6 ms·

My facebook timeline is the worst of all social networks. I unfollowed 90% of my friends that I don't care about, so it has very little data to show me, but ins

by hudell 11y ago

My facebook timeline is the worst of all social networks. I unfollowed 90% of my friends that I don't care about, so it has very little data to show me, but instead of showing all of the content of those users, it still filters out most stuff by whatever criteria they use, so I often go days with the same content being shown on the top of my timeline (and missing a lot of posts that I actually wanted to see). Setting the feed to "Most Recent" usually gives better content, but the option unsets itself every other day.

gs7 11y ago
Here's a tip: bookmark https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr and you will always see the most recent feed. I've been using this for months now and it hasn't unset the most recent setting yet.
- 1024core 11y ago
  But what about the app?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - gs7 11y ago
    Sadly I haven't figured out how to do this in the app yet :(
    - aneidon 11y ago
      I've switched to using the mobile web version. I personally find it much more responsive, and Facebook can't bug me with notifications anymore ;)
  - pconner 11y ago
    It's accessible from the Android app as a list (called "Most Recent"), from the same menu where you can access your timeline or the app settings.
- Turbo_hedgehog 11y ago
  Is it just me or has the recent feed recently started showing things from friends of friends that my friends like and comment when it didn't before? Or is my memory faulty?
  - 88e282102ae2e5b 11y ago
    Yes, I have had this feeling too. So many likes about people I've never heard of. Seriously degrades the quality.
  - avalexandrov 11y ago
    Yes, my feed has been like that for the past 2 months. It's one of the reasons I haven't logged in for 20 days now. I still use the Messenger app, tho.
harryf 11y ago
You get me thinking about side projects... http://getstream.io http://getstream.io provides Twitter-like feeds as a service. For personal use wonder if it's possible to build a better newsfeed that Facebooks on top of the same content?
- ethanbond 11y ago
  Jesus I really wish they had a few lowercase characters on their site. I feel verbally assaulted.
  - corobo 11y ago
    Especially the testimonials. I can't help but read them in a classic cartoon dumb guy voice
Zikes 11y ago
Whatever the underlying algorithm, the fact that it will continue to show you the same things when new content is available is by far the biggest failing. Surely they should prioritize fresh/unseen posts above all.
JoBrad 11y ago
Robert Scoble has some great tips that have worked for me. I'd recommend checking them out. http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/robert-scobles-22-tips-better-facebook-engagement-164995 http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/robert-scobles-22-tips...
- hudell 11y ago
  Those tips seem great to increase the reach of your own posts on facebook, but I believe you'll also see a lot more unwanted content on your timeline if you do that. Not really what I'm looking for.
  - JoBrad 11y ago
    I've tried some of these, and they do improve the quality of your newsfeed. Basically, they tell Facebook what kinds of posts and which people you are most interested in seeing.
mortenjorck 11y ago
There are two things, one trivial and one non-trivial, that would vastly improve the feed for me (and I imagine for a certain cohort of which I am a member): The trivial one: Allow me to turn off all links. All of them, globally. I don't care about the news article you just saw that reinforces your political views; I don't care about the clickbait editorial you just read; I don't even care about the moderately interesting piece you just shared because I probably already saw it on Twitter. No links. Just the pictures and status updates like before the age of inline expand. The non-trivial one: Allow me to turn off all images with text in them. Why? Because these are, with stunningly high frequency, visual versions of the same political-view-reinforcement article links. I already know if a friend or family member identifies as a liberal or a conservative. I don't need a regular stream of smug SomeEECards or Memegenerator pictures to remind me. On the technical side, there's clearly some fuzziness, but I have to think simply detecting the presence of text would be a comparatively simple task to what else Facebook's deep learning systems do.
- dankoss 11y ago
  What you are describing is basically Instagram. No "sharing" or "reposting" other content, only original posts from friends. Some have found ways around that but it's not the default. I'm not familiar with Snapchat but I expect they have a similar mechanic. It seems like the newer social networks are avoiding the problems caused by virality, and getting back to the original reason we wanted to join social networks: to see what our friends are up to.
  - ethanbond 11y ago
    Instagram has no links...
  - randycupertino 11y ago
    Interesting, a bunch of my instagram friends use it to share memes and reposts. Facebook seems to have more "personal" photos whereas instagram seems to be (at least amongst my friends) more of where they share cute random images or pictures of celebs, what bands they like, etc.
  - deleted 11y ago
Jordrok 11y ago
I wonder if part of the problem is that the news feed must always show the user SOMETHING, even when there may not be many recent posts that are particularly relevant for that user. The only variable that changes based on the "relevancy" score of a post is its position in the news feed, so one day the top post in your newsfeed may be "President Shot! Country in Chaos!", but on a different day when things are slow it will be "A Woman Tries To Sell A Fish. You Won't Believe What Happens Next!" (courtesy of http://community.usvsth3m.com/generator/clickbait-headline-generator http://community.usvsth3m.com/generator/clickbait-headline-g...). Basically, the newsfeed only has one "volume" - a constant drone. Combine that with the sometimes-relevant accuracy rate of the algorithm and a bottomless well of junk posts to draw from and you have a recipe for a constantly mediocre experience.
cnp 11y ago
I noticed recently that FB introduced a "configure your feed" utility. When I clicked into it, it appears as though it algorithmically determines the people who you most want to see content from, from highest probability to lowest. Interestingly, all of the interesting groups and news organizations and the like -- the stuff I care about -- was at the very bottom. I moved all of that stuff to the top and it fixed my feed for the most part. But that said, there is no substitute for a fixed "most recent first" setting that doesn't reset, and frankly, the fact that it DOES reset is extremely creepy and leads me to use facebook much less often that I would otherwise.
jmspring 11y ago
Every social network so far has eventually faltered. FB is certainly way bigger (and way more invasive), but usability issues like the feed may see it stumble.
blue11 11y ago
After unfollowing 90% of the people, I had a different problem. Facebook kept filling my news feed with "X liked this" or "X commented on this" from the remaining 10%. It seems that one of the goals of the news feed algorithm is to make sure that you are always seeing new content. This became really annoying really fast. So I ended up unfollowing 100% of my friends, than created a group containing the ones that I really cared about. Now my news feed is practically empty. It takes me one extra click/touch to get to the new "feed". The benefit of doing this is that in the group feed there are no "X liked this" items, only posts by my friends or posts in which they were tagged. Of course, at any time FB can decide to change the group feeds to make them similar to the news feed, but for now this setup kind of works for me.
- will_pseudonym 11y ago
  YES! I have the same problem (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10849984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10849984). I solved it by being OK with it, but I think that a browser extension would solve this issue pretty quickly, if I knew how to do it. Delete any element on facebook.com* that contains "* liked ". I can do it manually, I just don't know the Chrome extension world at all.
  - jakobloekke 11y ago
    "Solved it by being ok with it" is my favourite quote of today!
    - will_pseudonym 11y ago
      <3 Thanks for that! It's an amazing way to solve problems, especially if your normal way of existence is to be frustrated by awful products in every angle of your POV :)
    - CodeCube 11y ago
      Totally zen :) I mostlynlearnednto be with it, with one exception. Anyone I see a share from a radio station, I block that radio station's page. 9 times out of 10, they only share insipid memes ... And my feed quality has improved significantly.
peteretep 11y ago
I added a whole bunch of my friends from the programming community I'm part of, and generally I have interesting stuff to look at.

