[HN Gopher] The Facebook Text Prompt Zombie Land ___________________________________________________________________ The Facebook Text Prompt Zombie Land Author : skilled Score : 78 points Date : 2022-01-14 17:56 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.garbageday.email) (TXT) w3m dump (www.garbageday.email) | azinman2 wrote: | Wonder if there's any value in a 3rd party curation of Facebook | to just give me meaningful updates from friends... aka the | original usage. No links, no politics, just family pics, | announcements, etc. I'd love to get a weekly digest to my email! | gfody wrote: | I'd be interested in that, ideally not a third party but a | custom client that filters everything not from friends and | sticks to chronological order. | Tenoke wrote: | Have you tried the popular extensions like FB Purity[0]? As | far as I know there's plenty of options that do what you want | unless they've been broken by Facebook recently? | | I haven't tried them in a long time since I do want to see | posts by pages and groups I'm in (why else would I follow | them), and don't see any of the stuff people typically | complain about anyway. | | 0. https://www.fbpurity.com/ | gfody wrote: | I really only use the native ios app and figured anything | that did what I want would be taken down for violating some | tos | lupire wrote: | fraidyc.at | | http://fraidyc.at | throwawayboise wrote: | > just family pics, announcements, etc | | Easy to do with email. Why do you need Facebook at all if those | are your objectives? | nradov wrote: | It's hardly easy with email. Keeping an up to date list of | working addresses becomes a huge hassle once you get beyond a | few people. I remember trying that in the days before | Facebook and every time I sent a message it would bounce for | some recipients. | hoten wrote: | You won't get everyone in your family to move from social | media to a family mailing list. | | But a third party app that forwarded fb updates to a mailing | list ... That's something I'd pay for. | superfrank wrote: | Push vs pull or passive vs active. | | If I post a picture of my dog on Facebook and my child's | teacher sees, that feels normal since they just kind of | happen upon it. If I send them an email with a picture of my | dog, that feels like I'm over stepping a bit. | fullshark wrote: | It won't be friends, just 5-10 people you connected with 10 | years ago who still use the platform religiously producing the | content. | narrator wrote: | The ads for games in my feeds are like this guy's viral text. | They show someone failing at a very simple puzzle game and say, | "millions have tried, few have succeeded!" this is just bait for | boomers to play the very easy game and prove to themselves that | their brains aren't slowly rotting away. | mrguyorama wrote: | Calling what Rick Lax does "magic" is pretty damn generous. He | makes fake videos that are hyper produced. Think 5-minute crafts | and friends. | | Also pretty fitting to have this article sponsored by an NFT | "product" that claims to be a "troll on the perfume industry". | What even? | bredren wrote: | > There should be no illusions anymore about what Facebook is, as | a platform. It's just random bits of sensory information meant to | make old people fight with each other | | Oof. Engagement around conflict works at all age ranges though. | Controversial statements by eSports casters drives posts on | Reddit, NIMBY comments on NextDoor, etc. | | I suspect the tone of this comment is to suggest the platform's | algorithms did a better job mixing in rich content and focusing | attention on more interesting, less conflict-laden viral media? | verall wrote: | > Engagement around conflict works at all age ranges though. | | It certainly does, but content like that is described in the | article, is clearly aimed a less internet-savvy crowd. Maybe | the same crowd that didn't grow up with internet trolls and | have copious free time and are at the highest risk for | contracting plague, so they are especially juicy targets for | online engagement vampires. | allenu wrote: | > Engagement around conflict works at all age ranges though. | | I've noticed that the best way to get people to engage in a | problem is to state an opinion that is so obviously wrong. | People go out of their way to tell you that it's wrong and what | their opinion is. If you post something that's sort of wrong, | partially right, or probably right, people won't lift a finger. | | Try this with your next code review! :D Do something the wrong | way and everyone wants to correct you. I've noticed after I've | corrected such a problem, people are silent about the rest of | the code review, or get lazy about finishing it. | nomorecommas wrote: | Until proven otherwise, assume every socmed account is a bot. | ChrisClark wrote: | You're a bot, I'm a bot, we're all bots. Are any humans left | alive on Earth, or are they all still stuck in the 2020s | simulation? | danlugo92 wrote: | beep bop beep bop | kevinventullo wrote: | Reminds me of "There