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0 pointsAJ0079y ago0 comments

Yeah anecdotally, my in app time for Snapchat vs Instagram flipped once they changed the feed. Twitter was even worse, I don't use it anymore. How insane would it be if your email inbox didn't sort chronologically?

I don't know what cohorts Facebook is looking at. Are they seeing a drop in engagement but balance it doesn't matter because of the revenue stream from advertisers? Or may be the bulk of users have increased engagement with a non-chronological feed? Perhaps more users than I realized follow over 1,000 users and the chronology value was lost a very long time ago.

Oddly enough I'm finding myself returning back to RSS feeds. Lots of excellent independent bloggers still out there who actually write useful things. edit: and photographers.

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4 comments · 1 top-level

sbarre9y ago· 3 in thread

I never understood why they couldn't just give people the option to retain the chronological sorting.. It can't possibly be that difficult to give users the choice.

niftich9y ago

Moving the feed from 'chronological' to 'algorithmic' obfuscates the true quantity of actual content on the your timeline, thereby allowing a higher density of ads and other sponsored content without you necessarily being able to tell or prove.

I hypothesized about other benefits and drawbacks here [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12190724

tedmiston9y ago

This lets them experiment with showing ads at the most optimal times. I don't believe the new feed is about anything other than ad money.

madeofpalk9y ago

I don't understand this. I already see ads every n posts - why would non-chronological timeline change this?

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