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FB feed is 98% suggested pages and barely any friends' posts

• koprulusector 4y ago
  Disclaimer: I haven’t used Facebook in forever. I just thought I’d point out this Reddit post is from nearly six months ago. I’d imagine there have been numerous tweaks to what users are shown since then.
• SunghoYahng 4y ago
  New social media appeared -> people flock -> monetization -> people leave The implication of this is that social media is expected to make a lot of money from the number of users, but in the end it doesn't?
• isitmadeofglass 4y ago
  Yes of cause? If your friends want their content to reach you they should have paid Facebook. It’s an Add network not a social network.
• dms_ucsc 4y ago
  If you use FB on a computer instead of a phone, the FB Purity browser extension will let you block whatever you like. I haven't seen an ad or suggested post in years. I came here because today FB started putting posts from the groups I belong to in my feed, even though I had notifications off for all of them. So I was able to filter them back out by blocking posts containing the full name of each group (you can block by any string), so my feed is back to only posts from my friends.
• annadane 4y ago
  I'm seeing a few posts here that basically they have to do this because it's an ad service, it's for shareholders, etc. When are we going to blame Zuck and his unique brand of dishonesty and lying to everyone? They've misled their own investors and advertisers, at what point do we stop saying "with anyone else at the helm it would be the same" and recognize his character issues?
• astonfred 4y ago
  It's actually 25% ads (same on IG): https://www.callmefred.com/25-of-the-content-on-facebook-and-instagram-is-advertising/ https://www.callmefred.com/25-of-the-content-on-facebook-and...
• yonz 4y ago
  Pretty much same here, and that's why I don't log on as my much anymore. Most of my active social network is primarily on Instagram. However there is an aspect of growing out of social networks, especially when you have kids. The more surprising thing is that Facebook still has a lot of current information on me with out me ever logging on with off_facebook_activity. And of course there were a few HN posts on it. https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/ https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity/ Open the link below to see your third party data and opt out if you want to.
• PaulHoule 4y ago
  Ironic that a redditor is complaining about memes. I thought all the good people were driven away from Reddit years ago by the meme cancer.
  • tomrod 4y ago
    Memes aren't cancers, they are ideas.
    • chitowneats 4y ago
      Certain unhealthy ideas throughout history seem to metastasize and cause great harm to their host societies until they are eventually discarded or defeated.
      • tomrod 4y ago
        What do you have in mind? I can think of few modern examples that resulted in failed states and losers in wars, but many other bad ideas persist (but identifying them as such can be socially and politically sensitive) without dying off. Memes aren't cancer, but I agree that they can be pathogenic.
    • desindol 4y ago
      …and ideas can be cancer.
    • anon_123g987 4y ago
      The word "meme" was created by Dawkins to be similar to "gene", because they spread similarly. Cancer is, in a certain sense, a genetic disease, the result of the malfunction of genes caused by mutation. So, to continue the analogy, a badly mutated meme can be like cancer, and can spread like one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer#Genetics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer#Genetics
  • DennisP 4y ago
    A lot of reasonably small, well-moderated subreddits are still pretty great.
• mikewarot 4y ago
  Use this URL[1] to open it in a browser with adblock. It gives your feed in reverse chronological order, with a 90%+ ratio of friends posts. (Just verified) [1] https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr [Update] If you click anything it takes you away from that feed... that's why I have it in my Bookmarks toolbar. If I find myself going "wait.. this feels different"... I look up and see the URL is now the generic one, and I've fallen off the path. Also: I have 141 friends... not sure if that's a high or low number relative to others.. but there's always someone posting. I just read until I've seen it before, twice. (Some people repost other people's stuff)
  • gnicholas 4y ago
    This has been broken for me for the better part of the last 5 years. It would show me posts from several days prior, when I had just seen that there were posts from a few hours prior. It's almost as if FB didn't care to fix the chronological feed, since they wanted you to use The Algorithm instead...
  • jonny_eh 4y ago
    This didn't work for me at all.
  • notacoward 4y ago
    I've been using and recommending this for years. They've broken it twice that I can recall, but both times only briefly. It's the only thing that makes the site tolerable for me. I don't know why other people are reporting that it doesn't work for them. Usually the explanation for such differences would be that they're on the other side of a gatekeeper setting (gatekeeper being the system that FB uses for gradual rollouts) but that doesn't seem likely in this case. Maybe some sort of caching artifact, or something broken about their configs, or HNers just lying because they have an axe to grind, but it does still work at least for some of us.
  • bbarn 4y ago
    Yeah... I had to scroll 9 posts down to find one from a single friend. uBlock running. That trick hasn't worked in a long time, in fact I've had that same URL as my bookmark for years.
• JacobSeated 4y ago
  What is worse, I have seen quite a few suggested pages spreading hardcore conspiracy theories.
  • seydor 4y ago
    Facebook is a machine learning system in which there s only positive reinforcement. Reality is the opposite, people learn by their mistakes mostly. Biological netwokrs with continuous positive reinforcement end up epileptic. So does facebook
    • pessimizer 4y ago
      It's what happens when you ban short-sellers (or downvotes.)
    • JacobSeated 4y ago
      I think, what happened in my case, is that I have challenged a lot of conspiracy claims in the past, hence engaging with said content, and that is probably why it gets promoted in my newsfeed. It still infuriates me though, because it is extremely easy for fact-checkers to label this stuff. I got zero tolerance, so even if someone is just posting a meme, but I know what they actually refer to with the meme, then that meme has to be fact-checked based on the whole context; fact-checkers are probably constrained from doing that, but they really should, because it is just as provocative and damaging, if not more. I hate when I see memes in my newsfeed that are based on basically false assumptions. Usually such memes are obviously very conspiratorial at the same time, and potentially extremely harmful.
