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You know what's weird? I discovered that the following link shows my FB feed in chronological order: https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.c

You know what's weird? I discovered that the following link shows my FB feed in chronological order: https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr I thought, oh, great, this is the key to making FB decent again. But after a while of using it, it usually shows almost nothing. Sometimes literally nothing. People are still posting stuff though that I can see with the default view. I almost think I may have triggered some sort of adversarial logic that is trying to force me to use the engagement-driven ordering. Edit: In fairness, it could be that they are hostile to uBlock origin, either deliberately or as emergent behavior. I wouldn't mind ads in principle, normal ads like you used to have in print media, but I often get ones that are very unpleasant if I don't use the blocker.

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
I’m not looking for Facebook to be great, just useful enough. And I reckon I’ve got it doing that by only following people and groups that serve my interests and don’t rile me. That means I generally tried to avoid what my individual friends have to say, as it’s mostly the usual things which aren’t really worth engaging with.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  I find it almost unbearable the way it selects the worst of what everyone posts. I know, it's easy to blame the person and not the algorithm. But I think people underestimate how much manipulating context can warp perceptions and how vulnerable anyone who posts a fair amount is. I get to feeling almost persecuted and then I look at someone's posts in context chronologically and it seems quite normal. Just by selecting a small fraction of posts, there is an illusion of a personality that doesn't exist. Context matters so much. It's not humanly possible to overcome the effect of what you don't see other than by challenging it, going out and looking for a more representative sample.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    Yeah, look, I mean, I only follow groups like specific model vehicle owners group for my local state / country and say, in my own context as an example, permaculture and mushroom identification groups, which are usually well moderate to exclude poor behaviour / encourage good behaviour. Having said that, I do see how the most divisive posts and comments get more attention. And fuck Facebook and everyone one of the individuals who work there and enable that.
rozab 6y ago
To be fair, the kind of ads social media companies have been most criticized for (those masquerading as real posts) are exactly the sort adblockers don't effect.
geraldcombs 6y ago
I've been experiencing the same behavior here lately and take it as a hint to go do something else.
timbit42 6y ago
If you use FBPurity you can block all kinds of garbage on FB. It can also ensure sk=h_chr is always enabled, if you want.
- allthecybers 6y ago
  I use FBnofb and it allows me to block all the garbage on Facebook by not having an account and never visiting that dump. On a more serious note, I deleted my account several years ago. This after coming to the realization how much I was passively scrolling past misinformation, polarizing political discussions and curated self-promotion from acquaintances I barely new. It was funny to have people who never talked to me, complain to a mutual friend that they didn’t what was going on in my life because I was no longer on Facebook, but then never once reached out via any other channel to catch up.
  - Marsymars 6y ago
    There is some middle ground possible - I simply unfollowed everyone on Facebook, so my feed is always empty, and unfriend anyone with whom I wouldn't be willing to have a coffee. I'm often invited to events that are organized via Facebook, and it's sometime the only point of contact I have for people when they change their other contact info, so my approach seems, for me, more practical than deleting my account entirely.
gnicholas 6y ago
Yep, this has happened to me for years. Occasionally it will show me days-old posts from friends and then say that there are no more stories. If I switch back to the regular view, it will show me many new stories. My guess is they aren't ruining this experience on purpose, but they aren't keen to fix it because they don't want you using this mode.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
blululu 6y ago
I have experimented with Chronological order in the past, and it almost invariably provides a worse feed. It's like email with no spam filters. The grim reality is that most of the content that is uploaded to Facebook is repetitive and uninteresting. In my personal experience the friends who used to post the most interesting things have mostly stopped, and all that remains is the chaff.
- kickscondor 6y ago
  Yeah this is less a statement on chronological ordering and more a product of subscribing to all of your uncles. I do think chronological ordering can help you diagnose this problem quicker.
  - henrikschroder 6y ago
    It's always baffling to me to read about people who complain about their Facebook feed because their friends post shit, and because they like pages who post shit... Facebook can't magically fix your feed for you, you have to curate it yourself, how come people don't understand that?
    - HenryBemis 6y ago
      It pisses me off when someone reassigns the blame to the user and not to the cancerous Facebook shit and it's scumbag leadership. Just because WE are too stupid to "curate it ourselves".... Here are the three top search results when searching (in DDG) for: Facebook timeline psychological experiment 1: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/every... 2: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-... 3: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook-manipulated-689003-users-emotions-for-science/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook... Now then.. are we all so stupid, or is Facebook ran by a bunch of scumbags who care only for "user engagement" no-matter-what? And it may be that some people get confused by its practices, then understand the dishonesty that is causing the confusion and give it up (abandon FB), while others get trapped in it, so net-net FB made more £€¥$ and kept the bad practices.
jandrese 6y ago
I always use the chronological feed. That way when I see a story I recognize I know I can stop. It's much much faster than the default view where you have to scroll through a ton of content you've already seen to find something your friend just posted.
st1ck 6y ago
Nothing in FB feed is pretty much perfect, more time for HN.
djmips 6y ago
When you say 'discovered' do you mean you used the UI? That option is in my UI on my facebook. Although I realize that different people may have different UI from what I have heard.
TheAceOfHearts 6y ago
You can hide and report ads as offensive if you really dislike them.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  I've noticed recently that if I flag too many things I start getting ones that I can't reject. It's just unrelenting implacable pressure; you can report or hide things forever, but it never gets you anywhere and you start suspecting some subtle retaliation in the algorithms. I don't know about Facebook specifically, but every time I see something I don't like on Google News (on my phone), I tell it I never want to see that news source again, but then it started to give me news stories that collect a large number of sources together, without the ability to get rid of them all at once. Trying to curate this stuff is like sculpting fog.
pndy 6y ago
It doesn't work anymore - it used in the past before they started dumping sponsored posts, before the option of "subscribing" to selected friends was added and before they redesigned privacy options. What I do noticed is that after few times of selecting between the posts sorting options, there won't be anything else shown in "most recent" but "top stories" will puke posts at random from random time up to about a week. Maybe it's for everyone or maybe it's just for me - I'm not sure; I'm visiting that site once per month to check if someone wanted something and thus, perhaps algorithms have no data to display.

