[nimih]

Part of the reason that I, personally, hate algorithmic feeds is precisely because I end up spending more time staring at them. With a chronological feed, as soon as I see a post I've seen before[1], it's very easy for me to put down the phone and get back to work (or, if I'm not on the clock, otherwise find a way to spend my time which is actually enjoyable and rewarding). Whereas with an algorithmic feed, I find it very hard to stop scrolling, even when I see a repeat post or decide that my time would be better spent elsewhere.

So, I have no doubt that Facebook's usage metrics are substantially worse with a chronological feed: my own experience is that they are wildly more addictive for me, and I see no reason to believe that I'm unique in that regard.

[1] And even before that point, it seems to be easier to spend less time staring at the social media website, although that's more of a vague feeling I have without anything quantitative to back it up.

[monkeydreams]

One of the biggest frustrations I had with Twitter is those periodic decisions to swap my feed back to algorithmic. I would always find myself staring at a tweet I had seen before but which was hugely popular, or at something from some celeb I'm supposed to give a shit about.

[bluefirebrand]

I strongly agree with this.

It is extremely unfair to conclude "people spent more time looking at this, so they must have enjoyed it more!" When you've designed something to generate infinite interesting new stuff for people to look at