  • linguae 4y ago
    I’ve witnessed the same. In addition, I’ve recently seen Facebook recommend posts that were outright racist and anti-Semitic. I tried reporting them to Facebook, but they weren’t removed since they didn’t call for violence. One would think that a company that’s been under heavy scrutiny regarding its role in the growing political polarization of America with its negative social effects would make a better effort with its News Feed. It’s one thing to have a lenient policy regarding what people can post, but it’s another thing when I’m being recommended posts that encourage hatred and wild conspiracy theories that flirt with sedition.
• vlod 4y ago
  Looks like this is using the FB app, which the users has little control over. I don't use FB or Instagram anymore, but when I did, I used Firefox, so I could at least use uBlock or a Tampermoney script.
• gnicholas 4y ago
  I don't see quite this many ads/suggested pages, but I often see two ads in a row on mobile. Every time it happens I close the tab.
• ravenstine 4y ago
  I almost never log in to Facebook anymore, but the feed was hilariously bad the last time I checked it out. Almost entirely ads for random crap, eyecandy videos, exotic Asian street food videos, etc. Nothing even remotely related to my interests. At least Facebook seems to have figured out that I'm not a Star Wars fan. For years, their algorithm somehow decided that I liked Star Wars and that I wanted my feed to be full of lame ass Star Wars memes. I haven't been even remotely interested in Star Wars since I was a boy, and as an adult I hardly even watch Star Trek or have an interest in any other sci-fi. Perhaps Disnay was paying Facebook to just blast their product at random people. I suspect the even greater amount of suggested content in the FB feed is another symptom of the TikTokification of the internet. Facebook was already kind of doing this, but the feed becoming almost entirely suggested content definitely seems like a response to the fact that the 68th percentile of the public seems to have no problem scrolling through random eye-catching bullshit.
  • dleslie 4y ago
    For years Facebook fed me interesting local pages and national news from (usually) reputable sources. About six months ago Facebook decided that what I really need to see is an endless stream of lingerie and female-focused sex toys; I've never clicked on these things, or lingered long over them, as far as I am aware. Coincidentally, it was around six months ago that I disabled the browser from my phone; so perhaps they no longer have location information to lean on? And, of course, I haven't seen a post from a friend or family member in recent memory.
    • BitwiseFool 4y ago
      Some product manager misunderstood the concept of 'generating buzz'. /s
  • mmmpop 4y ago
    What do you mean you don't like Star Wars, everyone likes Star Wars, May the Forth and lol anjklsdnajkdsnfkasfasd Star Wars!!!! i'm so unique
    • 4y ago
• varelse 4y ago
• bluetidepro 4y ago
  Same. This also stems from the fact that no one I know (outside of my Boomer parents) even uses Facebook anymore, so Facebook has next to no "real" data to use like they used to. I've even started noticing this on Instagram, as well. Back in the prime of Facebook there was so much content to use from friends they could fill a feed and even "curate" it, but now I think majority of my friends post AT MOST 1 time a YEAR on Facebook. With the lack of data, they have to just fill it with nonsense to make it look "interesting", but my guess is that it fools very little people.
  • Melatonic 4y ago
    Very true. There was a segment where the news asked a bunch of kids (like actual kids - not 25 year olds people just want to shit talk about) and hilariously this one little boy just yells "FACEBOOK?!?! THATS FOR OLD PEOPLE!!!"
• ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
  I mean Facebook is a dying platform. All the fake numbers won't make a difference.
  • antegamisou 4y ago
    Mind you, communities/groups, obviously imitating subreddits, as well as the marketplace are saving it quite well from ending up like MySpace/Hi5. It's also evident that there has been a significant boomer infestation to the userbase the past 10 years.
    • cpsns 4y ago
      The communities/groups are significantly higher quality than the average subreddit, especially for niche subjects. Frankly they're the only thing I use Facebook for, because the people on hobby groups are way more knowledgeable than those on reddit and they largely don't tolerate meme posts.
      • bbarn 4y ago
        yeah, 90% of what I use it for is my internal group from my work friends about who's taking what shift on my side job, and Volkswagen repair groups - which are an absolute gold mine of experience and info.
    • pessimizer 4y ago
      Didn't Myspace think it was going to save itself with the music it eventually accidentally deleted?
  • micromacrofoot 4y ago
    "death" in this case will likely be quite slow, they're still a 100+ billion dollar company and are still the largest social network by quite a large number (hundreds of millions)
• YouWhy 4y ago
  Knowing the beast firsthand, there's no trace of doubt in my mind that the convergence to a junk product outcome involved a monotonous increase in ad revenue and likely, engagement metrics. There's a tragic dimension that a system which connected so much of humanity to itself so well would be rendered so toxic as a product and as a community in just a few years.
  • pfortuny 4y ago
    Ordinary people put up with a lot of inconvenience just to stay connected (in some way). This is why fb has not collapsed yet. I left it years ago when I realized it was just annoying me.
    • yieldcrv 4y ago
      It hasn't collapsed because everyone with a half-baked idea feels they need to purchase ads to syndicate across Facebook or Instagram and some of the fully baked ideas with a budget do it too its the crux of most modern online marketing strategies, its always an overhead cost, recurring
    • dvtrn 4y ago
      I made the conscious effort before leaving Facebook to trade phone numbers, addresses and birthday dates from the people I wanted to really wanted stay in touch with, and put them in my phone. This was all within the last three years. I’ve sent birthday gifts in the mail, and I’ve gotten gifts in mail from these very people. Sometimes, when I wonder where the convenience that gets talked about in the context of Facebook and “staying in touch” ends and a more delicate form of “you’re probably not as close to some of the people on your friends list as you think” (which was absolutely the case for me) begins. It took really minimal effort on my part to find other ways of staying in touch, but I think maybe the key is you have to WANT to stay in touch with people? Just a shower thought.
