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Facebook Social Networks Technology

Facebook Changes Users' Feeds To Look More Like TikTok (bloomberg.com) 59

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Facebook parent Meta Platforms is changing the way it shows users posts and videos on its flagship social network, part of an effort to get people to watch content from accounts they don't already follow and better compete with the video app TikTok. From a report: The main feed on Facebook will now be called "Home," and will be a place for people to "discover new content" that Facebook thinks that they'll like, according to a company blog post. That includes photos and videos selected by software algorithms, which will surface content based on users' interests, from both accounts they follow and those they don't.

The changes will start Thursday, but the majority of the content will still come from accounts users follow, a Meta spokeswoman said. The company plans to increase the new content it shows over time as it improves the recommendation algorithm. A new tab, called "Feeds," will exclusively show posts from friends, family, pages and groups that a person has chosen to follow, with the most recent content at the top. "Your Home tab is uniquely personalized to you," the company explained in its blog. "This system takes into account thousands of signals to help cut through the clutter and rank content in the order we think you will find most valuable."
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Facebook Changes Users' Feeds To Look More Like TikTok More

Facebook Changes Users' Feeds To Look More Like TikTok

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  • ...Facebook is officially dead man walking.

    From the most influential social media service to a mere copy cat...

    Good riddance.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 )

      Remember Myspace?

      They all end up like Myspace.

      That's because social media companies are essentially fads, like music styles and fashions. They come and go. Or rather, unlike music or fashion styles, they come once and go forever - which is one thing they have over disco.

      • I fully expect someone to capitalize on MySpace at some point in 10-15 years when Millennials are in their nostalgic mid life phase. Sort of like how retro games have been resurfaced/remastered for Gen Xers.

      • Facebook will always have the older crowd. The older crowd doesn't switch platforms like the youngsters do.
    • Assuming the summary is correct (I know, I know), this is a great change that I'm going to love. Now I'll be able to ignore all the crap on the "Home" page and only ever look at the "Feeds" page, which will only show the stuff I care about and, most importantly, show it chronologically.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ocker3 ( 1232550 )
        You can still see your feed in chronological order? I lost that option years ago!
        • Yeah, you can if you know where to look. On the desktop site, in the left sidebar, click "See more", then click "Most recent". If you bookmark that URL (https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr), you can always get chronological. On the mobile web site, I think the option is completely gone.

  • The only reason people are still using Facebook was that it doesn't look like that shit.

    But hey, if they really want to piss off the last users they have, more power to them!

    • This. People that want tiktok are on tiktok. But I do not think they actually want to grow their user base. If they did, they would not ban so many of them.
  • I've transformed my FB experience by unfollowing almost everyone and only keeping a handful of people and groups followed. This makes it useful to me without being too addictive or time consuming (an invitation for infinite scrolling). If they take away my ability to control/limit my home screen and experience, I'm gone.

    • Re:Let me control how addictive my experience is. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Tempest_2084 ( 605915 ) on Thursday July 21, 2022 @12:37PM (#62722462)
      I did something similar. I unfriended everyone and unfollowed everyone/thing except for a small handful of businesses and hobby groups. I then stripped out as much info as I could out of my profile. I told my friends that it was nothing personal, but I'm now only using FB as a tool for accessing my hobby and small businesses which only have a FB presence. I'm much much happier now and I stay in touch with my friends in various ways outside of FB.

  • ... to bomb "Facebook lawsuit" search results? Maybe it's 4D chess.

  • In other news, Coke announces that they are going to make Coke taste like Pepsi.

  • Because plenty of people over 20 use Facebook. Talk about aiming at the wrong market. Accept it Zuckerberg, you lost the kids years ago and they're not coming back - stick with the demographic you have and work it for them.

  • So those old people still can't understand it.

  • Utter garbage ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Thursday July 21, 2022 @10:17AM (#62722012) Journal

    Not that this wasn't already true of Facebook, really, for quite a long time. But the idea people using it want to see random video feeds from strangers when they're trying to use it to follow their real friends and family is .... clueless.

    The tik-tokish feeds I've seen offered to me on FB so far have been total time-wasters and generally poor attempts at amateur humor. All I can hope is that this other tab they talk about for your "feed" will filter all of that out completely. I'll just make sure I never look at that "home" page again.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

      But the idea people using it want to see random video feeds from strangers when they're trying to use it to follow their real friends and family is .... clueless.

      I'm fairly sure they're well aware that people don't want it. They just don't care, because it's not their goal to make people using the app happy, their goal is to make advertisers happy.

      So anyone this drives away that was only using Facebook for unprofitable things like "keeping in touch with friends and family" is one less drain on Facebook's resources that they can instead focus on driving the people who remain towards ad-supported content.

      Is this long-term sustainable? I sure hope not! I can only hope

    • But the idea people using it want to see random video feeds from strangers when they're trying to use it to follow their real friends and family is .... clueless.

      This. So much this. Facebook may be trash but the whole point of it was that you see the trash from your friends. If you want to see random videos from random people there are plenty of other platforms for that. It's not even remotely what the people who use Facebook use it for.

