alt Hacker NewsTo keep people engaged, social media platforms have shifted from showing you content from people you know to prioritizing viral content. The algorithms know viral content offers an endless stream of entertainment that keeps people scrolling longer.
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Smalltalker-80 • today at 11:15 AM
Like the writer I'm also a 'boomer' still keeping connected to an older friend group using Facebook and Instagram. For Facebook, I use the plugin "FB Purity" to filter out the generated cr*p posts and force chronological order. It's shocking too see how few posts are left, by agressive algorithm filtering and FB then deciding that "You're all caught up", refusing to show more posts. So my FB time is about 20 seconds every day...
"Viral content" got nerfed to oblivion in 2013-2014 something when Facebook made companies pay up for group exposure. (Promoted post)
Before that a popular article could be shared among different friends networks to like total exposure to like everyone logged in that were somewhat interested in the article.
I was kinda a journalist then it was a really obvious flip.