Will Come Soft Rains" | brink wrote: | I don't think it's fair calling it "boomer bait". I see people | from every generation commenting on them. | chizhik-pyzhik wrote: | Reminds me of the article about "internet chum" on The Awl: | https://www.theawl.com/2015/06/a-complete-taxonomy-of-intern... | cblconfederate wrote: | It's hilarious to me that the author pretends we should have | higher standards of facebook. Hey do you know how much facebook | paid for the content they publish? You know what you get for $0 ? | Nothing or less than nothing. And it s not just facebook, all of | them are selling attention, not content. As long as users are not | compensated for their content, the audience will be fed with | trash | rightbyte wrote: | > As long as users are not compensated for their content, the | audience will be fed with trash | | Not really. On the opposite. If there is no money to be made | there is no ad harvesting bullshit to be made. | vanilla_nut wrote: | I mean, plenty of people write blogs for no compensation | whatsoever (usually paying some token fees for hosting and | domains, making it a net _expense_ ). Just because content is | free doesn't mean it has to be bad. | cblconfederate wrote: | It's their blogs, they don't do unpaid work for facebook | xmprt wrote: | Exactly. I've seen plenty of YouTube videos that are | excellent despite being made by tiny channels of just a few | 100 or 1000 subscribers. Same goes for a lot of the posts on | Hackernews. And TikTok has a massive userbase that's still | growing because even if it's not healthy for you, at least | the content on the platform is good. Facebook is both | unhealthy and bad content. Every time I scroll through, it | feels like I'm torturing myself a little. | brendoelfrendo wrote: | They mention investigating another viral post farm back in | November, which was discussed on HN here: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29309201 | | Link to the November post: https://www.garbageday.email/p/when- | the-traffic-firehose-is-... | | All roads to monetization require engagement, so you just end up | with groups that churn out "bait" like this. | barbazoo wrote: | Excuse my ignorance but how do they make money with this? Ads | associated with their posts? | brendoelfrendo wrote: | Video ads is one, branded sponsorships is another (not sure if | this page engages in that). Looks like Facebook also offers | subscriptions and a "tip jar"-type feature: | https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/lessons/how-make-mon... | mysterydip wrote: | That's what I've been trying to figure out. So you have a | million comments and a hundred thousand shares, is that just | internet points? There has to be some financial compensation | I'm not seeing. | Ozzie_osman wrote: | Once you build enough reach, you can sell branded posts, drive | traffic to websites monetized by ads, or upload videos that can | be monetized. | kevincox wrote: | Yes. Once you have an audience just start selling sponsored | posts. | rossdavidh wrote: | Somewhat related to the "dead internet theory", but in this case | one side of the relationship is just not quite dead yet. | pimlottc wrote: | I love that the author complains about another popular Facebook | page that's using engagement bait to push a dropshopping | affiliate program, while their own blog post has a sponsored ad | for NFT perfume. | lupire wrote: | The ad and the liked opensea blurb openly call itself a | troll... it's not trying to pretend to be anything serious. | jonathankoren wrote: | Isn't that NFT perfume sarcasm? | brendoelfrendo wrote: | Yeah, what's even the point of the NFT at that point? It's like | saying "if you buy a Cracker Jack card, we'll give you a box of | Cracker Jacks!" | | Who's going to buy an NFT that gives comes with a physical | product on the secondary market? Unless that business will only | sell to NFT holders in perpetuity, which sounds like a poor way | to grow a business but hey, lots of things are successful by | being exclusive. | lupire wrote: | It's just bonus incentive for the first owner. It's clearly | not _worse_ than the NFT without the add-on. | | > Unless that business will only sell to NFT holders in | perpetuity | | That's what BAYC does. Then you open a next tier NFT line to | expand down-market. | xmprt wrote: | At this point, the only reason I can think of is VC funding. | But I also don't know why VCs don't see through this | bullshit... They're supposed to be smart right? Even if | they're shotgun investing and hoping that one company goes | 100x, I can say with absolute certainty that this company is | either going to fold or get rid of the NFT aspect of the | business in the next 5 years. What's the point of investing | in a company like that? | lupire wrote: | You don't need VC to sell a NFT digital picture. There is | no cost. | VHRanger wrote: | VCs dont care that a product is bullshit as long as they | can sell it for more to someone else ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-14 23:00 UTC)