
Facebook is worried about users sharing less – but it only has itself to blame - davidbarker
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/19/facebook-users-sharing-less-personal-data-zuckerberg
======
zodPod
I think another thing that is a huge factor is the dilution effecting
interaction. The spam from timeline advertising and the hundred different
pages that everyone is subscribed to throughout the years, I barely see
anything that anyone DOES post anymore. I have something like 175 people on my
"Friends" list and, when I post something, I usually only get a like or two if
that. I've stopped scrolling through my timeline because it's mostly filled
with bull crap that I don't care about from random pages that paid to be in my
face or random pages that I liked 5 years ago and would now rather they just
shut up.

Why would anyone put effort into writing a post out? No one sees it and no one
does anything with it if they do. It's pointless. Like @overcast said, people
are just sick of posting. It used to have a purpose. 50 people would see it,
they'd all like it and comment their opinions on it. Now nothing.

It's still Facebook's fault partially for laying out the groundwork for
Facebook to become total garbage.

~~~
onewaystreet
> I've stopped scrolling through my timeline because it's mostly filled with
> bull crap that I don't care about from random pages that paid to be in my
> face or random pages that I liked 5 years ago

You _can_ unlike things, you know. You can also mute things.

~~~
zodPod
lol I was waiting for this. I probably should've thought of something to say
in response.

Then, what would be on my feed?

No I'm clear that you can but it's still a lot of effort that isn't worth the
lack luster content that still remains.

~~~
Declanomous
It really isn't worth the effort. You need to manually unlike each page
individually. There is no way to unsubscribe from multiple sources
individually.

Once you have unsubscribed, your newsfeed will be wonderfully straightforward.
After a few days it will be cluttered with sponsored likes. I assume this is
however long the batch process takes to catch up.

I only go on Facebook to respond to invites at this point. I stopped going on
because their mobile app is literally the worst software I've ever installed
on my phone though. It's huge and bloated, and it doesn't even include
messaging, which they broke out to another app for god-knows-what reason.

~~~
jkaunisv1
Also the mobile app listens to what you say and targets ads appropriately (and
who knows what else they do with the audio).

~~~
coldpie
This is fascinating. Do you have a source for more information?

~~~
jkaunisv1
Sorry, no. I've just read a couple anecdotes about it online recently. One was
about a TV show in a foreign language playing in the background causing ads in
that language. Another was about a guy talking to a friend about an upcoming
trip to Vegas, then getting ads for Vegas. I've never wanted to install the
app on my phone so I haven't been able to test it myself.

~~~
Declanomous
I started getting ads in Spanish recently and I was totally confused. I've
been watching soccer on Telemundo Deportes recently. I wonder if an app was
listening in. I'll have to see which apps of mine are using the microphone.
I'm guessing it would have to be the standard Google app though, since I don't
have Facebook installed on my phone.

------
robbiemitchell
"You have one identity," he emphasized three times in a single interview with
David Kirkpatrick in his book, "The Facebook Effect." "The days of you having
a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people
you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly." He adds: "Having two
identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity."

source: [http://venturebeat.com/2010/05/13/zuckerberg-
privacy/](http://venturebeat.com/2010/05/13/zuckerberg-privacy/)

~~~
sevenless
That is a troubling quote. Having compartmentalized identities is part of the
human condition, and social websites can't ignore that. It raises questions
about Zuckerberg's own mental state, if he believes it.

~~~
jkeat
This is why Google Plus circles make so much sense.

Most substantive Facebook activity I've seen lately takes place in groups.

~~~
f_allwein
Yes - shame that circles (or G+) didn't really catch on.

You could do vaguely similar things on FB by defining who your close friends
are, bu I doubt many people do that.

------
zxcvvcxz
The attitudes of this company and its founder are becoming more and more
irritating. The other day he started getting more political about immigration
and open boarders [1]. I get it, he's a globalist proposing his own self-
interests. But it doesn't take a genius to see his hypocricy, living in a
gated fortress with private security, being shuttled around various places
occupied exclusively with the 1%.