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago

I’m not looking for Facebook to be great, just useful enough. And I reckon I’ve got it doing that by only following people and groups that serve my interests and don’t rile me. That means I generally tried to avoid what my individual friends have to say, as it’s mostly the usual things which aren’t really worth engaging with.

perl4ever 6y ago
I find it almost unbearable the way it selects the worst of what everyone posts. I know, it's easy to blame the person and not the algorithm. But I think people underestimate how much manipulating context can warp perceptions and how vulnerable anyone who posts a fair amount is. I get to feeling almost persecuted and then I look at someone's posts in context chronologically and it seems quite normal. Just by selecting a small fraction of posts, there is an illusion of a personality that doesn't exist. Context matters so much. It's not humanly possible to overcome the effect of what you don't see other than by challenging it, going out and looking for a more representative sample.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  Yeah, look, I mean, I only follow groups like specific model vehicle owners group for my local state / country and say, in my own context as an example, permaculture and mushroom identification groups, which are usually well moderate to exclude poor behaviour / encourage good behaviour. Having said that, I do see how the most divisive posts and comments get more attention. And fuck Facebook and everyone one of the individuals who work there and enable that.

rozab 6y ago

To be fair, the kind of ads social media companies have been most criticized for (those masquerading as real posts) are exactly the sort adblockers don't effect.

geraldcombs 6y ago

I've been experiencing the same behavior here lately and take it as a hint to go do something else.

timbit42 6y ago

If you use FBPurity you can block all kinds of garbage on FB. It can also ensure sk=h_chr is always enabled, if you want.

