13 ms·

Facebook Overhauls News Feed to Focus on What Friends and Family Share

280 points by axg 9y ago

tymyshoe23 9y ago
Ugh, I was so hoping for more political posts...
minimaxir 9y ago
Mark Zuckerberg's post on this change: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104413015393571 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104413015393571 Facebook press release: https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/news-feed-fyi-bringing-people-closer-together/ https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/news-feed-fyi-bringing-...
- w00b4 9y ago
  The very first sentence of Zuckerberg's FB post says: > One of our big focus areas for 2018 is to make sure that the time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent. "Time well spent" is also the name of an organization that is one of Facebook's strongest critics: http://timewellspent.io http://timewellspent.io I wonder if the phrasing is deliberate.
  - lostmsu 9y ago
    So they will finally embed Social Fixer into the website itself?
  - haydenlee 9y ago
    Yes it's absolutely deliberate. He's been using the term specifically a lot lately.
  - ipsum2 9y ago
    The name originally came from Facebook (and earlier uses by other companies) and was used by timewellspent.io.
- leeoniya 9y ago
  > It's easy to understand how we got here. and also easy to explain: the quest for ad revenue
- freehunter 9y ago
  >we will also prioritize posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people. Ugh... Lately I've had posts from weeks ago sticking to the top of my news feed. It gets really old logging in and seeing exactly the same content day after day, especially knowing things are happening and people are posting but I'm not seeing it. What we need is more fine-grained filters, Mark. Not your prediction algorithms.
grambrose 9y ago
Hopefully I won't miss the deaths of any of my friends now.
masterleep 9y ago
The FB feed has been terrible since it changed from a chronological list. Doubt this will improve anything.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > The FB feed has been terrible since it changed from a chronological list Isn’t there still an option to rank chronologically? It just isn’t the default. In any case, the news feed has been a quantitative success in terms of engagement metrics.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - scarmig 9y ago
    I don't think it's stictly honest about showing all posts chronologically--it still hides many that it decides aren't worth your time, time that can be better spent viewing ads. Even then, the choice to view it chronologically expires every 2 days or so, and you're back to the default.
  - jrs235 9y ago
    I recall there was a most recent option and a top stories option. It seems the feed often got reset to top stories so you had to pay attention.
- 40acres 9y ago
  Same with Instagram, it's a major reason why I no longer use the service.
- Florin_Andrei 9y ago
  It will "maximize eyeballs", which is the desired result for them.
  - jrs235 9y ago
    I thought the goal was to maximize the dopamine releasing Likes. Edit: to hook people on FB to increase eye ball time (which translates to more ad exposure as well as improving individual profiling and ad targeting)
prh8 9y ago
Sounds like they're returning the feed to what it was back around 2007-2009 ish (when I first remember it). Or at least attempting to do so.
jrs235 9y ago
I've unfollowed everyone. My feed only shows past memories. I love my feed. I highly recommend it.
- __alias 9y ago
  Have you ever considered that you might be narcissistic? Why on earth would you want to go on social media only to view self centred experiences?
  - jrs235 9y ago
    To have access to messenger to keep in touch for the people that are hooked on FB. Killing the feed has helped me stop wasting time mindlessly scrolling FB. Sorry, the memories comment wasn't meant to show narcissism but it's honestly the only thing that appears.
    - eckza 9y ago
      As an unabashed narcissist... I like your style. ;)
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    Yes, unlike those paragons of insight and community spirit taking selfies and updating their feeds with each thought, meal, and bowel movement. Be real, social media is intended to magnify narcissistic ego through engagement, not disengagement.
- dTal 9y ago
  Sounds like Facebook, and indeed the internet, is an unneccesary middleman for you.
  - bringtheaction 9y ago
    I thought so too at first but note that there is a distinction between unfollow and unfriend. See their response to a sibling of yours. They still use fb to keep in touch with people, just not have them on the newsfeed.
iokevins 9y ago
Josh Marshall just now: "Announcement to publishers who reshaped business models around Facebook. Bye." https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/951615904760172545 https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/951615904760172545
- george3383 9y ago
  If it's bad for journalists and advertisers then it's good for users.
  - taurath 9y ago
    “Journalists” being those making their money by being shared on Facebook are the least journalistic.
  - roywiggins 9y ago
    It depends. Some people use Facebook "likes" as a crappy replacement for RSS, so it's probably not great for them.
    - adrianratnapala 9y ago
      I can't be smug though. HN has become my replacement for RSS. Surely even Facebook is a better approximation.
    - eckza 9y ago
      I was one of those people. It's... shocking, how much of that noise that you can get by without. To be fair, I'm missing out on a ton of news with regards to the community and culture that I used Facebook to participate in - but my life is measurably better in every other metric for having left the platform. Getting BMX racing news second-hand is a small price to pay for having my mind back. (Disclaimer: I spent 20+ hours per week on Facebook. It's mostly nice to have those 20+ hours back, and not having to be constantly bombarded by all the evil of this world is a huge plus, too.)
    - freehunter 9y ago
milankragujevic 9y ago
Important to note, Facebook has been hiding posts by pages in the feed to users in Eastern Europe (Serbia, where I live), and it results in a much cleaner and less noisy feed, but people can still go to the Explore Feed and see posts by pages... More on this: https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/23/facebook-page-feed/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/23/facebook-page-feed/
fallous 9y ago
I'm beginning to wonder if Facebook has begun to realize that being the source of ads while temporarily beneficial to their bottom line is actually destroying their long-time value to advertisers. Chasing eyeballs for ads necessarily warps the things you present to those eyeballs and eventually you're in a race with every other eyeball chaser. The problem with that race is that you no longer have an undistorted understanding of viewer/user preferences but instead only understand their reaction to your attempts to capture attention and clicks, which is a more mechanical understanding of behavior rather than understanding underlying motives and preferences. Ad companies have long specialized in the mechanistic side of things so Facebook really brings nothing new to table for them, and merely being "a giant audience" isn't especially worthwhile either since a "run of network" ad buy for Adsense or the like is cheap. Facebook's differentiator was "we have all this insight into users!" and while that was true at the time they began courting advertisers what I suspect advertisers and Facebook discovered was that those insights became less and less accurate as users responded to the changes Facebook began to make in order to try and increase ad effectiveness, thus beginning the distortion spiral. I wonder if Facebook is making an attempt to return to the insight side of the business, allowing advertisers to use the info Facebook has regarding people as targeting for ads that occur away from Facebook. They return to a demographic/insight source rather than an advertising platform.