      • avgDev 4y ago
        I'm doing this too and it has been great for me in general. I looked at my fb friends and thought to myself which people I really liked and would like to reconnect with. I messaged "facebook friends" I have not talked to in a while and told them it may seem weird but I really would like to reconnect. I have never done anything like this, as I am extremely prone to losing touch with people. I ended up reconnecting with a few people in real life and it has been great. I also plan on sending cards and stuff.
• vkou 4y ago
  Same for me. I checked in a few times this year, and it's utterly unusable. If I want to argue about clickbait on the internet, Facebook is the last place I want to do that. But I'm sure some PM's really proud of the engagement metrics they've generated.
• throwaway888abc 4y ago
  Same crap with Instagam
• pearjuice 4y ago
  Deleted Facebook years ago and turns out if you have actual friends who you care about, you'll just send each other life/status updates via direct messages (whatsapp, sadly also owned by Meta).
• heliodor 4y ago
  The current FB is great for productivity! No need to mourn the former FB. It's gone. I've given up on FB as a social network a long time ago. I unfollowed all my friends and started following things that interest me. Followed the astronomical society so I can be informed when they have a public night. I get ads for everything I need for renovating my house: roof sealing services, AC repair, contractors, new windows, cabinets, countertops, tiles, custom woodworkers, and more! The comments teach you a thing or two too. The other great things on FB are events, the marketplace, and groups. So much useful information out there if you tailor the platform to your needs.
  • gukov 4y ago
    >The current FB is great for productivity! Good guy Zucc. Is the platform salvageable at this point? Probably easier to acquire a new social media platform than steer the old behemoth.
    • heliodor 4y ago
      The point of FB is to make profit for shareholders. The platform can evolve into something new and profitable. There's no need to salvage the old. That's why the poor guy is driving his VR vision so hard!
  • 1121redblackgo 4y ago
    That is really clever, a swimming with the stream kind of strategy. Thanks for the tip.
  • scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
    I actually concur with this. I largely abandoned the platform, but one thing that I actually got from it lately turned out to be... a fantastic local mechanic. I went to a fan group for my car in my country and asked for a recommendation for someone in my city. Someone gave me a tip on a guy within 20 minutes. This of course is something I would have found in a searchable public forum back in the day, but I think more people use the platform in this way than we think.
• SamuelAdams 4y ago
  This Reddit post is 5 months old, is there a recent change that prompted this post?
• taylodl 4y ago
  The way I use FB these days is to logon at most once per week or every other week. It gives your friends/groups some time to post. Most people aren't posting on a regular basis and oftentimes the ones who are you don't need to read 90% of their posts.
• Tao3300 4y ago
  I suspect part of it is that Real People are posting less. Since the feed doesn't have a bottom anymore it makes up the difference with sponsored and suggested junk rather than going empty.
  • laweijfmvo 4y ago
    So ~3B people are now willingly going to Facebook to be served ads and (probably) bot farms that just repost/share junk articles (some of which are or will be computer generated). Can't wait for the metaverse /s
  • londons_explore 4y ago
    This. Most people have ~300 friends. Most of those friends never post, and the 10% that do probably only post a couple of times a year now. That means whenever you log in, there is no content from your friends to see.
    • wincy 4y ago
      I’m not so sure about that. My mom posts on Facebook and gets a few likes with pictures of Jesus with text in them, and my wife posts every day with political hot takes, literally just text posts and gets hundreds of likes on virtually every post she makes with tons of comments and engagement. My high school peers post pictures of their kids all the time. I like their pictures and they like mine. My grandparents all like my posts too, except grandpa who told me not to curse on Facebook so I blocked her. I’ll curse on Facebook if I want, damn it! Edit: You know, I haven’t even posted this but just to verify I went to Facebook and… 90% was suggested pages and barely any of my friends posts. I swear it wasn’t like this yesterday. Did someone push an algorithm change and screw everything up in prod for Facebook?
      • CuriouslyC 4y ago
        I have also noticed a lot more suggested pages recently, I think they pushed a junk algorithm change.
      • 4y ago
• benevol 4y ago
  Literally all my social contacts have left FB for quite a while already, myself included. I'm surprised people still talk about this.
• smrtinsert 4y ago
  My feed is practically spam.
• Eleison23 4y ago
  I first created a FB account in 2008. I amassed a huge number of so-called "friends", I posted a lot, I was active, and it was detrimental to my mental health, so I destroyed that account. I crept back on last year or so with a blank slate. My "friends" list now consists of an eclectic mix of 100% people I will never meet in person. It's small and selective, so my actual feed is likewise small and runs out quickly. As a consequence, it's not possible for me to waste much time there. I like it that way. I post very little and don't get too personal or dramatic. I had a good series of photos and blurbs about my home cooking projects for awhile, but it's always been sporadic output from here.
• tpmx 4y ago
  My feeling/understanding: Because of the culture wars and privacy concerns, many regular people who used to be quite active on FB stopped posting things altogether on Facebook. The risk outweighed the benefit. So most people were left with a handful of people in their network who would crank out generally quite uninteresting posts. This combined with FB's agenda to monetize the service... here we are. I now only use FB to check in to a few very local groups (population of 7k) once in a while. The signal-to-noise ratio is really bad, even there.
• duxup 4y ago
  Long ago when I felt like I couldn't just find all my friends posts I gave up on Facebook and logged off forever. That was the value to me and Facebook seemed to not want me to see it...
