Mark Zuckerberg Says Social Media Is Over
During testimony at Meta’s antitrust trial, the Facebook founder’s argument was, in so many words, that platforms like his are not what they used to be.
Meta displayed a chart showing that the “percent of time spent viewing content posted by ‘friends’ ” has declined in the past two years, from twenty-two per cent to seventeen per cent on Facebook, and from eleven per cent to seven per cent on Instagram.
Yeah. By their design. If they would allow user control over what shows up in their feed, mine would prioritize friends' content. I'm not the one choosing to turn my feed jnto AI slop based on my alleged interest in the topic.
One of the appeals of Bluesky (for now) is the Followimg feed that presents comments exclusively from people I follow, in chronological order.
Crazy that Facebook can't deliver this anymore
That's not a can't, it's a get-paid-a-shitload-of-money-to-not.
This is exactly why I deleted Facebook and Instagram. It no longer served it’s only purpose.
This is ironic because all the 40 year old chicks who are career users of FB since college, all cite the same justification for continuing to use it: "But all my photos and the current happenings of my friends".
If you showed them epirical data that only 17% of what they consume on the platform is actually even tangentially related to their friends and family, maybe they'd finally decouple themselves from FB.
It’s worse with instagram. I debated switching to Pixelfed at first because no one I know is on it. But then I realized I barely see friends content on insta, so it’s not really different, at least on Pixelfed I don’t see adds and only see posts from people I follow.
I just scrolled Facebook, and out of the 44 posts I came across 10 were from friends or pages I had liked. The rest was sponsored slop, or "you should follow this person" type posts.
No wonder the social interaction is down, when less than a quarter of posts I come across are from the reason to have Facebook.
I'm not friends with corporations, so don't push me their shit.
Prime Facebook was 2007 - 2011/12. When they started algorithm-ing friends posts, that heralded the end. I don't care that I haven't interacted with friend XYZ for a long while, I'm still interested in seeing their stuff equally as much as friend ABC who I interact with daily
Agreed. 1/10 of the posts were from friends for me, and half of those friends posts were from one chronic Facebook acquaintance that I should unfriend.
I went through and unfriended a couple of hundred people that I need not be friends with on the platform anymore recently, and I've got to say I was impressed with how little my real friends actually post to Facebook. It wasn't uncommon to see someone's last post to be well before 2020 on there, over half a decade ago.
It leads me to believe that the concept of pushing out a comment to the Facebook news feed died a long time ago for the average millennial. People still probably comment in groups, but have set up privacy filters that prevent them from being shown publicly. Stories get used more, but it's maybe 5-10 people posting the lions share of them.
Right? 'ZOMG users aren't viewing the contents of their friends!', yeah, because you hide that shit behind ads and promoted content, dumb-ass.
Also if I was just looking at friends’ content, it would be empty haha. Couldn’t scroll infinitely.
I miss when the Instagram homepage showed all your friends’ new posts before it showed recommended stuff. Now it’s all interwoven
It's not even new stuff. Last I had looked (a couple years ago) it would show me friendss posts from last week with no sign of anything new, and I knew they had posted newer things than that. It was completely unusable. I'd see the same stale old posts for days
you've got a point. they're trying to redefine what "friends" are. and they're succeeding.
Yes, his offerings of "social media" are over. And that's great.
You heard it, the robot said we can go outside again.
An opinion from the guy who thinks the metaverse is a viable product? Yeah I'll pass
Mark Zuckerberg Says For-Profit Social Media Is Over
ftfy
Exactly this. "We have maxed out the amount of money we can extract from people and have reached diminishing returns on profitability."
Why can't anyone just create a billion dollar company that makes something people like and then be happy they can consistently earn $200m per year? Maybe ask the people what kinds of features they want and improve the service to increase the value to users once you need something for your staff to do when the product is complete.
Because modest returns don't attract investment, so whoever set it up would have to fund the startup out of pocket and never go public or sell the company off. Not quite impossible, but very unlikely (unless the world changes and investors start getting more sensible about profits).
Yeah, if I was Zuck, I would've left it more or less as it was in the 2010s, and then moved on to making adjunct services to create a Google/Yahoo-like ecosystem. Oh, and open the API so interesting services could be built on it. Instead, they maximized profitability and bought their way to an ecosystem.
He should know, he's the one that put a shotgun in its mouth over a decade ago.
Has been over for a while. Unless you call ads social media. It’s all ads.
Right. They got greedy and made it more shitty for profit. Users left and now its one of these free weekly papers with ads and classified ads. Now they are considering filling the gap of missing user content with AI so it will be a circular system without humans at one point.
He should know, he fucking killed it
Centralized for profit social media should be over.
"Social media is dead, and we killed it."
"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us?"
Killed it, as in they were awesome and won, or as in unalived. The quote by itself could mean either.
It's such an easy fix too. Create a separate wall that only contains your friends' OC (not reshared garbage).
It's about 3 posts per day for someone with 200 friends, but I'd take it.
So... original, unshittified Facebook?
I wonder if a fediverse version of that would resonate with any of my friends and family. Seems like we are where we started with forums, just strangers respectfully taking about their common interests. Social media is indeed dead.
You actually can nearly do that. Facebook inexplicably showed me how a few weeks ago. If a friend reshares something, you'll see it, but it removes all groups, etc. It was stunning how little content actually comes from friends.
On the Facebook site (I'm sure it can be done via app, too, but I didn't look), click on the menu near the top right, then click Feeds (under Social). Then click on Friends on the left.
Wow, is does. Thanks for that
So you going to shut down Facebook right Mark? Right Mark?
I would probably think that too if I ran Facebook.
Yeah I wonder who could possibly be responsible for that... Tis a mystery
May I be the first to say..
Over?
Give me your profits, then.
Washed up trend chaser monopolist wannabe millionaire! Of course your social platforms are over: YOU MADE THEM SHIT!
Good. Social media was only ever the corporate commodified communications platforms.
Social media said Mark Zuckerberg was over and sadly I think neither are right.
It's shitty ass hats like zuck that makes me appreciate Lemmy even more. Its the right amount of social media for me.
Thought this was a press release thing... Like: Social media is dead... Now it's "Meta-media" dabs as crowd collectively faints
Hahaha, not a fast learner... Own it bro, FB is over...
Clearly the solution is to spread more conspiracy theories. People are obviously leaving due to the lack of conspiracy theories.
Well I say Mark Zuckerberg is over.
Bye guys, guess none of us are really here
I think, therefore I am.
"your honor, in my defense my website sucks. like really sucks. like try using it for a good purpose. it is inherently evil."
After the android downloads all the data on the Internet, like a dalek.
Has been for a while. If you look at most recent marketing analysis, numbers weren’t like they were peak pandemic and 2016. It was declining since then, you just chilling with bots mostly.
Don’t threaten me with a good time, Mark.
Did zuck say anything relevant to the market in the past 10+years?
It's a provocation but I'm also kinda curious, with the level of information and consulting he has access to he must be choosing the topics he is relevant about?