HNSucksAss 9y ago
It’s long past time to GET OVER FACEBOOK.
taurath 9y ago
Wait, Facebook cares about engagement between people instead of between people and ad-supported lowest common demoninator content? Could have fooled me over the past several years. I’m really cynical about FB but it really has earned it. I hope it becomes more useful, because for me their original value proposition to users was great but has totally lost its way as they’ve monetized.
- jcadam 9y ago
  Yea, at this point I'd be willing to pay $10/month for a social network that respected my privacy, didn't bombard me with ads, and just generally treated me as a customer, rather than product. The trick of course is convincing anyone who isn't me to pay :) Heck, maybe it should be a non-profit.
  - itissid 9y ago
    I use umatrix chrome extension to block FB and twitter to the max and almost every ad server. That keeps FB and twitter and a bunch of other nonsense out.
  - eckza 9y ago
    Just... get your real friends to text you. If they won't text you, they're not your real friends. (This isn't always true, but I'd say that it's 95% accurate.) I'm not being condescending or pretentious. I have done this, over the last few months, and it's helped me to realize who's really worth having in my life on a daily basis, and who's not.
    - freehunter 9y ago
      I don't want my friends texting me everything. That's far more disruptive than a passive feed I can glance at. And I don't want to text my friends everything either. One of the great things about Facebook is the unexpected social interactions. I post a picture and someone I haven't talked to in a while comments something really great on it and sparks a conversation and rekindles the friendship. That's not going to happen over text. People in my life on a daily basis are in my life on a daily basis. People in my life occasionally are on Facebook.
hitgeek 9y ago
I looked through my newsfeed this week for the first time in several months. I thought the amount of trash posts and videos (which caused me to leave Facebook) had greatly declined, but wasn’t sure why. If it’s related to this change, it’s a good start. While I’m skeptical of Facebook, I appreciate their attempt to improve if it’s genuine.
- eckza 9y ago
  What's your criteria for "genuine"?
  - hitgeek 9y ago
    from the article: “We want to make sure that our products are not just fun, but are good for people,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “We need to refocus the system.” genuine for me, is making changes that are good for people, even if they are bad for advertisers.
untog 9y ago
I very much hope this isn't just words. The core problem, IMO, is that content that makes us angry, anxious or jealous is a much better driver of clicks than content that makes us happy. I'm sure Facebook knows this. If they really mean it, they'll accept that they will make less money as a result of this change. It would be the right decision in the long term, but the short term will hurt.
- jp555 9y ago
  Are clicks the majority of revenue for FB? An ad unit that fills a users screen for a few second as they scroll throughout the day every day is super super valuable to brand advertising. I think that’s ~$450 billion of the total ~$500 billion total annual global ad spend. To me browsing the fb feed is a lot like like flipping through tv channels used to be. Brand advertising loved that too. I’d think the More people browse their feeds the more valuable their ad unit becomes to brand advertisers.
  - Avshalom 9y ago
    Right I mean, driving a click through to a website due to rage has to be less profitable than driving a click through to say DeWalt power tools due to delight. Right? I mean some fraction of a fraction of of an ad for DeWalt must be worth less than keeping your friends pro DeWalt status update on top. (This is not a paid ad for DeWalt but seriously, fucking DeWalt. Them and Stihl: just gorgeous power tools)
    - matwood 9y ago
      Haha. Yeah. My wife doesn't get it yet that when I pay a little extra for DeWalt it means I will not have to buy the same tool again for a very long time.
      - jugg1es 9y ago
        I wholeheartedly agree with this statement.
    - 9y ago
dvcrn 9y ago
yes please! The reason I don't use facebook anymore is because it doesn't present me anything I care about. Just memes, news and updates in some sale groups I am part of. I'm not complaining that it doesn't hog me as much as it used to, but the reason why I still have a account is to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances and see what's going in in their life
- a_imho 9y ago
  it is pretty easy to curate your own feed though, just unfollow/unfriend the people posting noise. I see maybe 1-2 new posts a day on average.
archiepeach 9y ago
I have long critiqued Facebook for chasing after ad revenue at the expense of the experience they offer users. In light of this news, the following quote comes to mind: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." I generally feel that Facebook has traveled so far in the wrong direction, coming back to any sense of morality will be an extremely hard job. That being said, I wonder if they truly understood the extent of their "shady" tactics. It's all too easy to focus on shareholders and forget about the real people using your service. All told, this does at least feel like a step in the right direction.
- sova 9y ago
  This is actually a good update, coming from someone who is above-average disgusted with the blue F
- freyir 9y ago
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  - dannyw 9y ago
    As much as I dislike Zuckerberg, I do feel like early IM chats made over a decade ago while he was in college is not meaningful anymore.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - austenallred 9y ago
    The context there is important there. He didn’t call them dumbfucks for using Facebook, but made the observation that a small subset that work at the school newspaper are dumbfucks. Not saying it’s right, but that quote is taken wildly out of context all the time.
stuffedBelly 9y ago
I see. FB is adopting a similar model to Tecent's WeChat Moments in which users primarily see content shared by friends and family. It worked for WeChat but let's how it goes for Facebook.
alexkavon 9y ago
I'm guessing that this change won't affect the dopamine-release strategy they were engaging with before. There are far more issues with Facebook rather than the need to tweak the network to ad post ratio in the news feed.
treyfitty 9y ago
I believe this is step 1 in entering/dominating another industry: influencer marketing. Hear me out. I have 3 friends who have started “influencer marketing” companies that fly out 20 or so influencers, and brands pay for posts during their trip. I’m not too well attuned to the economics of it, but from what I can see, it’s profitable. Facebooks move of doing this is probably to ultimately purposefully change the incentives for advertisers. Now, advertisers, who have went all in to social networks will have to retain that channel, since it happens to work so well. And they’ll be paying more per ad, as a result of the economics of this new marketing paradigm. Influencers (when FB takes over this market, I’m sure they/we won’t be called that) and Facebook is, please excuse my use of a buzzword, a true synergy. I mean, who wouldn’t want free stuff* (with the catch that you have to post about the product x times in a given time frame)? By using the whole network as a conduit for advertising, I think this is going to be huge.
- dude01 9y ago
  I think you're right, influencers are going to get bigger. They're kind of like a contracted-out or part-time sales team. Or another way of looking at it, they're living commercials. Eventually FB will see influences as a challenge to their own ad network (the only ads on FB must go thru FB!), so I agree with you, FB will try to take it over. PS I wonder why you got a downvote.
archiepeach 9y ago
