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Ask HN: Why doesn't Facebook let you filter friends by current city/state?

19 points by anderspitman 7y ago

I'm sure it has something to do with money but I can't figure.

notlukesky 7y ago
Privacy is clearly not the issue as that is the antithesis of their business model. Maybe it has to do with the fear of creating theoretical travel stalkers??? But logically there is no reason not to do it. Facebook had this available in their early days by city etc... just like they even showed your friends and their tally by school even. They removed both filters over 9 years ago.
anotheryou 7y ago
they had what they called "graph search" and i guess it just showed too much of how creepy Facebooks dataset is. You could e.g. search for female friends of friends that are single and living in X Here you can see a bit of the UI, but it worked with natural language in the search bar, too: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-journalists/how-journalists-can-use-facebook-graph-search-for-reporting/543504605661558 https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-journalists/how-jour...
dredmorbius 7y ago
This is a peculiarly common missing feature of online social networks, including several I've been closely associated with.. My suspicion is that it would tend to reveal the thinness of actual coverage. That outside a few hubs (mostly major costal cities), the social graph is quite sparse. It might also enable advertisers to bypass paid advertising targeting, or (especially for ad-free networks) attract spam. On Mastodon, sex-worker-friendly nodes spam the hell out of locality-based hashtags to the point that default instance blocking is required, and sex work seems particularly prone to this. Location is secondary only to intent. Excessive legibility can be a vulnerability. The principle alternatives seem to be local or personal groups, though those are weak substitutes.
reustle 7y ago
It does, just search "Friends who live in New York" or "Friends who have been to Berlin". I've noticed they disable/enable the feature every few months/years, but overall it still works. It has never worked for me on mobile, though. I just searched and it returned a list titled "My friends who live in Berlin, Germany (see more)"
sherlock_h 7y ago
This function would be one of the last remaining things I’d use on FB (the others being marketplaces & messenger - I disabled the news feed a while back and don’t use FB on mobile). Unfathomable to me. I’d really like to see who of my friends are in a given city so when I go visit said city I can reach out and say hi. Don’t really understand it either
pure_garbage 7y ago
Don't even bother, dude. Facebook is designed from the ground up to be a labyrinth. It's not there to make things easier for you. It's there to watch you spill your guts, and lead you around by the nose until you do. It doesn't give you helpful information. It only gives you the minimum to keep you there as long as possible. Any time Facebook seems like it's missing an obvious feature, stop, think about that, and then consider never using Facebook again. Count how many times you might have dropped Facebook for lacking obvious, really easy to use functionality that almost any other normal site has. Count how many times you have to dig deep to find some key piece of information, especially when you'd expect it to be right next to this some other heavy use item. Then think about how Facebook is this billion dollar company, with thousands of smart employees. And yet Facebook still serves up this ridiculous UI with glaring omissions, which may or may not be buried at depths unexplored, hidden from any obvious placement. When you've had a moment to think about that, just drop Facebook, cold turkey. It's not there to help you do anything.

19 points by anderspitman 7y ago

I'm sure it has something to do with money but I can't figure.

Privacy is clearly not the issue as that is the antithesis of their business model. Maybe it has to do with the fear of creating theoretical travel stalkers??? But logically there is no reason not to do it. Facebook had this available in their early days by city etc... just like they even showed your friends and their tally by school even. They removed both filters over 9 years ago.

anotheryou 7y ago

they had what they called "graph search" and i guess it just showed too much of how creepy Facebooks dataset is. You could e.g. search for female friends of friends that are single and living in X Here you can see a bit of the UI, but it worked with natural language in the search bar, too: https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-journalists/how-journalists-can-use-facebook-graph-search-for-reporting/543504605661558 https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-journalists/how-jour...

dredmorbius 7y ago

This is a peculiarly common missing feature of online social networks, including several I've been closely associated with.. My suspicion is that it would tend to reveal the thinness of actual coverage. That outside a few hubs (mostly major costal cities), the social graph is quite sparse. It might also enable advertisers to bypass paid advertising targeting, or (especially for ad-free networks) attract spam. On Mastodon, sex-worker-friendly nodes spam the hell out of locality-based hashtags to the point that default instance blocking is required, and sex work seems particularly prone to this. Location is secondary only to intent. Excessive legibility can be a vulnerability. The principle alternatives seem to be local or personal groups, though those are weak substitutes.

reustle 7y ago

It does, just search "Friends who live in New York" or "Friends who have been to Berlin". I've noticed they disable/enable the feature every few months/years, but overall it still works. It has never worked for me on mobile, though. I just searched and it returned a list titled "My friends who live in Berlin, Germany (see more)"

sherlock_h 7y ago

This function would be one of the last remaining things I’d use on FB (the others being marketplaces & messenger - I disabled the news feed a while back and don’t use FB on mobile). Unfathomable to me. I’d really like to see who of my friends are in a given city so when I go visit said city I can reach out and say hi. Don’t really understand it either

pure_garbage 7y ago

Don't even bother, dude. Facebook is designed from the ground up to be a labyrinth. It's not there to make things easier for you. It's there to watch you spill your guts, and lead you around by the nose until you do. It doesn't give you helpful information. It only gives you the minimum to keep you there as long as possible. Any time Facebook seems like it's missing an obvious feature, stop, think about that, and then consider never using Facebook again. Count how many times you might have dropped Facebook for lacking obvious, really easy to use functionality that almost any other normal site has. Count how many times you have to dig deep to find some key piece of information, especially when you'd expect it to be right next to this some other heavy use item. Then think about how Facebook is this billion dollar company, with thousands of smart employees. And yet Facebook still serves up this ridiculous UI with glaring omissions, which may or may not be buried at depths unexplored, hidden from any obvious placement. When you've had a moment to think about that, just drop Facebook, cold turkey. It's not there to help you do anything.