5 ms·

This article reminded me of what Facebook was and the fact that I did actually like it when I first joined. The major complaint I see is usually centered around

This article reminded me of what Facebook was and the fact that I did actually like it when I first joined. The major complaint I see is usually centered around politics. But for me, I never saw any of that. The main reason I've stopped using it is simple: I used Facebook as a tool to see what people were doing in a passive way that I wouldn't have otherwise. But now the feeds are geared towards the advertisers, not what my friends are doing. Therefore it is no longer a good tool. It's bad software, plain and simple. I really wish there was a better alternative. I know a lot have tried, but they don't seem to "get" what Facebook was for some reason. They all seem to be Twitter alternatives rather than Facebook ones. The number one feature about the way Facebook works is simple: I can share something on someone else's wall/feed/timeline and all of their friends can see it and comment. No other site/network seems to have that feature. Google+ didn't have it, Mastodon doesn't have it. Everything is post on your own page.

chillacy 8y ago
Ah the old days of having a wall and poking people
mszcz 8y ago
Aside from the stuff mentioned everywhere else, my biggest complain was ephemeral nature of the feed. If I saw something interesting I had to act on it at that percise moment or never ever see it again. No scrolling, no page reloads, no "I'll do it in a sec". Once something was out of my sight the Facebook fold seemed to devour it forever ;p If I recall correctly the feed wasn't always like this, but once it became like that it took only a couple of frustrating months for me to start truly hating FB. Nowadays, just because of that, I use FB only maybe once per month and usually only when I have to. Hell, maybe that ephemeral nature of the feed did some good afterall? ;P
- yason 8y ago
  Yes, this is frustrating, especially with the "Top stories" feed which seems to quite randomly choose something interesting occasionally and when you go see it again it's buried by something else. The "Most recent" feed at least tries to stay coherent for a while I still see posts that I can't find later unless I spotted who shared it and where, and then go look that up — and I still might not find it. However, the "Most recent" feed is also quite short: you can easily hit the bottom which makes you realise that you probably saw 1% of all the "most recent" posts. This isn't the only case, though. I have a custom list that includes all of my friends so that I could see their posts, hopefully most if not all of them. Guess what? I only get maybe ~20 posts until that list runs out of items. So, it seems that it's quite impossible to get to see what's happening in your friends' lives by using a Facebook view into their posts. And this is why I started using Facebook in the first place. It wouldn't be technically impossible to dig up the last 7 days of posts from the couple of hundred people I have as friends and sort them based on likes and amount of commentary. I could then consume that list to the extent I want. But that wouldn't be good business, apparently.
- hateful 8y ago
  This too. There was no finding that post again, or catching up. And it because even worse on the app because sometimes hitting "back" from one link would refresh the feed and it'd be gone. After it happening 1-3 times in a session, I closed the app and uninstalled it (for a long while).

chillacy 8y ago

Ah the old days of having a wall and poking people

mszcz 8y ago

Aside from the stuff mentioned everywhere else, my biggest complain was ephemeral nature of the feed. If I saw something interesting I had to act on it at that percise moment or never ever see it again. No scrolling, no page reloads, no "I'll do it in a sec". Once something was out of my sight the Facebook fold seemed to devour it forever ;p If I recall correctly the feed wasn't always like this, but once it became like that it took only a couple of frustrating months for me to start truly hating FB. Nowadays, just because of that, I use FB only maybe once per month and usually only when I have to. Hell, maybe that ephemeral nature of the feed did some good afterall? ;P

yason 8y ago
Yes, this is frustrating, especially with the "Top stories" feed which seems to quite randomly choose something interesting occasionally and when you go see it again it's buried by something else. The "Most recent" feed at least tries to stay coherent for a while I still see posts that I can't find later unless I spotted who shared it and where, and then go look that up — and I still might not find it. However, the "Most recent" feed is also quite short: you can easily hit the bottom which makes you realise that you probably saw 1% of all the "most recent" posts. This isn't the only case, though. I have a custom list that includes all of my friends so that I could see their posts, hopefully most if not all of them. Guess what? I only get maybe ~20 posts until that list runs out of items. So, it seems that it's quite impossible to get to see what's happening in your friends' lives by using a Facebook view into their posts. And this is why I started using Facebook in the first place. It wouldn't be technically impossible to dig up the last 7 days of posts from the couple of hundred people I have as friends and sort them based on likes and amount of commentary. I could then consume that list to the extent I want. But that wouldn't be good business, apparently.
hateful 8y ago
This too. There was no finding that post again, or catching up. And it because even worse on the app because sometimes hitting "back" from one link would refresh the feed and it'd be gone. After it happening 1-3 times in a session, I closed the app and uninstalled it (for a long while).