Good intentions or not, we must remember that history has proven time and time again, when any entity has far too much unchecked power, it is inevitably exploited by bad actors. A user base of two billion users without any real accountability is a scary thing. The only people policing Facebook are Facebook. We would never agree to a having a single dictator who answers to no one, why should Facebook be treated any differently?
- thinkloop 9y ago
  Because unlike a dictator Facebook has zero real power over your life? It's a site of puppies and horoscopes, you think we should be dealing with them like we do Kim Jong Un? How have we moved so far on the personal responsibility scale. Why aren't people partly responsible for not making better use of their time? Facebook is an "evil echo chamber", "wasting people's lives", "catering to business", etc - ALL THEY DO IS HOST YOUR FRIENDS' PHOTOS. Can't we take partial responsibility at least for how often we _choose_ to log on? Are we that simple that our entire personalities can be fully pwned with some basic machine learning?
  - so33 9y ago
    FB does far more than host photos. In addition to being a platform to disseminate any sort of media, from cat videos to news to political commentary (so much so that they developed Instant Articles), it serves as a platform for text/video chat, event coordination among friends and organizations, web pages for small businesses, forums (which is basically what a Group is), games, and countless other stuff I haven’t listed here. Facebook really does want to be your homepage and their products currently released all point to an all encompassing strategy to get you to stay on Facebook in order to look at more ads. In light of their ambitious strategy that extends far beyond the scope of traditional media, it really is not something to laugh off.
  - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
    >Facebook has zero real power over your life >ALL THEY DO IS HOST YOUR FRIENDS' PHOTOS. These two obviously false statements completely undermine your otherwise valid point about personal responsibility.
guy98238710 9y ago
This change was tested for months in several smaller countries including mine. I am not on facebook, but I know that media here hate the change. They lost tens of percents of traffic overnight.
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  This plus the Adblock wars makes me wonder if there's anything that would make both consumers and media happy at the same time, or whether the relationship is pseudo adversarial by nature now.
  - Terretta 9y ago
    I was super happy mid-90s when we spent our own money to self-publish, as both a consumer and publisher. Publishing a static set of lightly styled HTML pages to massive audiences is shockingly cheap.
- hrasyid 9y ago
  > They lost tens of percents of traffic overnight This is not necessarily a bad thing for users
  - freehunter 9y ago
    It is if those users wanted to see that content.
cratermoon 9y ago
So, like it was in the beginning? That's some innovation right there, boy.
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  Everything old is new again.
natural219 9y ago
I welcome the changes, and am open to giving Zuckerberg's pledge to investigate decentralization this year[1] a fair shake. He has a lot of work and convincing to do to fulfill these lofty goals and inspire us to take him seriously. Nothing against Zuckerberg specifically, even -- just that corporate incentives and business momentum are mighty forces to be contended with, even assuming Mark is acting in good faith and full capacity. [1]https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104380170714571 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104380170714571
qao 9y ago
Facebook = weapon of mass disinformation Smartphone = weapon of mass distraction next? VR/AR = weapon of mass delusion ?
fiatjaf 9y ago
Horrible news. Now this stupid thing will be less horrible and will keep people who were leaving. Or maybe it will just go back to the point it was when I left, in 2013, which was already very unbearable.
Animats 9y ago
"Sharing" is spamming. I'm interested in what my friends write. I have little interest in what they share, especially if it's commercial content.
- freehunter 9y ago
  I agree. I've unfollowed so many friends because they are basically little machines designed to share everything they see on Facebook. I'm missing tons of moments from their lives and it gets awkward when my brother asks me if I saw his Facebook post the other day, but man I wish I could choose to see written posts but not shared posts.
  - Animats 9y ago
    man I wish I could choose to see written posts but not shared posts. Exactly. And Facebook won't give you that.
    - creator_lol 9y ago
      I remember when that was only what I saw on facebook
- username223 9y ago
  The News Feed algorithm is a plague for everyone who is not Facebook or its shareholders. Who knows if I will see something written by a "friend"? Who knows if "friends" will see something I write? What if they "share" or "like" it; does that make a difference? I guess this is how all those poor pigeons felt inside Skinner's boxes.
- mrweasel 9y ago
  I've noticed that very few actually write or post content to Facebook at this point. Of cause it may just be within my circle of friends, but it's mostly just stuff people liked or shared. At this point, if Facebook would allow me to just view friends posted content, chronologically, then I could browse a weeks worth of posts in five minutes. The trend of people posting updates on their lives on Facebook is dead I think. Either people have moved to snapchat, or they don't want to play that game anymore. Facebook has been reduce to a platform for party invites and messaging.
qao 9y ago
Facebook = weapon of mass disinformation Smartphone = weapon of mass distraction The 'perfect' storm. next? AR/VR = weapon of mass delusion?
Jedi72 9y ago
I am very surprised by the general vibe in here that FB are doing this for the users or to promote responsible social networking. IMHO They poisoned the well by disrespecting their users [1] and are now trying to undo the damage. Just like Apple were very sorry after they got caught slowing iPhones. [1] https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/facebook-sharing-crisis.html https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/facebook-sharing-crisis.h...
dfee 9y ago
I wonder if enough of the core-base was eroding that they were forced to make this change. I've been logged out of Facebook since October, and I know a few other friends who have as well. That's not really relevant, except that this group all had membership on Facebook at the 1 year mark - early 2005.
- phkahler 9y ago
  >> I wonder if enough of the core-base was eroding that they were forced to make this change. You're probably right. I'm just one person and my views are not universal but also not unique to me. IMHO shared content of all kinds has killed the value of facebook to me. I go there to see what's up with people I know, not to see bunch of shared stuff from 3rd parties. A few years ago you could go through and click "don't show any more from cool_cat_videos" and do that agressively for a day or two and the feed would clean up and show more friends posts. That doesn't work any more, there is a constant barrage of suggested content that isn't coming from anyone I know - just FB paid suggestions. It's awful. My typical Facebook experience is to log in, scroll down - ignoring almost all content - looking for an actual post from someone I know. Then I log out. To me the problem is the "share" button. It encourages impersonal content sharing, which I can get all day long over at reddit or youtube or whatever. I go to FB to see what's up with people I know, but it just doesn't work like that any more. They seem to get it, but the fix they're talking about is to focus on 3rd party content that get a response from people you know. That's still not personal posts, and I don't think it's going to change my use much. The problem for them is that the stuff that used to bring me there doesn't pay, and the stuff that does drives me away.