• avgDev 4y ago
  FB is complete trash and a joke. I have issues seeing older FB comments. The UI doesn't work properly on my safari browser. Fb freezes, images fail to load. It is an extremely frustrating experience on safari on my phone. The platform is dying and it cannot come soon enough.
• llaolleh 4y ago
  Facebook is adbook.
• darth_avocado 4y ago
  Yes it’s a negative feedback loop created by the very bad product decisions they made to optimize for local maxima of getting more ads revenue. You inject more and more ads followed by more and more suggested content, thereby reducing the in network content. The in network content doesn’t get as much of traction, therefore people stop posting. This in turn forces the feed to have more and more suggestions and a few stale in network posts from days ago. This drives engagement down from people who want to see in network content and they leave. So what is left is people who do engage with suggested content, pushing the product to make decisions to push even more suggested content. All of this continues till eventually fatigue sets in and a sudden rapid drop in engagement kicks in because your global maxima of a quality product was lost long time ago and your product dies.
  • voisin 4y ago
    Sounds a lot like Google Search results. It’s almost as if advertising dollars are an addictive drug that ultimately kills the company.
    • onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
      Except Search volume and MAUs are still growing like a weed, whereas FB's growth has slowed dramatically. Search is not perfect, for sure. It has different problems.
    • mtgx 4y ago
    • scarmig 4y ago
      It actively makes the product worse. E.g. from yesterday, if I search for "high tc record," I'm not looking for the set of bedsheets with the greatest number of threads.
      • JustLurking2022 4y ago
        In fairness, reading your search term, I had no idea what you were talking about so it's not entirely surprising the organic content producers don't match those terms well. Looks like the SEO folks do though.
• VikingCoder 4y ago
  Should I be moving everyone in my circle over to Mastadon or something?
• freeslave 4y ago
  There might be some other people out there like me with school age kids. I find that my kids schools and the various PAC (parents advisory committee) groups all use Facebook to communicate. So I have to be on there if want info and to be connected with other parents. I hate Facebook but for this purpose it is actually quite useful. Similarly, I am in a neighbourhood group and there is a certain amount of nimby/busybody type posts but it can also be great for knowing what is going on in the neighbourhood. The main page feed is all junk posts/ads but if I stick to these group pages it's useful.
• senko 4y ago
  Same here. Not only that, but the random suggested pages are completely irrelevant to me. Facebook knows where I live and at least a few details of what I'm into, and the suggested pages have no connection to any of those whatsoever.
  • InCityDreams 4y ago
    It's ok. Having used facebook, everybody knows where you live, and what you're into.
• justahuman74 4y ago
  If I posted something no one I know these days would see it as it's become non-trendy to add people on facebook, it's just people from 10 years ago
• yardstick 4y ago
  From the Reddit thread: In the app, click on the Feeds icon (top for Android, bottom for iOS) then select Friends. I’m now seeing a lot more relevant stuff.
• kyleblarson 4y ago
  People still use Facebook?
• ineptech 4y ago
  Crazy idea: FB should stop trying to lure people back from Tiktok with weird features and just lean in to its one remaining strength, which is that among social media sites, it's the most generic and boring and ubiquitous. Being the default place for non-influencers to do quotidian stuff like hearing about school closings, joining the PTA or HOA, coordinating family gatherings, see your nephew's school photos, etc would be a pretty good little business. And they already have all of that functionality built, so they could run significantly leaner, and hence not have to drive their remaining users away with excessive ads. This seems like a good idea to me. But I also think it's about as likely to happen as President Stallman.
  • tpoacher 4y ago
    That's GNU/President Stallman
  • ok123456 4y ago
    Marketplace is the only reason a lot of people still use the site. This is since especially true for people looking for beater cars since Craigslist started charging $5 to post ads for cars. If Apple or someone else with an ax to grind with Facebook really wanted to bust Meta's kneecaps, they could off to subsidize this charge. Maybe also help them out with fraud and spam detection, since that's where most of the overhead on that section is going to come from.
    • achenatx 4y ago
      I use it for groups. Many of our local clubs do great on facebook
      • addicted 4y ago
        The problem is that FB has changed groups as well. Groups seem to be redesigned to become more like open billboards than private enclaves with a limited membership. They haven’t gone all the way there, so the groups are still useful, but I’m worried that’s the direction they’re taking.
• phantom_of_cato 4y ago
  This is a good opportunity to reflect on how irrelevant and vacuous is the omnipresent "It's a private company, they can do whatever they want." We also have a right to criticize them for whatever reason.
• 60secs 4y ago
  And FB default notification settings are cancer.
• specialist 4y ago
  My extended family has been the major reason I've held onto my facebook account. Nieces, nephews, cousins. Baby & puppy pics. Weddings, funerals, milestones, well wishes. Apple's Messages now largely serves that role. Feature Req: Make Messages savvy about Contact groups.
• jonnycomputer 4y ago
  Agree, FB is trashing the place. But will say that, currently, putting feed in chronological order (https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr) reduces the number of suggesteds considerably; usually there is some (non-obvious) way to organize the feed in one of the menus too.
• intrasight 4y ago
  Just get rid of things you don't want. "FBP" gives you find granular control over what information is displayed in the Facebook interface.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• mullingitover 4y ago
  Facebook is a fantastic product, as long as you use it properly and not remotely as Facebook wants you to. - Most important step: Unfollow every single person and page - Follow entertaining groups like 'This cat is c h o n k y' - Keep facebook messenger - Use FB events for party planning That's it, and it's easy: you get all the social graph functionality, all the event planning and chat stuff. The feed (if you even visit it, personally I might spend five minutes a week there) is fun and doesn't make you feel disappointed with your elderly family members.
  • munchler 4y ago
    Why would you want to unfollow your own friends? To me, that's always been the one useful feature of Facebook.