I predict that Facebook is pretty fucked in about a decade from now. I already
see the demographics tipping - all the younger girls I've dated prefer
Snapchat, and use FB only as a force of habit, and even that's waning. People
closer to my age group don't want to post anything that could possibly damage
their real identity's reputation in anyone's eyes: goodbye interesting
content. Older people who used the internet before 2000 really do see the
value in anonymity and alternate identities and don't see it as "a lack of
integrity" [2]. And let's not forget about clickfarms [3].

It's not going to die like MySpace, but it's not going to be anything special,
either.

[1] - [http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-
valley/telecom/intern...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-
valley/telecom/internet/facebooks-plan-to-connect-the-world-is-not-just-
social-its-political)

[2] - [http://venturebeat.com/2010/05/13/zuckerberg-
privacy/](http://venturebeat.com/2010/05/13/zuckerberg-privacy/)

[3] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag)

~~~
soundwave106
Yes, I can easily see Facebook declining as far as a general social network
goes, unless something changes. Zuckerberg's attitude about not keeping your
public and private life separate really needs to change in this regard -- one
of the big reasons I hear people avoid Facebook is the lack of privacy. Kind
of fitting that Snapchat is the new rising star.

Having said that, right now, Facebook still seems to be one of the dominant
tools for business to consumer communication. (In particular, many small
businesses survive with an online presence of a minimal web page and a
Facebook site for day-to-day updates.) You never know, but unless something
rises to challenge _that_ angle of Facebook, I don't see them going away
anytime soon.

------
sevenless
We may be coming back to the "old internet" mentality where we don't write
anything we wouldn't want on a poster stuck up in a public place.

I'm still astonished by those who use their full names and face pictures on
Twitter, etc. Those opinions you've shared online are stuck to you forever
now.

~~~
tjr
_We may be coming back to the "old internet" mentality where we don't write
anything we wouldn't want on a poster stuck up in a public place._

I'm perplexed that anyone ever left that mentality. As an internet user in the
1990s, that was drilled into me pretty hard.

~~~
tremon
I don't think many "left" that mentality, it's more that many new people
entered the Internet without being properly drilled. In a way, it took society
20 years to learn what we already knew.

------
overcast
It's time to just face the fact that people are just getting completely sick
of posting. It's turned into basically a never ending homework assignment to
keep up with it all. Closing my Facebook account last year was cathartic.

~~~
chris_wot
You think we've hit Peak Facebook?

~~~
overcast
If not, it's getting close. Certainly the original users are getting sick of
it, and the new generation wants nothing to do with it.

~~~
ZenoArrow
That's why Facebook bought Instagram and Whatsapp, and it seems to be working.
Both seem to be popular with the younger generation (as far as I can tell) and
both continue to grow, even under Facebook:

Instagram user stats (acquired around April 2012):

[http://www.statista.com/statistics/253577/number-of-
monthly-...](http://www.statista.com/statistics/253577/number-of-monthly-
active-instagram-users/)

Whatsapp user stats (acquired around Oct 2014):

[http://www.statista.com/statistics/260819/number-of-
monthly-...](http://www.statista.com/statistics/260819/number-of-monthly-
active-whatsapp-users/)

------
golemotron
I've been surprised that Facebook never did anything like Google+ Circles.
People in your family don't need to see everything that your coworkers see,
and your coworkers don't have to see who you are dating.