- chrisper 9y ago
  I haven't visited the Facebook Main site either for quite some time. Only using the messenger.
- IshKebab 9y ago
  Yeah exactly the same for me. Friends communicate and share photos and news on WhatsApp now, not Facebook. Facebook has become a kind of shit version of Reddit where everything in the news feed is basically stuff from Reddit that has been shared by friends. It used to be original messages from friends.
rdiddly 9y ago
Oh brother... the quote at the end there? "It’s important to me that when Max and August grow up that they feel like what their father built was good for the world." Why does it bother me? Let me analyze. OK 1) There are people out there who live their whole lives according to good values pretty much the whole time, and don't need the shock of parenthood to finally make them care about acting like a decent human being. And most are not 2) billionaires. However, quite a few apparently do need that little kick in the pants, which explains 3) how trite this sentiment is. But owing precisely to how common it is, we may never know if this is something Zuckerberg actually feels, or if it's 4) just something he picked up that he thought sounded like something an earthling might say. A nice platitude to conceal the true market-driven motivation for this move, and 5) you just know there is one. Also even assuming it's sincere, there's a prominent tone of 6) narcissism in it, when people suddenly start caring about their legacy. (Like "my legacy" and "how I will be viewed" as opposed to anything about the kids themselves or you or me or anyone that person might've hurt.) I feel like as outlandish as it is, South Park's animated version of him, voiced like a badly dubbed Hong Kong martial arts actor, saying "Ha ha ha, you cannot block my shtoyle" and such, is more convincing & realistic than the reality!
- tinymollusk 9y ago
  I like to apply a test to myself, which I fail every time. Goes as follows: Can I literally write down a statement that would have changed my perspective on this statement/issue/perspective? Most things that I'm against, I cannot imagine myself not being against. One possible explanation is Zuckerberg is evil incarnate, but I believe the world is much more nuanced than that. If I cannot bring to life (and even metaphorically "try on" the other perspective), there is a high probability that I am too biased to offer a fair judgement.
  - rdiddly 9y ago
    I hear ya, and obviously I would fail as well, though a few years of statements backed up by actions would definitely change my perspective. We'll just have to wait & see!
zitterbewegung 9y ago
I think Facebook is basically the replacement of the newspaper at this point. Oh well....
- alexkavon 9y ago
  Years ago they pitched this exact idea/goal at F8 I believe.
makecheck 9y ago
There’s still something eerily uncomfortable about how they want me to log in so much and check everything. They basically lie about it now, finding any excuse to put a colored flag on something. Recent example: while I was logged out, they put my picture on their “quick login” page with a little red number “2” on my photo. Well gee, turns out there wasn’t “2” of anything in my profile to see: no unread messages, etc.; no, it was just made-up crap to make me want to go check Facebook again. Not sure why Facebook is so desperate for attention that they need to LIE to get it but advertisers should be concerned: anything Facebook claims about “active users”, etc. is probably greatly exaggerated.
- DashRattlesnake 9y ago
  > Recent example: while I was logged out, they put my picture on their “quick login” page with a little red number “2” on my photo. Well gee, turns out there wasn’t “2” of anything in my profile to see: no unread messages, etc.; no, it was just made-up crap to make me want to go check Facebook again. I've seen this too: I created an empty profile once for some reason. The email account that I setup for it very quickly started getting messages like "you have 1 new notification - log in." When I did that, there wasn't a damn thing there.
- username223 9y ago
  Spammers gonna spam. Anything sent to me from "notification@facebookmail.com" or "noreply@facebookmail.com" goes straight to the trash, and the problem is solved.
intrasight 9y ago
You can of course do that "overhaul" yourself by installing a filter like F.B.Purity
krisgenre 9y ago
Funny this was reason I've been using G+ to share photos with friends and family since they 'stay' in the news feed.
Von_Jones 9y ago
Still a douchebag company. In essence, they got its users (me included) to sign away our sovereign data before we knew its value. I feel the equivalent is colonialists in Africa getting African chiefs to sign away their land for a bottle of whiskey. I would go as far as to say Facebook is a neo-colonialist land-grabber - except its not your land you've given away, it's your most personal information. Zuckerberg = world's biggest douche. A modern day Cecil Rhodes.
te_chris 9y ago
Install newsfeed eradicator. Best decision I ever made. The news feed offers nothing.
- rad_gruchalski 9y ago
  The best decision ever was to log out.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nepotism2018 9y ago
The fact that I'm not allowed to order my newsfeed by latest permanently is a big problem!
- mrweasel 9y ago
  I have the same issue, I wouldn't call it a big problem, just annoying. What it does is show us where Facebook believe there's a possibility to make a profit, and it's not by keeping you up to date with your friends lives.
  - nepotism2018 9y ago
    Sure, at minimum it is annoying. For me i'm always checking latest political, sports or technology news, although this might come across pretty bad but I put my facebook "world" in the same category so I want the latest updates all the time
musage 9y ago
Just show all things from all subscribed sources in chronological order, add pagination, filtering and sorting, and you might have yourself something.
kerpele 9y ago
I just wish they would stop tracking me and everyone I interact with whenever and wherever
Marazan 9y ago
I just want a date ordered list of everything my friends have posted. Is that too much to ask for?
gimmeayrwlt 9y ago
Family share with nsa and cia... why not. It's always been very important, just like in KGB ?
roadbeats 9y ago
Too late. Noone around my family and friends share nothing in Facebook for long time. In 2018, it’s probably the worst platform to connect to people. The best thing I did in 2017 was to permanently delete my Facebook account. Thankfully they now allow you to divorce with their app at least.
Demoneeri 9y ago
I don't understand, here is my news feed right now: - A beautiful video from Patrick Seabase (person that I follow) - A post from a friend asking a question I don't know the answer to, but already 8 comments. - A post from The Economist (that I follow). This article is not relevant to my interest but sometime they are. - A post about about a comment that one of my friend left on another post (this the kind of post I don't want to see) - A friend posted a video of something funny happening in my home town. - A post from my mayor telling us that the snow removing in the street is nearly done. - A post from CityLab relevant to me. So on and so forth. If your feed is irrelevant, it's your fault...
luckydata 9y ago
It's remarkable how closely the evolutions of the facebook "the product" track the evolutions of facebook "the founder". Zuckerberg starts his professional life as a college bro making tools for college bros, then a few steps later he's married and has kids and it's all about family and true connection, less about broadcasting to the world.
cconstantin 9y ago
The newsfeed should be a cronological list of posts from your sources. Then you could have some filter functionality that YOU control
- Double_a_92 9y ago
  I remember when Google+ was like that. It was so perfect. You could even set a frequency (with a slider!) for posts from each individual source.
zghst 9y ago
Zuckerberg is painfully slow. Makes me really question his so-called “genius”.

