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Comment by kragen | Hacker News Reader

That's the opposite of what Facebook notoriously found—but, either way, is maximizing long-term engagement in the best interest of the users?

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> That's the opposite of what Facebook notoriously found

Consider that Facebook's conclusions are why they don't have anything remotely as successful as TikTok, for engagement.

> in the best interest of the users?

I don't understand this. Is this some moral motive? TikTok is an independent for profit company that has a product with better engagement than any other in the world. Within that context, yes, it's in the best interest for the user, measured by engagement.

Exactly, let’s not forget that Facebook is currently losing users. A shrinking business.

You cannot answer the question of whether maximizing engagement with TikTok is in the best interest of the user by pointing out that maximizing engagement maximizes engagement.

I was answering in the context of video watching, where “interest” is literally how interested the videos are to the person, which could be measured as a global max of long term engagement.

As I said, I don’t understand the question. To understand I would be to know what “best interest” means to you, and in what specific context?

Facebook is kinda dead now proves the point

False. Facebook continues to grow.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...

That's not growth, it's just logged in users navigating the web and FB counting anybody that hits their APIs. Facebook is dead.

Growth can be gained from the shape of the graph.

Sure, you can buy the lies you want

3b monthly users would mean nearly half of the entire world's population is on Facebook at least once per month. No matter how you shake it, that's simply not a realistic number, even before you consider people that live in areas with no internet, or regimes that disallow sites like Facebook, children too young to even possibly use Facebook, so on.

It wouldn't surprise me if the total number of real users, not counting bots and alt accounts, is probably ~1b or less.

HN lives in a bubble. Almost everyone I know uses FB daily. These are legal numbers and shouldn’t be too much off.

also a difference for approaches, possibly, for maximizing engagement (commenting) versus maximizing time on app

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