If Facebook had circles, I'd share more. The fact that they don't makes me
believe that either there's a patent in place, or Facebook has an ideological
position. Something like "we're making the world better by making more
connections and interactions transparent." If that's the case it's both sad
and doomed to failure as "context collapse" shows.

~~~
rimunroe
Facebook's "Circles" are called "Lists", and UX aside, I think Facebook's
Lists are a lot better than Google+'s Circles. I actually got a chance to talk
with some Google+ folks at an event while the beta was still going on, and
asked why I couldn't say "share this post with all the people in my 'friends'
Circle but not with anyone in my 'coworkers' Circle", which is something
Facebook's lists allow you to do quite easily. Their response was that this
wasn't a feature they wanted to add because it didn't serve most people's use
cases.

------
imgabe
I've been using the News Feed Eradicator for Chrome for a while now so I can
still get event invites without getting sucked in to mindlessly surfing the
newsfeed. It's been pretty helpful. I'll still check the feed on the mobile
site on my phone sometimes, but much less than I used to.

At some point it just became people sharing articles so that everyone could
agree with them. There's also a lot of people being outraged about things and
demanding that I also feel outraged about whatever the injustice of the day
is. It gets very tiresome and is mostly a waste of time IMO.

That's not even talking about the clickbait, which I started resolutely
blocking. Whenever a post has a clickbait title I'll choose "Don't show me
posts from this page / site anymore". It cleaned up a lot, but even what's
left just isn't that great in terms of content.

------
randomgyatwork
Imagine someone said, "please go out and toil this field in exchange for some
scraps". You'd certainly say no, but when Facebook makes the offer, its seems
alright to many people.

------
makecheck
The problem with Facebook is the same feeling I get when any random store,
event or web form asks for an E-mail address: “oh great, what unsolicited crap
will you start sending me?”. And it is the same mentality that led to ad-
blocking.

If entities could be trusted not to be total jerks with over-marketing, maybe
people would share and Like things more.

Instead, a simple “Like” is virtually _guaranteed_ to result in new spam.

A very simple thing Facebook could do: _mandate_ that each Page (and even
itself) may not send more than one message per MONTH. Period. And set a
maximum length. Hire some editing people if you must, and make that message
count. Don’t just assume you can send hourly updates to all your “followers”
as if they care more about you than their own families.

------
f_allwein
Really interesting read. I thought myself recently that it would be nice to
have a place where you could read only your friends' updates, but that's not
FB anymore (and hasn't been for a long time).

Then I guess it's more profitable for them to be "the Internet" for as many
people as possible.

Wonder what will be the alternative? Many fragmented social networks? Or one
that's open and does not have commercial interests?

------
aub3bhat
I think a significant amount of interaction has shifted to Instagram and
Snapchat. There is little reason to share anything other than a random
political post on facebook. The only places on facebook where sharing actually
helps, are Open/Semi-open/private groups.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
There are too many niche social networks these days. Aside from those you
mentioned, you have Subreddits and Stack Exchanges for pretty much everything
you could form a community around.

Actually, I think that's Facebook's problem. It's not a community. It's an
interactive contact book. You're expected to add everybody and the
conversation turns to mush.

As the Roman philosopher Seneca said: "To be everywhere is to be nowhere."

------
chris_wot
Given that Facebook makes "mistakes" in removing posts, like the one that
happened to my friend John Dickson [1], is it any wonder folks aren't really
using the platform as much as they used to?

1\. [http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/facebook-
un...](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/facebook-under-
pressure-to-explain-axing-gay-marriage-post/news-
story/d05643b4c37fc03ebef44d7188479dca)

~~~
a_small_island
pay wall

~~~
bunnybender
Google Cache has it:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theaustralian.com.au%2Fnational-
affairs%2Ffacebook-under-pressure-to-explain-axing-gay-marriage-post%2Fnews-
story%2Fd05643b4c37fc03ebef44d7188479dca)

------
tsunamifury
I think its pretty obvious that the majority of users are burned out on
"publishing" their own content and are more than happy to slide back into a
re-professionalized world of super-users and regular consumers.

Where they do want to create their own content is in chat. I dont think this
is a great mystery and FB is very aware of it. Its why Mark kept saying "The
best way to privately share" instead of "Chat" when referring to messenger.

------
Animats
Sharing is spamming.

I'd like to see posts only, and not see "sharing" at all. You can block
sharing on a per-user basis, and I do a lot of that.

------
artpepper
\- I don't trust their privacy settings.

\- Most of my feed is links to stuff elsewhere on the Internet.

\- If I post, I have no idea whether their algorithm will actually show it to
my friends.

\- I get the feeling their algorithm prioritizes posts with images or video
over pure text.

\- Hard to post to subsets of friends. I know you can manage lists, but the UI
is clunky. (And I don't trust their privacy settings.)

------
lowbloodsugar
It is something of a noticeable absence that I'm not "Friends" with my boss
and coworkers, but at the same time, I'm not willing to risk sharing aspects
of my personal life with them. If Facebook would add context, I'd share more.
Otherwise I'd need two separate accounts and I can't be arsed.