280 points by axg 9y ago

Ugh, I was so hoping for more political posts...

Mark Zuckerberg's post on this change: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104413015393571 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104413015393571 Facebook press release: https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/news-feed-fyi-bringing-people-closer-together/ https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/news-feed-fyi-bringing-...

w00b4 9y ago
The very first sentence of Zuckerberg's FB post says: > One of our big focus areas for 2018 is to make sure that the time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent. "Time well spent" is also the name of an organization that is one of Facebook's strongest critics: http://timewellspent.io http://timewellspent.io I wonder if the phrasing is deliberate.
- lostmsu 9y ago
  So they will finally embed Social Fixer into the website itself?
- haydenlee 9y ago
  Yes it's absolutely deliberate. He's been using the term specifically a lot lately.
- ipsum2 9y ago
  The name originally came from Facebook (and earlier uses by other companies) and was used by timewellspent.io.
leeoniya 9y ago
> It's easy to understand how we got here. and also easy to explain: the quest for ad revenue
freehunter 9y ago
>we will also prioritize posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people. Ugh... Lately I've had posts from weeks ago sticking to the top of my news feed. It gets really old logging in and seeing exactly the same content day after day, especially knowing things are happening and people are posting but I'm not seeing it. What we need is more fine-grained filters, Mark. Not your prediction algorithms.

grambrose 9y ago

Hopefully I won't miss the deaths of any of my friends now.

masterleep 9y ago

The FB feed has been terrible since it changed from a chronological list. Doubt this will improve anything.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> The FB feed has been terrible since it changed from a chronological list Isn’t there still an option to rank chronologically? It just isn’t the default. In any case, the news feed has been a quantitative success in terms of engagement metrics.
- deleted 9y ago
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- scarmig 9y ago
  I don't think it's stictly honest about showing all posts chronologically--it still hides many that it decides aren't worth your time, time that can be better spent viewing ads. Even then, the choice to view it chronologically expires every 2 days or so, and you're back to the default.
- jrs235 9y ago
  I recall there was a most recent option and a top stories option. It seems the feed often got reset to top stories so you had to pay attention.
40acres 9y ago
Same with Instagram, it's a major reason why I no longer use the service.
Florin_Andrei 9y ago
It will "maximize eyeballs", which is the desired result for them.
- jrs235 9y ago
  I thought the goal was to maximize the dopamine releasing Likes. Edit: to hook people on FB to increase eye ball time (which translates to more ad exposure as well as improving individual profiling and ad targeting)

prh8 9y ago

Sounds like they're returning the feed to what it was back around 2007-2009 ish (when I first remember it). Or at least attempting to do so.

jrs235 9y ago

I've unfollowed everyone. My feed only shows past memories. I love my feed. I highly recommend it.

__alias 9y ago
Have you ever considered that you might be narcissistic? Why on earth would you want to go on social media only to view self centred experiences?
- jrs235 9y ago
  To have access to messenger to keep in touch for the people that are hooked on FB. Killing the feed has helped me stop wasting time mindlessly scrolling FB. Sorry, the memories comment wasn't meant to show narcissism but it's honestly the only thing that appears.
  - eckza 9y ago
    As an unabashed narcissist... I like your style. ;)
- QAPereo 9y ago
  Yes, unlike those paragons of insight and community spirit taking selfies and updating their feeds with each thought, meal, and bowel movement. Be real, social media is intended to magnify narcissistic ego through engagement, not disengagement.
dTal 9y ago
Sounds like Facebook, and indeed the internet, is an unneccesary middleman for you.
- bringtheaction 9y ago
  I thought so too at first but note that there is a distinction between unfollow and unfriend. See their response to a sibling of yours. They still use fb to keep in touch with people, just not have them on the newsfeed.

iokevins 9y ago

Josh Marshall just now: "Announcement to publishers who reshaped business models around Facebook. Bye." https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/951615904760172545 https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/951615904760172545

george3383 9y ago
If it's bad for journalists and advertisers then it's good for users.
- taurath 9y ago
  “Journalists” being those making their money by being shared on Facebook are the least journalistic.
- roywiggins 9y ago
  It depends. Some people use Facebook "likes" as a crappy replacement for RSS, so it's probably not great for them.
  - adrianratnapala 9y ago
    I can't be smug though. HN has become my replacement for RSS. Surely even Facebook is a better approximation.
  - eckza 9y ago
    I was one of those people. It's... shocking, how much of that noise that you can get by without. To be fair, I'm missing out on a ton of news with regards to the community and culture that I used Facebook to participate in - but my life is measurably better in every other metric for having left the platform. Getting BMX racing news second-hand is a small price to pay for having my mind back. (Disclaimer: I spent 20+ hours per week on Facebook. It's mostly nice to have those 20+ hours back, and not having to be constantly bombarded by all the evil of this world is a huge plus, too.)
  - freehunter 9y ago

milankragujevic 9y ago

Important to note, Facebook has been hiding posts by pages in the feed to users in Eastern Europe (Serbia, where I live), and it results in a much cleaner and less noisy feed, but people can still go to the Explore Feed and see posts by pages... More on this: https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/23/facebook-page-feed/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/23/facebook-page-feed/

fallous 9y ago

I'm beginning to wonder if Facebook has begun to realize that being the source of ads while temporarily beneficial to their bottom line is actually destroying their long-time value to advertisers. Chasing eyeballs for ads necessarily warps the things you present to those eyeballs and eventually you're in a race with every other eyeball chaser. The problem with that race is that you no longer have an undistorted understanding of viewer/user preferences but instead only understand their reaction to your attempts to capture attention and clicks, which is a more mechanical understanding of behavior rather than understanding underlying motives and preferences. Ad companies have long specialized in the mechanistic side of things so Facebook really brings nothing new to table for them, and merely being "a giant audience" isn't especially worthwhile either since a "run of network" ad buy for Adsense or the like is cheap. Facebook's differentiator was "we have all this insight into users!" and while that was true at the time they began courting advertisers what I suspect advertisers and Facebook discovered was that those insights became less and less accurate as users responded to the changes Facebook began to make in order to try and increase ad effectiveness, thus beginning the distortion spiral. I wonder if Facebook is making an attempt to return to the insight side of the business, allowing advertisers to use the info Facebook has regarding people as targeting for ads that occur away from Facebook. They return to a demographic/insight source rather than an advertising platform.