by hudell 11y ago

gs7 11y ago

Here's a tip: bookmark https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr and you will always see the most recent feed. I've been using this for months now and it hasn't unset the most recent setting yet.

1024core 11y ago
But what about the app?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- gs7 11y ago
  Sadly I haven't figured out how to do this in the app yet :(
  - aneidon 11y ago
    I've switched to using the mobile web version. I personally find it much more responsive, and Facebook can't bug me with notifications anymore ;)
- pconner 11y ago
  It's accessible from the Android app as a list (called "Most Recent"), from the same menu where you can access your timeline or the app settings.
Turbo_hedgehog 11y ago
Is it just me or has the recent feed recently started showing things from friends of friends that my friends like and comment when it didn't before? Or is my memory faulty?
- 88e282102ae2e5b 11y ago
  Yes, I have had this feeling too. So many likes about people I've never heard of. Seriously degrades the quality.
- avalexandrov 11y ago
  Yes, my feed has been like that for the past 2 months. It's one of the reasons I haven't logged in for 20 days now. I still use the Messenger app, tho.

harryf 11y ago

You get me thinking about side projects... http://getstream.io http://getstream.io provides Twitter-like feeds as a service. For personal use wonder if it's possible to build a better newsfeed that Facebooks on top of the same content?

ethanbond 11y ago
Jesus I really wish they had a few lowercase characters on their site. I feel verbally assaulted.
- corobo 11y ago
  Especially the testimonials. I can't help but read them in a classic cartoon dumb guy voice

Zikes 11y ago

Whatever the underlying algorithm, the fact that it will continue to show you the same things when new content is available is by far the biggest failing. Surely they should prioritize fresh/unseen posts above all.