    • spoonjim 4y ago
      The problem is FB uses that to suggest content from their friends. Then you get random stuff from randos
    • psygn89 4y ago
      It's easy when you don't have any.
    • BeFlatXIII 4y ago
      So you don't see the opinions that make you hate them and end the friendship over thoughts that would never be uttered if it were just the two of you.
    • mullingitover 4y ago
      If I'm interacting with my friends on facebook, it means I'm spending irreplaceable moments of my life looking at a screen and not spending it with them in the real world. Even worse, I'm helping Facebook make money that they'll use to further harm society. It's a lose-lose.
  • YurgenJurgensen 4y ago
    The thing about "X is a fantastic tool as long as you use it in a way the developers never intended", is that sooner or later, some interaction you rely on will break because the devs either don't care about or actively want to remove your use-case. Which is a problem if you've invested a lot into it at that point.
• alphabetting 4y ago
  I never use FB but checked it just now and the mix seems fine. Out of the first 10 panels on my page 7 were friends or pages I follow. Remaining were 2 ads and one suggested post. I'm guessing it's worse if you use FB frequently and have seen all of your friends recent content already.
• matchagaucho 4y ago
  And the irony is Reddit social feed is "broke" when trying to view details about how FB is broke :-/
  • dpedu 4y ago
    I'm seeing the "You broke reddit" screen as well but you can still access the post if you use .compact or the `new.reddit.com` domain. https://old.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/tvqddc/fb_feed_is_98_suggested_pages_and_barely_any/.compact https://old.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/tvqddc/fb_feed_is...
    • qjx 4y ago
      i also keep getting the "you broke reddit" screen (even though it's a 503 so actually reddit broke it, but blaming it on the users?) on old.reddit.com but works on new.reddit.com is this reddit's not-so-subtle way to stop people from using old.reddit?
      • JohnFen 4y ago
        old.reddit is the only usable version of reddit. Without that, I'd just stop using reddit entirely.
• misiti3780 4y ago
  FB is dinosaur, it's where yahoo was 15 years ago. Taking into account how horrible the product is, and all the studies that show how unhappy and polarized it makes you, it's surprising to me people are not leaving in mass at this point.
  • ipaddr 4y ago
    Few are deleting there account but most are limiting their presence. I never left myspace but never went back either.
• Melatonic 4y ago
  So glad I deleted that crap years and years ago. Also you can deactivate your account and still use the separate messenger app
• herpderperator 4y ago
  I've been seeing this with Twitter also... a lot of the stuff is suggested content and really clickbaity sponsored posts. :(
• hankdoupe 4y ago
  The stickiest feature for me is Facebook groups. I go to Facebook to see what the people who share my interests are up to, where the next group bike ride is, etc. The recommended content (read: auto-playing reels) just distracts from that and literally any other content / media I'd rather be consuming. I'm really bummed that the platform is trending towards being a Tik-tok clone. I remember at some point there were a bunch of Facebook ads about how it was a great platform for groups. What happened to that focus? e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88mIXSdF7nw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88mIXSdF7nw
  • mtgx 4y ago
  • mrweasel 4y ago
    > where the next group bike ride is, etc Didn't things like that become a problem once they switched the feed to not be chronological? LinkedIn has this problem. Top posts: Some meet up from two weeks ago that I am interested in... but it was two weeks ago, so, MEH.
    • martin_a 4y ago
      Yeah, I was bored and spend too much time on LinkedIn. Now all they can show me is events and promotions from three weeks ago. Not sure I should interact with that content anymore.
• ryanchoi 4y ago
  I’ve found the same thing but for Instagram, though I think it might be similar on Facebook too. It’s just that when I’m on Facebook it’s only to check out some things in a few hobby related groups I’m in so I’m never on home feed.
• TrackerFF 4y ago
  Youtube is also turning into garbage. First 10 or so results are relevant vids, then it becomes a mishmash of "people also watched", "for you", shorts, and similar suggested vids. EDIT: As for FB. The other day I watched three Studio Ghibli movies on Netflix. The last time I watched anything anime related, was Akira some 30 years ago. Now the feed is being bombarded with anime and manga meme content. I click "hide all" from these random pages, but they just keep popping up.
  • bobo_legos 4y ago
    Youtube is a traiwreck anymore. Thankfully when this came up here a few weeks ago a users pointed out that the subscriptions tab is there to just show you what you're subscribed to.
  • DIARRHEA_xd 4y ago
    I use a FF Add-On called DF (Distraction Free) Youtube. I turn off everything but the subscriptions tab. Search on Youtube is dead, recommendations all but. At this point I discover creators on other platforms, then subscribe to them on Youtube.
• null-shell 4y ago
  Yeah I'm seeing this happen on Instagram also, which I used to actually use but every 3rd post is an ad followed by a sponsored post and some account I don't follow.
• donatj 4y ago
  I don't post often on Facebook these days, but I find my posts either get zero likes or in the 30-40 like range with almost nothing in between. This leads me to believe that no one is being shown roughly half my posts, though it's arguably possible half of what I post is total garbage.
• didgetmaster 4y ago
  It's called signal-to-noise ratio and it affects everything these days. We stopped reading newspapers and magazines when it became harder to find articles in-between all the ads. We stop watching broadcast TV when a typical 30 minute show has 18 minutes of commercials. We stop visiting websites when pop-up and flashing ads overwhelm the site. Social media sites are no different. The question is will they wake up before all their users flee.
  • JohnFen 4y ago
    > We stopped reading newspapers I didn't stop reading newspapers because of ads. I stopped reading newspapers because a handful of large companies bought them all and turned them into crap.
    • didgetmaster 4y ago
      Well, there was that too...
• Vrondi 4y ago
  Yes, Facebook seems to be determined to get rid of as many users as possible by eliminating their core functionality.