HNSucksAss 9y ago

It’s long past time to GET OVER FACEBOOK.

taurath 9y ago

Wait, Facebook cares about engagement between people instead of between people and ad-supported lowest common demoninator content? Could have fooled me over the past several years. I’m really cynical about FB but it really has earned it. I hope it becomes more useful, because for me their original value proposition to users was great but has totally lost its way as they’ve monetized.

jcadam 9y ago
Yea, at this point I'd be willing to pay $10/month for a social network that respected my privacy, didn't bombard me with ads, and just generally treated me as a customer, rather than product. The trick of course is convincing anyone who isn't me to pay :) Heck, maybe it should be a non-profit.
- itissid 9y ago
  I use umatrix chrome extension to block FB and twitter to the max and almost every ad server. That keeps FB and twitter and a bunch of other nonsense out.
- eckza 9y ago
  Just... get your real friends to text you. If they won't text you, they're not your real friends. (This isn't always true, but I'd say that it's 95% accurate.) I'm not being condescending or pretentious. I have done this, over the last few months, and it's helped me to realize who's really worth having in my life on a daily basis, and who's not.
  - freehunter 9y ago
    I don't want my friends texting me everything. That's far more disruptive than a passive feed I can glance at. And I don't want to text my friends everything either. One of the great things about Facebook is the unexpected social interactions. I post a picture and someone I haven't talked to in a while comments something really great on it and sparks a conversation and rekindles the friendship. That's not going to happen over text. People in my life on a daily basis are in my life on a daily basis. People in my life occasionally are on Facebook.

hitgeek 9y ago

I looked through my newsfeed this week for the first time in several months. I thought the amount of trash posts and videos (which caused me to leave Facebook) had greatly declined, but wasn’t sure why. If it’s related to this change, it’s a good start. While I’m skeptical of Facebook, I appreciate their attempt to improve if it’s genuine.

eckza 9y ago
What's your criteria for "genuine"?
- hitgeek 9y ago
  from the article: “We want to make sure that our products are not just fun, but are good for people,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “We need to refocus the system.” genuine for me, is making changes that are good for people, even if they are bad for advertisers.

untog 9y ago

I very much hope this isn't just words. The core problem, IMO, is that content that makes us angry, anxious or jealous is a much better driver of clicks than content that makes us happy. I'm sure Facebook knows this. If they really mean it, they'll accept that they will make less money as a result of this change. It would be the right decision in the long term, but the short term will hurt.

jp555 9y ago
Are clicks the majority of revenue for FB? An ad unit that fills a users screen for a few second as they scroll throughout the day every day is super super valuable to brand advertising. I think that’s ~$450 billion of the total ~$500 billion total annual global ad spend. To me browsing the fb feed is a lot like like flipping through tv channels used to be. Brand advertising loved that too. I’d think the More people browse their feeds the more valuable their ad unit becomes to brand advertisers.
- Avshalom 9y ago
  Right I mean, driving a click through to a website due to rage has to be less profitable than driving a click through to say DeWalt power tools due to delight. Right? I mean some fraction of a fraction of of an ad for DeWalt must be worth less than keeping your friends pro DeWalt status update on top. (This is not a paid ad for DeWalt but seriously, fucking DeWalt. Them and Stihl: just gorgeous power tools)
  - matwood 9y ago
    Haha. Yeah. My wife doesn't get it yet that when I pay a little extra for DeWalt it means I will not have to buy the same tool again for a very long time.
    - jugg1es 9y ago
      I wholeheartedly agree with this statement.
  - 9y ago

dvcrn 9y ago

yes please! The reason I don't use facebook anymore is because it doesn't present me anything I care about. Just memes, news and updates in some sale groups I am part of. I'm not complaining that it doesn't hog me as much as it used to, but the reason why I still have a account is to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances and see what's going in in their life

a_imho 9y ago
it is pretty easy to curate your own feed though, just unfollow/unfriend the people posting noise. I see maybe 1-2 new posts a day on average.

archiepeach 9y ago

I have long critiqued Facebook for chasing after ad revenue at the expense of the experience they offer users. In light of this news, the following quote comes to mind: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." I generally feel that Facebook has traveled so far in the wrong direction, coming back to any sense of morality will be an extremely hard job. That being said, I wonder if they truly understood the extent of their "shady" tactics. It's all too easy to focus on shareholders and forget about the real people using your service. All told, this does at least feel like a step in the right direction.

sova 9y ago
This is actually a good update, coming from someone who is above-average disgusted with the blue F
freyir 9y ago
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- dannyw 9y ago
  As much as I dislike Zuckerberg, I do feel like early IM chats made over a decade ago while he was in college is not meaningful anymore.
  - deleted 9y ago
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  - deleted 9y ago
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- austenallred 9y ago
  The context there is important there. He didn’t call them dumbfucks for using Facebook, but made the observation that a small subset that work at the school newspaper are dumbfucks. Not saying it’s right, but that quote is taken wildly out of context all the time.

stuffedBelly 9y ago

I see. FB is adopting a similar model to Tecent's WeChat Moments in which users primarily see content shared by friends and family. It worked for WeChat but let's how it goes for Facebook.

alexkavon 9y ago

I'm guessing that this change won't affect the dopamine-release strategy they were engaging with before. There are far more issues with Facebook rather than the need to tweak the network to ad post ratio in the news feed.

treyfitty 9y ago

I believe this is step 1 in entering/dominating another industry: influencer marketing. Hear me out. I have 3 friends who have started “influencer marketing” companies that fly out 20 or so influencers, and brands pay for posts during their trip. I’m not too well attuned to the economics of it, but from what I can see, it’s profitable. Facebooks move of doing this is probably to ultimately purposefully change the incentives for advertisers. Now, advertisers, who have went all in to social networks will have to retain that channel, since it happens to work so well. And they’ll be paying more per ad, as a result of the economics of this new marketing paradigm. Influencers (when FB takes over this market, I’m sure they/we won’t be called that) and Facebook is, please excuse my use of a buzzword, a true synergy. I mean, who wouldn’t want free stuff* (with the catch that you have to post about the product x times in a given time frame)? By using the whole network as a conduit for advertising, I think this is going to be huge.

dude01 9y ago
I think you're right, influencers are going to get bigger. They're kind of like a contracted-out or part-time sales team. Or another way of looking at it, they're living commercials. Eventually FB will see influences as a challenge to their own ad network (the only ads on FB must go thru FB!), so I agree with you, FB will try to take it over. PS I wonder why you got a downvote.