JoBrad 11y ago

Robert Scoble has some great tips that have worked for me. I'd recommend checking them out. http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/robert-scobles-22-tips-better-facebook-engagement-164995 http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/robert-scobles-22-tips...

hudell 11y ago
Those tips seem great to increase the reach of your own posts on facebook, but I believe you'll also see a lot more unwanted content on your timeline if you do that. Not really what I'm looking for.
- JoBrad 11y ago
  I've tried some of these, and they do improve the quality of your newsfeed. Basically, they tell Facebook what kinds of posts and which people you are most interested in seeing.

mortenjorck 11y ago

There are two things, one trivial and one non-trivial, that would vastly improve the feed for me (and I imagine for a certain cohort of which I am a member): The trivial one: Allow me to turn off all links. All of them, globally. I don't care about the news article you just saw that reinforces your political views; I don't care about the clickbait editorial you just read; I don't even care about the moderately interesting piece you just shared because I probably already saw it on Twitter. No links. Just the pictures and status updates like before the age of inline expand. The non-trivial one: Allow me to turn off all images with text in them. Why? Because these are, with stunningly high frequency, visual versions of the same political-view-reinforcement article links. I already know if a friend or family member identifies as a liberal or a conservative. I don't need a regular stream of smug SomeEECards or Memegenerator pictures to remind me. On the technical side, there's clearly some fuzziness, but I have to think simply detecting the presence of text would be a comparatively simple task to what else Facebook's deep learning systems do.

dankoss 11y ago
What you are describing is basically Instagram. No "sharing" or "reposting" other content, only original posts from friends. Some have found ways around that but it's not the default. I'm not familiar with Snapchat but I expect they have a similar mechanic. It seems like the newer social networks are avoiding the problems caused by virality, and getting back to the original reason we wanted to join social networks: to see what our friends are up to.
- ethanbond 11y ago
  Instagram has no links...
- randycupertino 11y ago
  Interesting, a bunch of my instagram friends use it to share memes and reposts. Facebook seems to have more "personal" photos whereas instagram seems to be (at least amongst my friends) more of where they share cute random images or pictures of celebs, what bands they like, etc.
- deleted 11y ago

Jordrok 11y ago

I wonder if part of the problem is that the news feed must always show the user SOMETHING, even when there may not be many recent posts that are particularly relevant for that user. The only variable that changes based on the "relevancy" score of a post is its position in the news feed, so one day the top post in your newsfeed may be "President Shot! Country in Chaos!", but on a different day when things are slow it will be "A Woman Tries To Sell A Fish. You Won't Believe What Happens Next!" (courtesy of http://community.usvsth3m.com/generator/clickbait-headline-generator http://community.usvsth3m.com/generator/clickbait-headline-g...). Basically, the newsfeed only has one "volume" - a constant drone. Combine that with the sometimes-relevant accuracy rate of the algorithm and a bottomless well of junk posts to draw from and you have a recipe for a constantly mediocre experience.

cnp 11y ago

I noticed recently that FB introduced a "configure your feed" utility. When I clicked into it, it appears as though it algorithmically determines the people who you most want to see content from, from highest probability to lowest. Interestingly, all of the interesting groups and news organizations and the like -- the stuff I care about -- was at the very bottom. I moved all of that stuff to the top and it fixed my feed for the most part. But that said, there is no substitute for a fixed "most recent first" setting that doesn't reset, and frankly, the fact that it DOES reset is extremely creepy and leads me to use facebook much less often that I would otherwise.

jmspring 11y ago

Every social network so far has eventually faltered. FB is certainly way bigger (and way more invasive), but usability issues like the feed may see it stumble.

blue11 11y ago

After unfollowing 90% of the people, I had a different problem. Facebook kept filling my news feed with "X liked this" or "X commented on this" from the remaining 10%. It seems that one of the goals of the news feed algorithm is to make sure that you are always seeing new content. This became really annoying really fast. So I ended up unfollowing 100% of my friends, than created a group containing the ones that I really cared about. Now my news feed is practically empty. It takes me one extra click/touch to get to the new "feed". The benefit of doing this is that in the group feed there are no "X liked this" items, only posts by my friends or posts in which they were tagged. Of course, at any time FB can decide to change the group feeds to make them similar to the news feed, but for now this setup kind of works for me.

will_pseudonym 11y ago
YES! I have the same problem (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10849984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10849984). I solved it by being OK with it, but I think that a browser extension would solve this issue pretty quickly, if I knew how to do it. Delete any element on facebook.com* that contains "* liked ". I can do it manually, I just don't know the Chrome extension world at all.
- jakobloekke 11y ago
  "Solved it by being ok with it" is my favourite quote of today!
  - will_pseudonym 11y ago
    <3 Thanks for that! It's an amazing way to solve problems, especially if your normal way of existence is to be frustrated by awful products in every angle of your POV :)
  - CodeCube 11y ago
    Totally zen :) I mostlynlearnednto be with it, with one exception. Anyone I see a share from a radio station, I block that radio station's page. 9 times out of 10, they only share insipid memes ... And my feed quality has improved significantly.

peteretep 11y ago

I added a whole bunch of my friends from the programming community I'm part of, and generally I have interesting stuff to look at.