• cphoover 4y ago
  and it's all crap. Very low quality content... especially on video. Terrible recommendations. YouTube has the same problem. Whoever is leading recs is doing a terrible job.
  • titzer 4y ago
    The recommendation system was really addictive for me for a while. I was wasting a ton of time on YouTube. Then I switched off recommendations based on my watch history and it suddenly got abysmally bad. And hallelujah, that worked like a charm. I spend almost no time on YouTube at all now. Whoever thinks that recommendations aren't predatory time sinks probably hasn't experienced both sides of that.
    • cphoover 4y ago
      They can be both addictive and bad.... I find myself clicking clickbait nonsense all the time. With annoying titles like "Funniest NFL celebration fails" or "Best cheeseburger in NYC" It's inane worthless content, that my brain is addicted to. I feel utterly unsatisfied after watching this terrible content, yet I still click more often than I would like.
    • cphoover 4y ago
      how did you disable recommendations based off watch history?
      • titzer 4y ago
        If you click on your user icon (upper right for me) then "your data on youtube" and disable watch history.
    • rnd0 4y ago
      Actually, Youtube is the last service I like because I pretty ruthlessly go through my watch history and delete anything that might mess it up. As a result my recommendations tend to be pretty decent. Not perfect, but acceptable.
  • 4y ago
• standardUser 4y ago
  I did this on purpose. I muted almost every actual person from my feed and all that remained were a handful of pages I chose to follow. Mostly tv/media related pages and retro video game groups, plus some local groups. Now, instead of looking at the random crap people I barely know decide to post, including their ample complaints about anything and everything, I mostly just see relevant content I'm actually happy to see! This change got me checking FB again regularly for the first time in years.
• kderbyma 4y ago
  I deleted my 15 year old account because of that.....it was tough, but it was so far gone from what it was that it wasn't really a loss to say goodbye.....
• binarynate 4y ago
  I absolutely hate the unwanted recommendations and Reels, but I currently still find FB useful for staying in contact with extended family and friends, so I use this "Facebook Hide Recommendations and Reels" browser extension to keep FB useable: https://github.com/mrinc/Facebook-Hide-Recommendations-and-Reels/ https://github.com/mrinc/Facebook-Hide-Recommendations-and-R... Even with recommendations and Reels disabled, other aspects of FB have also degraded significantly: - Friends don't share original content there as much as they used to, a sign that FB's relevance is dwindling. I suspect people have also grown wary of Facebook's privacy practices like I have. - FB's features lack taste. For example, its knock-off of Bitmoji looks terrible. - Increasing prevalence of scammers. I tried to sell some things on FB Marketplace last week and was contacted by a dozen fake profiles trying to scam me with fake emails from Zelle. I also frequently get friend requests from profiles where scammers created a duplicate of a friend's profile, copying their exact name and pictures. Taken together, my feeling is that facebook.com is (and has been) on a downward spiral toward irrelevance.
  • legitster 4y ago
    Wow! This extension is great! Thanks. > I suspect people have also grown wary of Facebook's privacy practices like I have I do not think this really tracks for the average user. Most people use social media because they a) want to be seen or b) want content tailored to their interest. Ironically, FB now offers neither. So even my wife, who will gladly give out her info for any sweepstakes she can doesn't really find anything particularly interesting anymore.
    • binarynate 4y ago
      You're welcome! And I think you're right, the privacy issues probably aren't a concern for the average user.
• tmaly 4y ago
  I only use FB for the market place. I have not really noticed the feed.
• monkpit 4y ago
  I have noticed this also, I got around it by clicking “feeds” instead of browsing my default feed via “home”. The “feeds” tab doesn’t seem to give me any of these suggested pages.
• thrdbndndn 4y ago
  We're posting Reddit thread with exaggerated number and zero detail now? I know FB is bad but come on.
• wikitopian 4y ago
  This period is best understood as a brutal hangover from several years of market subsidized growth. We had cheap Ubers, cheap meal delivery, and free web services all paid for by a speculative bubble which is in the process of popping. Meta can't just admit that they don't have a viable business model or their stocks will truly crash, so they have no choice but to cannibalize their remaining customers, like how phone and cable companies screw the remaining people with landline phone service and traditional cable packages.
  • fullshark 4y ago
    They made 6.5 billion in pure profit last quarter. The business model is sound the question is just if they are managing it poorly.
• insane_dreamer 4y ago
  Instagram isn't nearly as bad, but still seems to have an ad/suggested/sponsored post every 3 posts from people I follow. YMMV.
• JonathanBeuys 4y ago
  It wouldn't be that hard to write a bookmarklet that scrolls through your feed, removes posts from people you don't follow and sorts the rest by time. A good portion of people here on HN would be capable of writing it. That nobody does shows that there is not really a strong preference for this type of experience over the current suggested/ads/friends mix.
  • pr0zac 4y ago
    Unsure why you think no one has done it. Theres been a browser plugin/greasemonkey script for this type of functionality for over a decade. https://www.fbpurity.com/ https://www.fbpurity.com/
  • JZerf 4y ago
    There are quite a few addons for Firefox for improving Facebook, here are three that I found right away and there are plenty more: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/socialfixer/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/socialfixer/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-facebook-news-feed/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-faceb... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fbcleaner/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fbcleaner/ Facebook does make changes from time to time which makes it a bit of a cat and mouse game to keep these things working and that can easily get tiresome for people. Also some people might find the initial time investment to create these things to be too much. There is another post in this thread where someone mentioned that for many people (but apparently not all???) including myself, browsing to https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr tends to show your friends' posts in chronological order like many of us prefer. There are also several people who mention that using ad blockers like uBlock Origin do seem to be fairly effective at blocking most ads and other unwanted suggestions in Facebook and it does seem to work for me.
