of snagging a fraction of a cent simply by being in the way.
I don't mean that as personally derogatory as it sounds. I don't know them or their story. But I've seen many thousands of human lives spent in quiet desperation and wish that there was a better way to use the mind they were born with.
We all have something to contribute but, like a single ant in a column of ants moving from one hole to another, that thing may be minor and not newsworthy.
Have thought that this was a problem so have been working on a solution. At some point intend to announce on HN. I'm supposed to do a "Show HN"?
https://www.marginalia.nu/log/82_killing_community/
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36296882
Meantime I am distressed by that grasping, which I understand to be necessary, or at least desperate. I wonder if they could do better creating something, anything, more useful than vast quantities of the lowest possible effort.
Meta goes farther than Twitter ever did, as they actually deprioritize the more news-like content.
After all, why pay for less engaging content when you have users tripping over themselves to game engagement for free? Ignoring long term health (and the health of the society they inhabit) seems to have worked out for Meta so far.
I think an interesting experiment would be to also prioritize some "news-ish" "good news" of the type that wouldn't quite make major TV news broadcasts. The type of stuff that John Krasinski was doing with Some Good News during the pandemic.
It's amazing to me that people expect one of the largest companies on the planet to be capable of doing this with any measure of success.
Meanwhile, there's tons of groups of people who meet under the banner of shared interest, probably right now, right in the town you live in. You can just go do that if that's what you _actually_ want.
I personally don't mind ads, somebody needs to pay for the service and I prefer ada over forced paid for content wasting my time.
I don't mind ads either if they are obvious and targeted (no more penis ads like the early days of the internet). I suspect Meta won't turn on ads for awhile, but when they do, they have one of the biggest ad markets to tap into. I suspect soon enough advertisers will see an additional button in their preferences. Run ads on Instagram and Threads.
Isn't Musk hinting that twitter implemented rate limits because Meta/Threads were scraping them agreaaively?
Tongue-in-cheek response aside, when YouTube managed to trick me into wasting a couple hours with YouTube shorts, my reaction after reflecting on what I just did wasn't to try and make it even better by curating it - instead I blocked YouTube shorts recommendations with my adblocker.
https://www.threads.net/t/CuYdZ_oBX8v/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ...
Seems bearable now.