The Problem With Facebook

The problem is much worse than I originally thought.
Share this on Facebook
Facebook is a complex ecosystem of individuals, creators, brands and advertisers, but I don't think it serves any of these groups particularly well because its top priority is to make money.

This business plan backfires because 1) not all entities ARE advertisers and 2) it was the content from these people, specifically friends, family, and creators that made the site worth visiting in the first place. Now the incentives are misaligned:
- individuals want to see great content, but they are now seeing more paid content and organically shared content which appeals to the lowest common denominator
- creators want to reach fans but their posts are being throttled to force them to pay to be seen
- brands and advertisers have to pay once to advertise their page on Facebook, and then pay again to reach the people who have already liked their page.

… Read more ›

<iframe src="https://www.snotr.com/embed/17227" width="400" height="330" frameborder="0"></iframe>

People who liked this video also liked

Comments

14 comments posted so far. Login to add a comment.

Expand all comments

62

+7 1. fjwjr commented 8 years ago

This has been apparent for a while. If you actively send birthday wishes to everyone as they come up, you'll see that after you do, content from those people shows up for a while and then disappears.

54

+23 2. loadrunner commented 8 years ago

Not going to facebook solves the problem.

43

+5 3. MindTrick commented 8 years ago

#2 actually no, it doesn't. Even if you chose to not visit facebook, the problem is still there. What you were trying to say was that you can easily avoid the problem by not going to facebook. Two different meanings and things there

41

+11 4. ughlah commented 8 years ago

Actually, yes it does. The more people leave sites that have rulesets or behaviour that is disliked, the more force is built up to change this.

50

+5 5. 01nvr commented 8 years ago

I have definitely noticed this lately, I barely seem to see any 'original' posts from my friends on my newsfeed, instead my news feed has just come a wash of people 'liking' company videos and posts.

47

+5 6. Cyrille commented 8 years ago

Well, the business models of Youtube or even Facebook is not that bad compared to academic publishing companies.
For those who are unfamiliar with this world, researchers have to pay publishing companies to get their work published, and also pay those companies to get access to the work of other. And of course, you are not getting paid for that, since you had to abandon your copyrights on the said work.
That's one of the main reasons why I left research.

34

+3 7. huldu commented 8 years ago

I haven't been on facebook for I don't even know how long, probably close to a decade by now. I couldn't be happier.

59

+11 8. Burimi commented 8 years ago

Behind every successful life, there is a deactivated Facebook account.

45

+1 9. snotraddict commented 8 years ago

I too noticed this a while ago and started to look into it. There is a lot of crap but I noticed I was only seeing content from a handful of "Friends", shameful if you ask me.

Interesting stat I heard today, 85% of on-line advertising goes to Google and Facebook.

43

+1 10. MindTrick commented 8 years ago

Im a little bit amazed that a site made such a negative impact on peoples life that their life quality actually degraded. I mean, if you are having feelings towards the fact you're not using a certain website, and take some sort of pride in it, or joy, where does that come from? im really askin

41

+3 11. ughlah commented 8 years ago

#10 Have you never suffered from addictive behaviour, even in mild forms? Coming home, turning on the tele and hitting the couch, even while the weather outside is awesome, just because you do that every day. Having a headache after drinking too much the night before.

People usually take pride in overcoming behaviour like that. Same with the Facebook.

Cyrille, i wish i could upvote you more. Could have been my comment and annoys the hell out of me.

42

0 12. drunkmonk commented 8 years ago

Still there's China.

43

+1 13. MindTrick commented 8 years ago

#11 actually, not to the point where i felt relieved or happy to get away from it, no. (or vica versa, i never felt sad because i felt i "had to" visit) I have used lots of sites through my times, but i never was "Yes, finally, i got away!". I'm just thinking that its not the site thats the problem. Some people praise themselves for not being facebook users, or twitter, or any other "popular" site. As its some sort of... i dunno, lacking word...

edit: might add my usage: I only go to FB to send messages, or post something funny or maybe check something that someone has told me they posted. I dont sit and scroll and scroll to wait for something special or anything. I dunno, what do you other people expect or want from a site like that?

54

+1 14. ringmaster commented 8 years ago

I find it annoying that I get news about something that I can't comment on, nor give an emotion about. Just because one of my friends interacted with it.