      Mind you I see this change on Youtube too. The stupid frigging Youtube shorts full of completely irrelevant uninteresting and poorly made "content" is a blight on that platform. It's worse than their frigging suggestion algorithm

  • I use FB and note TikTok. (Score:4, Informative)

    by John Allsup ( 987 ) <slashdot&chalisque,net> on Thursday July 21, 2022 @10:18AM (#62722020) Homepage Journal

    This reminds me of the old Aesop's Fable about the dog and his bone. I fear Facebook will lose Facebook in its pursuit of being TikTok, and won't become a better TikTok along the way.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • Facebook will lose Facebook in its pursuit of being TikTok

      You always see a silver lining in everything, don't you?

  • Most of the video on facebook is yanked by their own users from other sites, and facebook algos reward people for posting useless and disgusting videos (AFAIK the more disgusting it is the higher ranking it gets).

  • It's dead then .... (Score:5, Informative)

    by JasterBobaMereel ( 1102861 ) on Thursday July 21, 2022 @10:33AM (#62722058)

    ..I only have a facebook account to communicate with people who are not on other platforms ... ...I don't use it to discover content, or watch videos - there are better platforms for that

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Instagram, Twitter, etc. too. I don't want to discover, ads (mobile), etc. Just people I connect to!

    • I'm guessing that you also use Facebook to communicate with *specific* people, not randoms presented to you by algorithm.

  • Telling me what I want... (Score:3)

    by rickb928 ( 945187 ) on Thursday July 21, 2022 @10:40AM (#62722078) Homepage Journal

    Yeah, I read a book about this years ago. It was, back then, unsettling in its frightening depiction of society too much like mine, devolving into abject failure, and taking its citizens with it.

    I think I may have to start pruning my Facebook preferences, cutting out 'friends' that I barely know or have connection to.

    And I saw this new video stream concept starting the other day. It's stupid, shows me things I have no idea of the connection to me or my life, and are of no relevance to me. Ugh. They are winning, I'm getting less and less interested in Facebook. Not a win for them, unless, by chance they are actually trying tp oget users like me to self-deport...

  • Facebook parent Meta Platforms is changing the way it shows users posts and videos on its flagship social network

    The normal phrase that describes the real reality is:

    "Facebook is changing the way it shoes users posts and videos"

    That's it. No Meta, no parent company, no flagship social network. It's all Facebook.

  • Seems desperate

  • Never mind that users want to view it the way they want to view it, and that we're on fecesplant, they want us to be on tiktok.

    And if we don't WANT to be on tiktok? And if we just want to hang out with friends, and not "discover personalized new content"?

  • I installed the Facebook Purity extension years ago so that on desktop I literally only see posts by friends and subscribed pages/groups, and I annually cull my friends down to under 100 people. By only ever using my phone for responding to alerts and messenger and doing the 'scroll/read/comment' on desktop Facebook has actually been a pleasant user experience for me.
  • The only reason I'm on Facebook is to connect with my circle of friends. I do not want to see people I don't know. I can go to TikTok or Instagram for that. Facebook is a slowly dying service.

  • Screw whoever wrote the original code for that AND the horse they rode in on.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by OzPeter ( 195038 )

      Screw whoever wrote the original code for that AND the horse they rode in on.

      There has been a PSA for it for literally a decade: Vertical Video Syndrome A PSA [youtube.com]

      • I've come to the conclusion that the people/companies/products that push portrait orientation and prevent landscape orientation have studied Plato's Cave.

    • That ship has sailed. Vertical videos are the standard now. Expect to see it in theaters and on blu-ray releases soon. Maybe the drive for 16:10 and now the drive for 2:8 will average out and we'll end up back at 4:3 where we should be.

  • Tabs (Score:2)

    by jythie ( 914043 )
    So, it kinda sounds like what they are doing is splitting the home feed into two tabs, one that is tik-tok like in that it presents media it thinks you might want to view, and the other is a more dedicated 'news feed' where you see posts by friends and groups and such. If this is actually the case, I am actually pleased with this. I am not interested in the media end of FB so relegating it to a seperate interface that you can engage or ignore seems like a good thing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )

      one that is tik-tok like in that it presents media it thinks you might want to view, and the other is a more dedicated 'news feed' where you see posts by friends and groups and such

      For now.

  • Yes I have a FB account, no I am not ditching it.

    When facebook suggests things that it thinks I should look at, I simply flag those posts as being inappropriate. If FB is going to waste my time, then I am going to return the favor.

    This is really a problem when podunk groups all around the world are advertising events that are at best regional, yet have the entire country set as the target for their ads.

  • So Facebook learned nothing from Twitters attempt to do this and the massive backlash from users?

    Most users dont want algorithm-driven “content discovery”, most users want the content they find for themselves and subscribe to - but Im betting theres no way to set “Feeds” as the default tab. So most users are going to hate this change.

  • and use their mobile site, m.facebook.com Less garbage on your phone.

  • Hey Facebook,

    We don't want to see shit in the feeds of people we don't follow. Thats why we don't follow them.

    Love, Everyone.

  • I don't go to facebook to find "new content". I go to Facebook to see what my family and friends have been up to, smile at cat videos, and laugh at my idiotic relatives' bullshit political views. I don't give two shits about the latest dance, some moronic "reaction" video, or what Kim Kardashian has been up to lately.

    • My kingdom for a modpoint. How does Facebook not know what Facebook is or how Facebook is used? I thought they employed 1000s of people who specialise in analytics.

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