• zelman_gina 4y ago
  It is simple. Most of the feed is going to stories. I have so many stories that I can't finish.
• revskill 4y ago
  FB is still doing good job ! It's finding its way to the real death of social media. Thanks Mark and the team !
• snickerbockers 4y ago
  I am so glad I stopped using that site 7 years ago. What an absolute dumpster fire it has become.
• SamvitJ 4y ago
  In my experience, what happened is that young people eventually stopped posting personal updates (this was a multi-year process), either because the novelty of it declined or because they entered a life phase change (e.g. leaving college) that made social updates less frequent or less shareable. In my friend group, this happened around 2018, about a year after we left college and entered the working world. I'd guess something similar happened with many cohorts.
  • max51 4y ago
    For most people I know, they stopped posting when the feed started being filled with suggested crap. We didn't want to post on a feed we hated and where our friends would likely miss it anyway amongst all the garbage.
  • phendrenad2 4y ago
    LinkedIn (or is it LInkedIn?) still serves one purpose: you can sign up for a free month of lInkedLn premium and drop a priority one chat message in someone's inbox. Much better than getting lost in someone's spam folder.
• b800h 4y ago
  I'm waiting for WhatsApp to start serving me ads...
  • ugjka 4y ago
    That will cause mass exodus to Signal or something
• legitster 4y ago
  My FB feed absolutely sucks. All I get anymore are Disney memes and low effort socialist propaganda - content I have no interest in no matter how much I try to hide it. I used to keep a fairly curated feed of news and groups and businesses I followed, for some reason FB has decided to throw out all of that out to feed me this garbage.
• pipeline_peak 4y ago
  “Facebook is dying, TikTok will take over” “Why is Facebook trying to be like TikTok?”
• Havoc 4y ago
  It can't show you content that doesn't exist. My FB feed is pretty much a ghost town aside from a few people that somehow didn't get the memo
• oofbey 4y ago
  Resolution: WON'T FIX. WORKING AS INTENDED.
• smallerfish 4y ago
  What products are poised to pick up if and when FB nosedives? Craigslist is a clear fallback for marketplace (although there was evidently a reason people started using markplace in favor of craigslist). Nextdoor/Reddit are just as much cesspools as FB groups...is there room for an oldster friendly groups replacement that somehow solves the cesspool problem? At least in my area these fill the void of not having local news - but instead it's a local bitchy gossip stream. Social feed is the big one. Obviously insta for photos, if they don't screw it up. Do whatsapp/telegram/signal fill the void otherwise?
• rr888 4y ago
  Surely there is a replacement out there? Like FB from 10 years ago. Any suggestions?
• luckydata 4y ago
  Everyone knows FB is dying (including FB). Doesn't mean a dying product can't make money. They'll squeeze it until it bleeds, then do the same with Instagram while they figure out the next big thing. It's a very similar business as malls and amusement parks, you can't just keep doing the same stuff cause people's taste change.
• oh_my_goodness 4y ago
  Spam Sushi's First Law: all Internet forums eventually reach a point where they focus primarily on driving users away.
• colordrops 4y ago
  I recall discussions of this problem years ago. I did a measure of what percentage of my feed was actual content with friends and it was roughly the same as this current measure. I'll have to go through my comments and find it.
• fmajid 4y ago
  Well, yes. Your friends are not paying for placement. If they are, they are "influencers" and you need better friends.
• throwmamatrain 4y ago
  I noticed I saw way less information about shows in my area, the only thing I used facebook for. I missed nearly two months of shows at my local venues due to relying on facebook before I realized something had changed. Maybe they increased how much you had to pay to advertise or increase reach? No idea! Looks like I'll be writing my own scraper, fun times are here.
• paparush 4y ago
  so, garbage. Got it.
• noneeeed 4y ago
  This is just an extreme form of my problem with both Facebook and Linkedin, both of which have become utterly unusable over the last year. Linkedin is particularly aggressive with the "someone you know liked a comment by someone you don't know on a post by someone else you don't know, from three months ago about an even that has alredy happened...". Utterly irrelevant crap that it is convinced will get me to come back. I actually like the basic idea of social media, I want to know what my friends and family have been up to, or the people I'm professionally connected with, it's a nice way to stay connected to people you might not get to see regularly. The SM companies have all managed to utterly ruin their own products to the point where I don't/won't/can't use them. I would love it if someone could make a site that helped me stay in contact with my wider social circle without trashing it in the deperate pursuit of ad dollars. Sadly I can't see something like that happening and not then being ruined.
• timbit42 4y ago
  FBPurity is a web browser plugin that will hide whatever you don't want to see in your FB feed. If a sponsored post shows up you can click the 3 dots menu to flag it. I have it set to not show Likes or Comments my friends make on other people's posts or shares. All I see is what my friends post.
• kelsolaar 4y ago
  I just spent 20 mins hiding all the Ad, Sponsored and Sugges content and now my feed is clean upon refresh. I do that from time to time and it stays fine for a bit but that type of content starts creeping up again. Lately it has been insane though, for example this morning after seeing this post my feed was everything but content I follow.
  • dwringer 4y ago
    I expect they algorithmically tailor this sort of thing so when they detect a spike in "hide" activity they temporarily scale it back so you think it had an effect, making you more likely to methodically spend 20 minutes poring over all their Ad, Sponsored, and Suggested content again in the future.
• briandoesdev 4y ago
  I wish FB had a way for me to disable posts from companies, pages, "shared" content etc.. I only want to see photos and status updates from friends. That is all. I don't want memes or reels. It's sad that in the first 10 items on my FB Home, only 1 is from a friend and its just a shared meme.
