This perspective rings true to me, on a platform’s decay from Steve Troughton-Smith:
Threads has the same problem all of Meta’s social media properties have: nobody really wants to be on them. That social graph may be the company’s crown jewels, but there’s a clear sense of decay, a radioactive half-life to Facebook, Instagram, et al that portends doom
@manton — There's a funny reflection on it that I feel that stuff on Facebook / Instagram always makes me want to click on it, but when I do, I end up feeling slightly worse, where my favourite platforms make me feel like I'm being recommended stuff because it's interesting rather than shiny, and I end up feeling slightly better, more informed, or challenged in a way that I didn't expect to be.
@paulca That’s my experience too. We sometimes can’t tell if we’re being gamed, but maybe at some level we know we were just sucked into a bunch of performance pieces / viral posts that have little value except as advertising fuel.
@manton — Yeah. It's definitely a frog-boil. Then one day you experience a new thing that's jank-free and it's like "shit"
@manton I’m skeptical. A person on Mastodon says people don’t like Facebook. This seems like the picture of confirmation bias.
However, I’ve posted a query on my Facebook profile (I’m still very active there) and I’m curious how people respond.
@manton Slightly different to me are the Facebook groups, especially the closed groups which have strict rules that are enforced by the moderators. Things tend to be more on-message there, and trolls are kicked off without fail. The recommendations by Facebook are clearly different and can easily be ignored.
On Facebook proper and Instagram, yes it’s chaos and doom scrolling galore. I’m not on Threads, since I don’t know why I should be. I’m not an influencer, nor ever want to become one.