archiepeach 9y ago

Good intentions or not, we must remember that history has proven time and time again, when any entity has far too much unchecked power, it is inevitably exploited by bad actors. A user base of two billion users without any real accountability is a scary thing. The only people policing Facebook are Facebook. We would never agree to a having a single dictator who answers to no one, why should Facebook be treated any differently?

thinkloop 9y ago
Because unlike a dictator Facebook has zero real power over your life? It's a site of puppies and horoscopes, you think we should be dealing with them like we do Kim Jong Un? How have we moved so far on the personal responsibility scale. Why aren't people partly responsible for not making better use of their time? Facebook is an "evil echo chamber", "wasting people's lives", "catering to business", etc - ALL THEY DO IS HOST YOUR FRIENDS' PHOTOS. Can't we take partial responsibility at least for how often we _choose_ to log on? Are we that simple that our entire personalities can be fully pwned with some basic machine learning?
- so33 9y ago
  FB does far more than host photos. In addition to being a platform to disseminate any sort of media, from cat videos to news to political commentary (so much so that they developed Instant Articles), it serves as a platform for text/video chat, event coordination among friends and organizations, web pages for small businesses, forums (which is basically what a Group is), games, and countless other stuff I haven’t listed here. Facebook really does want to be your homepage and their products currently released all point to an all encompassing strategy to get you to stay on Facebook in order to look at more ads. In light of their ambitious strategy that extends far beyond the scope of traditional media, it really is not something to laugh off.
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  >Facebook has zero real power over your life >ALL THEY DO IS HOST YOUR FRIENDS' PHOTOS. These two obviously false statements completely undermine your otherwise valid point about personal responsibility.

guy98238710 9y ago

This change was tested for months in several smaller countries including mine. I am not on facebook, but I know that media here hate the change. They lost tens of percents of traffic overnight.

hkmurakami 9y ago
This plus the Adblock wars makes me wonder if there's anything that would make both consumers and media happy at the same time, or whether the relationship is pseudo adversarial by nature now.
- Terretta 9y ago
  I was super happy mid-90s when we spent our own money to self-publish, as both a consumer and publisher. Publishing a static set of lightly styled HTML pages to massive audiences is shockingly cheap.
hrasyid 9y ago
> They lost tens of percents of traffic overnight This is not necessarily a bad thing for users
- freehunter 9y ago
  It is if those users wanted to see that content.

cratermoon 9y ago

So, like it was in the beginning? That's some innovation right there, boy.

hkmurakami 9y ago
Everything old is new again.

natural219 9y ago

I welcome the changes, and am open to giving Zuckerberg's pledge to investigate decentralization this year[1] a fair shake. He has a lot of work and convincing to do to fulfill these lofty goals and inspire us to take him seriously. Nothing against Zuckerberg specifically, even -- just that corporate incentives and business momentum are mighty forces to be contended with, even assuming Mark is acting in good faith and full capacity. [1]https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104380170714571 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104380170714571

qao 9y ago

Facebook = weapon of mass disinformation Smartphone = weapon of mass distraction next? VR/AR = weapon of mass delusion ?

fiatjaf 9y ago

Horrible news. Now this stupid thing will be less horrible and will keep people who were leaving. Or maybe it will just go back to the point it was when I left, in 2013, which was already very unbearable.

Animats 9y ago

"Sharing" is spamming. I'm interested in what my friends write. I have little interest in what they share, especially if it's commercial content.

freehunter 9y ago
I agree. I've unfollowed so many friends because they are basically little machines designed to share everything they see on Facebook. I'm missing tons of moments from their lives and it gets awkward when my brother asks me if I saw his Facebook post the other day, but man I wish I could choose to see written posts but not shared posts.
- Animats 9y ago
  man I wish I could choose to see written posts but not shared posts. Exactly. And Facebook won't give you that.
  - creator_lol 9y ago
    I remember when that was only what I saw on facebook
username223 9y ago
The News Feed algorithm is a plague for everyone who is not Facebook or its shareholders. Who knows if I will see something written by a "friend"? Who knows if "friends" will see something I write? What if they "share" or "like" it; does that make a difference? I guess this is how all those poor pigeons felt inside Skinner's boxes.
mrweasel 9y ago
I've noticed that very few actually write or post content to Facebook at this point. Of cause it may just be within my circle of friends, but it's mostly just stuff people liked or shared. At this point, if Facebook would allow me to just view friends posted content, chronologically, then I could browse a weeks worth of posts in five minutes. The trend of people posting updates on their lives on Facebook is dead I think. Either people have moved to snapchat, or they don't want to play that game anymore. Facebook has been reduce to a platform for party invites and messaging.

qao 9y ago

Facebook = weapon of mass disinformation Smartphone = weapon of mass distraction The 'perfect' storm. next? AR/VR = weapon of mass delusion?

Jedi72 9y ago

I am very surprised by the general vibe in here that FB are doing this for the users or to promote responsible social networking. IMHO They poisoned the well by disrespecting their users [1] and are now trying to undo the damage. Just like Apple were very sorry after they got caught slowing iPhones. [1] https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/facebook-sharing-crisis.html https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/facebook-sharing-crisis.h...

dfee 9y ago

I wonder if enough of the core-base was eroding that they were forced to make this change. I've been logged out of Facebook since October, and I know a few other friends who have as well. That's not really relevant, except that this group all had membership on Facebook at the 1 year mark - early 2005.

phkahler 9y ago
>> I wonder if enough of the core-base was eroding that they were forced to make this change. You're probably right. I'm just one person and my views are not universal but also not unique to me. IMHO shared content of all kinds has killed the value of facebook to me. I go there to see what's up with people I know, not to see bunch of shared stuff from 3rd parties. A few years ago you could go through and click "don't show any more from cool_cat_videos" and do that agressively for a day or two and the feed would clean up and show more friends posts. That doesn't work any more, there is a constant barrage of suggested content that isn't coming from anyone I know - just FB paid suggestions. It's awful. My typical Facebook experience is to log in, scroll down - ignoring almost all content - looking for an actual post from someone I know. Then I log out. To me the problem is the "share" button. It encourages impersonal content sharing, which I can get all day long over at reddit or youtube or whatever. I go to FB to see what's up with people I know, but it just doesn't work like that any more. They seem to get it, but the fix they're talking about is to focus on 3rd party content that get a response from people you know. That's still not personal posts, and I don't think it's going to change my use much. The problem for them is that the stuff that used to bring me there doesn't pay, and the stuff that does drives me away.
chrisper 9y ago
I haven't visited the Facebook Main site either for quite some time. Only using the messenger.
IshKebab 9y ago
Yeah exactly the same for me. Friends communicate and share photos and news on WhatsApp now, not Facebook. Facebook has become a kind of shit version of Reddit where everything in the news feed is basically stuff from Reddit that has been shared by friends. It used to be original messages from friends.

