Your friends are boring
Social Media platforms don't want to show us news from our own friends anymore
Facebook
This morning I logged into Facebook to post some photos from a recent friends wedding that I took. As you do, I ended up getting distracted scrolling instead of doing what I was supposed to do, which was post my friends wedding pictures to my Seeby Photography Facebook page.
After a while, I realised I was being shown a bunch of crap that was getting me worked up (war in Gaza, trashy influencers doing outrageous things, USA political antics), but that I hadn’t seen ANY updates from my friends and family at all - which is what Facebook USED to be about.
So I decided to start actually counting the posts vs. mindlessly scrolling , and I was pretty shocked. As I scrolled, I counted 41 posts in a ROW that were either from people I weren’t following but who were going “viral”, or advertisements.
It took scrolling past 42 posts before I saw a post from a friend or family member.
Subconsciously I knew things were bad, but I didn’t really know how bad it’s gotten!
I was hopelessly addicted to Facebook in the “use it on a computer” era from 2004 to 2015. I spent 11 years being a busy-body, catching up with all my friends and families news (in the days when that’s what Facebook used to show you), but somehow I don’t remember any of it. Scrolling is like the movie “Click” where you fast forward through your life, then suddenly you wake up and you’re old.
Then one day I just got sick of Facebook, and basically didn’t use it for 10 years. It’s only in the last year I’ve started logging back in to engage a little bit and post my photography and reach out to old friends.
Instagram
After Facebook came Instagram. In 2015 I picked up photography, and Instagram seemed to be the home of photographs and people like me rather than the land of Facebook gossip.
I’ve spent a lot of time on Instagram over the last decade. Probably way too much. And again, if you ask me what it was that I saw I learned, I honestly can’t tell you.
I do love memes, and I love news, so Instagram is a great distraction, but like Facebook I feel that I’m coming to the end of my enjoyment of it.
And like Facebook, the poison is that Instagram no longer shows me what I want to see, but what they think I might see, might enrage me or engage me, and what I’ll forward to people.
When Instagram was first set up, if you only followed one person, that person’s pictures were all you saw. You could reach the end of your feed and be “done” with your catch ups and scrolling for the day.
But Meta Corp doesn’t want you to be “done” with scrolling. So then came the Instagram Explore page, then came the endless feed, then came the feed of not your friends pictures, but anyone account with the right “virality”.
Take me back to the OLD instagram!
TikTok
Recently, I’ve gotten into TikTok, and one of the things I like about TikTok is you can select a feed that’s only your friends, and then get to the end of it! Just like old times, then when you’re done, you can go back to seeing everyone on TikTok if you want to.
Start Again I say
I’m fantasising about one day creating a social media platform where I’m only shown news and information from exactly the accounts I follow, and no-one else. With maybe 10% advertising to pay for it.
Meta corp has gone 95% junk posts, and maybe one day everyone will just wake up and leave.