| Point of fact first, twitter does filter tweets via a recommendation algorithm [1]. If you troll through HN you should be able to find threads with people complaining about that too... I assume instagram does too but don't use it and haven't verified [edit: It does https://later.com/blog/how-instagram-algorithm-works/]. > Facebook also shows me content from my "friends"... I opted in to the content from my friends: if I don't like my friends, I can and should unfriend them This is not the service Facebook offers, nor has it ever been. Facebook has forever been about friending everyone you are actually friends with (and then some), and you (or at least the vast vast majority of people) do not want to swallow the entire firehose of content that their facebook friends post. Facebook doesn't want people unfriending people to avoid seeing their content, that's not how the model works - doing so would break all of other facebooks services like acting as a birthday reminder, event planner, and so on and so forth. Even the language is indicative of this, "unfriend" (I don't like you anymore) not "stop showing me these posts" (I don't like what you post). > the entire mechanism of social media to followers is primarily direct communication! On the contrary, the entire mechanism of the majority of successful social media companies is curated communication. As it turns out 99% of everything (e.g. posts) is crap, and people go to the sites where less than 99% of what they see is crap. Types of curation vary, but the existence of it is very consistence. To create some categories: algorithms (facebook, tiktok, youtube, twitter), community upvotes + community moderation (reddit, HN, slashdot), just straight up heavy moderation (many forums, forum.nasaspaceflight.com comes to mind as one that is still going strong). Also worth pointing out that most of these platforms actually mix it up, e.g. youtube, twitter, and facebook all have forms of upvotes, and facebook has forms of community moderation. But if you want direct communication, that exists. I.e. the previously mentioned facebook messenger (which admittedly doesn't do followers) and substack (which is a competitor of sorts that does). Direct communication is not what facebook is offering as their main product (but is what they are offering with messenger), it's never been, and I don't see that you have any right to demand that it becomes what their main product does. [1] (Turn of js to avoid the paywall, this can be done with ublock origin for just this domain by clicking the "</>" button) https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/08/01/twitters... |