rdiddly 9y ago

Oh brother... the quote at the end there? "It’s important to me that when Max and August grow up that they feel like what their father built was good for the world." Why does it bother me? Let me analyze. OK 1) There are people out there who live their whole lives according to good values pretty much the whole time, and don't need the shock of parenthood to finally make them care about acting like a decent human being. And most are not 2) billionaires. However, quite a few apparently do need that little kick in the pants, which explains 3) how trite this sentiment is. But owing precisely to how common it is, we may never know if this is something Zuckerberg actually feels, or if it's 4) just something he picked up that he thought sounded like something an earthling might say. A nice platitude to conceal the true market-driven motivation for this move, and 5) you just know there is one. Also even assuming it's sincere, there's a prominent tone of 6) narcissism in it, when people suddenly start caring about their legacy. (Like "my legacy" and "how I will be viewed" as opposed to anything about the kids themselves or you or me or anyone that person might've hurt.) I feel like as outlandish as it is, South Park's animated version of him, voiced like a badly dubbed Hong Kong martial arts actor, saying "Ha ha ha, you cannot block my shtoyle" and such, is more convincing & realistic than the reality!

tinymollusk 9y ago
I like to apply a test to myself, which I fail every time. Goes as follows: Can I literally write down a statement that would have changed my perspective on this statement/issue/perspective? Most things that I'm against, I cannot imagine myself not being against. One possible explanation is Zuckerberg is evil incarnate, but I believe the world is much more nuanced than that. If I cannot bring to life (and even metaphorically "try on" the other perspective), there is a high probability that I am too biased to offer a fair judgement.
- rdiddly 9y ago
  I hear ya, and obviously I would fail as well, though a few years of statements backed up by actions would definitely change my perspective. We'll just have to wait & see!

zitterbewegung 9y ago

I think Facebook is basically the replacement of the newspaper at this point. Oh well....

alexkavon 9y ago
Years ago they pitched this exact idea/goal at F8 I believe.

makecheck 9y ago

There’s still something eerily uncomfortable about how they want me to log in so much and check everything. They basically lie about it now, finding any excuse to put a colored flag on something. Recent example: while I was logged out, they put my picture on their “quick login” page with a little red number “2” on my photo. Well gee, turns out there wasn’t “2” of anything in my profile to see: no unread messages, etc.; no, it was just made-up crap to make me want to go check Facebook again. Not sure why Facebook is so desperate for attention that they need to LIE to get it but advertisers should be concerned: anything Facebook claims about “active users”, etc. is probably greatly exaggerated.

DashRattlesnake 9y ago
> Recent example: while I was logged out, they put my picture on their “quick login” page with a little red number “2” on my photo. Well gee, turns out there wasn’t “2” of anything in my profile to see: no unread messages, etc.; no, it was just made-up crap to make me want to go check Facebook again. I've seen this too: I created an empty profile once for some reason. The email account that I setup for it very quickly started getting messages like "you have 1 new notification - log in." When I did that, there wasn't a damn thing there.
username223 9y ago
Spammers gonna spam. Anything sent to me from "notification@facebookmail.com" or "noreply@facebookmail.com" goes straight to the trash, and the problem is solved.

intrasight 9y ago

You can of course do that "overhaul" yourself by installing a filter like F.B.Purity

krisgenre 9y ago

Funny this was reason I've been using G+ to share photos with friends and family since they 'stay' in the news feed.

Von_Jones 9y ago

Still a douchebag company. In essence, they got its users (me included) to sign away our sovereign data before we knew its value. I feel the equivalent is colonialists in Africa getting African chiefs to sign away their land for a bottle of whiskey. I would go as far as to say Facebook is a neo-colonialist land-grabber - except its not your land you've given away, it's your most personal information. Zuckerberg = world's biggest douche. A modern day Cecil Rhodes.

te_chris 9y ago

Install newsfeed eradicator. Best decision I ever made. The news feed offers nothing.

rad_gruchalski 9y ago
The best decision ever was to log out.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

nepotism2018 9y ago

The fact that I'm not allowed to order my newsfeed by latest permanently is a big problem!

mrweasel 9y ago
I have the same issue, I wouldn't call it a big problem, just annoying. What it does is show us where Facebook believe there's a possibility to make a profit, and it's not by keeping you up to date with your friends lives.
- nepotism2018 9y ago
  Sure, at minimum it is annoying. For me i'm always checking latest political, sports or technology news, although this might come across pretty bad but I put my facebook "world" in the same category so I want the latest updates all the time

musage 9y ago

Just show all things from all subscribed sources in chronological order, add pagination, filtering and sorting, and you might have yourself something.

kerpele 9y ago

I just wish they would stop tracking me and everyone I interact with whenever and wherever

Marazan 9y ago

I just want a date ordered list of everything my friends have posted. Is that too much to ask for?

gimmeayrwlt 9y ago

Family share with nsa and cia... why not. It's always been very important, just like in KGB ?

roadbeats 9y ago

Too late. Noone around my family and friends share nothing in Facebook for long time. In 2018, it’s probably the worst platform to connect to people. The best thing I did in 2017 was to permanently delete my Facebook account. Thankfully they now allow you to divorce with their app at least.

Demoneeri 9y ago

I don't understand, here is my news feed right now: - A beautiful video from Patrick Seabase (person that I follow) - A post from a friend asking a question I don't know the answer to, but already 8 comments. - A post from The Economist (that I follow). This article is not relevant to my interest but sometime they are. - A post about about a comment that one of my friend left on another post (this the kind of post I don't want to see) - A friend posted a video of something funny happening in my home town. - A post from my mayor telling us that the snow removing in the street is nearly done. - A post from CityLab relevant to me. So on and so forth. If your feed is irrelevant, it's your fault...

luckydata 9y ago

It's remarkable how closely the evolutions of the facebook "the product" track the evolutions of facebook "the founder". Zuckerberg starts his professional life as a college bro making tools for college bros, then a few steps later he's married and has kids and it's all about family and true connection, less about broadcasting to the world.

cconstantin 9y ago

The newsfeed should be a cronological list of posts from your sources. Then you could have some filter functionality that YOU control

Double_a_92 9y ago
I remember when Google+ was like that. It was so perfect. You could even set a frequency (with a slider!) for posts from each individual source.

zghst 9y ago

Zuckerberg is painfully slow. Makes me really question his so-called “genius”.