allthecybers 6y ago
I use FBnofb and it allows me to block all the garbage on Facebook by not having an account and never visiting that dump. On a more serious note, I deleted my account several years ago. This after coming to the realization how much I was passively scrolling past misinformation, polarizing political discussions and curated self-promotion from acquaintances I barely new. It was funny to have people who never talked to me, complain to a mutual friend that they didn’t what was going on in my life because I was no longer on Facebook, but then never once reached out via any other channel to catch up.
- Marsymars 6y ago
  There is some middle ground possible - I simply unfollowed everyone on Facebook, so my feed is always empty, and unfriend anyone with whom I wouldn't be willing to have a coffee. I'm often invited to events that are organized via Facebook, and it's sometime the only point of contact I have for people when they change their other contact info, so my approach seems, for me, more practical than deleting my account entirely.

gnicholas 6y ago

Yep, this has happened to me for years. Occasionally it will show me days-old posts from friends and then say that there are no more stories. If I switch back to the regular view, it will show me many new stories. My guess is they aren't ruining this experience on purpose, but they aren't keen to fix it because they don't want you using this mode.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

blululu 6y ago

I have experimented with Chronological order in the past, and it almost invariably provides a worse feed. It's like email with no spam filters. The grim reality is that most of the content that is uploaded to Facebook is repetitive and uninteresting. In my personal experience the friends who used to post the most interesting things have mostly stopped, and all that remains is the chaff.

kickscondor 6y ago
Yeah this is less a statement on chronological ordering and more a product of subscribing to all of your uncles. I do think chronological ordering can help you diagnose this problem quicker.
- henrikschroder 6y ago
  It's always baffling to me to read about people who complain about their Facebook feed because their friends post shit, and because they like pages who post shit... Facebook can't magically fix your feed for you, you have to curate it yourself, how come people don't understand that?
  - HenryBemis 6y ago
    It pisses me off when someone reassigns the blame to the user and not to the cancerous Facebook shit and it's scumbag leadership. Just because WE are too stupid to "curate it ourselves".... Here are the three top search results when searching (in DDG) for: Facebook timeline psychological experiment 1: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/every... 2: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-... 3: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook-manipulated-689003-users-emotions-for-science/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook... Now then.. are we all so stupid, or is Facebook ran by a bunch of scumbags who care only for "user engagement" no-matter-what? And it may be that some people get confused by its practices, then understand the dishonesty that is causing the confusion and give it up (abandon FB), while others get trapped in it, so net-net FB made more £€¥$ and kept the bad practices.

jandrese 6y ago

I always use the chronological feed. That way when I see a story I recognize I know I can stop. It's much much faster than the default view where you have to scroll through a ton of content you've already seen to find something your friend just posted.

st1ck 6y ago

Nothing in FB feed is pretty much perfect, more time for HN.

djmips 6y ago

When you say 'discovered' do you mean you used the UI? That option is in my UI on my facebook. Although I realize that different people may have different UI from what I have heard.

TheAceOfHearts 6y ago

You can hide and report ads as offensive if you really dislike them.

perl4ever 6y ago
I've noticed recently that if I flag too many things I start getting ones that I can't reject. It's just unrelenting implacable pressure; you can report or hide things forever, but it never gets you anywhere and you start suspecting some subtle retaliation in the algorithms. I don't know about Facebook specifically, but every time I see something I don't like on Google News (on my phone), I tell it I never want to see that news source again, but then it started to give me news stories that collect a large number of sources together, without the ability to get rid of them all at once. Trying to curate this stuff is like sculpting fog.

pndy 6y ago

It doesn't work anymore - it used in the past before they started dumping sponsored posts, before the option of "subscribing" to selected friends was added and before they redesigned privacy options. What I do noticed is that after few times of selecting between the posts sorting options, there won't be anything else shown in "most recent" but "top stories" will puke posts at random from random time up to about a week. Maybe it's for everyone or maybe it's just for me - I'm not sure; I'm visiting that site once per month to check if someone wanted something and thus, perhaps algorithms have no data to display.