• jrnichols 4y ago
  I noticed this as well and as a result I use Facebook a whole lot less. one big problem that I've encountered is that it's suggesting borderline NSFW content from the plague of OnlyFans "creators" that have flooded onto literally every social media platform out there. I've tried the "suggest less" and liking literally everything else I can but I continue to get a flood of borderline content. You click "Like" on one reel by accident and IG thinks that's all you want to see. less Meta usage for me. No TikTok either.
• ACV001 4y ago
  How do you think ads work on FB?
• Gud 4y ago
  What I'm wondering is why an alternative social network has not gained more wide spread adoption, at least in the nerd community(looking at you, HN reader). It seems to me social media is ripe for disruption.
  • martin_a 4y ago
    > It seems to me social media is ripe for disruption. I think what we see is that every social media site goes down pretty much the same way at some point. FB was great until they started that whole recommended post stuff which fucked up the feed. Instagram was great until they were bought by Facebook and had to get some metrics straight, too. TikTok will be the next one to go down as influencers and other parasitic users tear it down, flood it with low quality content etc. There will be something after TikTok. And TikTok will copy their features and FB will (try to) buy them and ruin them that way, too. It all goes down eventually.
    • Gud 4y ago
      I agree! But what I've learnt from being on HN for a fairly long time is that online communities can be built to last. Maybe not forever, but for a long time. I think _community_ is the important part, as soon as the site builder tries to cater to everyone it eventually just becomes another ad platform.
      • martin_a 4y ago
        I think we might have had something like that community when we were all hanging around in bulletin boards something like... 15 to 20 years ago. I remember that I had a very dark time and some moderator (I was one, too) managed to find out my phone number (I think he dailed every number with my family name in our town till he found mine) and called me, after I had posted in a moderator-only group that I would take some time off and wasn't sure about returning because everything was shit. That really touched me, although we had and have never met. It was human and very unexpected and I don't think you'd find something like that in modern day communities, build on Facebook. Also: FB Groups probably killed bulletin boards because it was just very easy. What a loss.
• Animats 4y ago
  Facebook has a declining user count and a market cap which assumes growth. (Although the stock is down 60% from peak.) So, they've tried to increase revenue per user by adding more ads and promotional content. User count declined further. This is sometimes called "pulling a Myspace". Facebook/Meta is now on metaverse failure #3 (Oculus, Facebook Spaces, Horizon), has lost $10 billion in that space, and investors are not happy. They're not getting out that way. Facebook remains a viable business for now, but not a growth business.
  • JacobSeated 4y ago
    Facebook is still making massive amounts of money, and is still hugely popular. It remains my go-to social network in spite of my complaints with conspiracy theories spreading, and I do not think Twitter, TikTok and others, are even remotely competing with Facebook yet. What happened though is that some younger users lean towards smaller dedicated apps, but these apps are typically less solid, less profitable, and has worse leadership behind them. Apple also abused their near-monopoly by releasing a privacy update that was very harmful to their competitors, essentially it was an anti-competitive move. As a shareholder in both companies (mostly in Apple), I wish Apple would be held accountable for their hostility and anti-competitive practices against Facebook and other companies. Their arguments against ads holds no water. What we will probably see, however, is that Apple is not held accountable for their overnight changes to iOS, and Facebook will find other technologies and/or streams of revenue to make up for the overall hostile ad-based environment. Ad-free Facebook would be cool, but i doubt we will see it happen anytime soon. Myspace and Facebook can not be compared even remotely – myspace was and still is a hot burning mess in more aspects than I have count of. I am not even sure you can define myspace as a social network, because it is so unconventional and boring in that sense, but each to their own.
• martin_a 4y ago
  Another anecdotal data point: I loved Facebook around 2010-2015. I was in university, had lots of "friends" that I had met in person, was a user of the groups, events, everything. It was great to stay in touch with old and new people I knew. As people finished university, they had less time for FB, posted less and so FB probably decided to fill up the blanks they had left with "XY liked this", ads, and "you could like this" posts. As all our lives moved on, FB became worse and worse because we didn't feed it with our own content anymore. At some point I just deleted it and didn't really look back. Now I see the same thing happening with Instagram, where I see less and less content of old friends and more and more reels and "engaging" content. Maybe I'm getting old, but I'd just love to see how my former classmates are doing with their children and families and jobs etc.
  • foobarbecue 4y ago
    I have a similar experience, but when it comes to: people posting less --> "XY liked this", ads, and "you could like this" posts I'm pretty sure the cause and effect is reversed. Facebook decided to prioritize BS over friend content on the feed, and suddenly it became lame because nobody was interacting. A bit chicken-and-egg / feedback cycle I suppose, but I really think FB started it by adding "sponsored content" and even likes (remember when you had to actually type out a response if you wanted to reply?).
  • warner25 4y ago
    This is an interesting explanation of things. So it's not just that Facebook was better in 20XX-20YY, it's the stage of life a person was in. I started college in the fall of 2004 (in Boston back when "TheFacebook" was limited to college students there and at a handful other prestigious schools across the country). It was indeed great fun in those days. By 2010, just a couple years out of college, I already thought that Facebook had turned to garbage, so it's interesting to hear that you had a good experience starting in 2010. Your theory makes sense. Now that I'm a parent in my mid-30s, Facebook is just a utility for getting information from local officials (who've all but abandoned their legitimate public-facing websites) and buying / selling through Marketplace. It has nothing to do with fun.
• foobarbecue 4y ago
  I really miss having a way to talk to my friends online. It was possible in the early 2000s with multi-network instant messaging clients, and then in the late 2000s to a few years ago with Facebook. And then Facebook destroyed itself (as described in this thread) and now I honestly can't find a frictionless way to get in touch with people. My most common use case was posting "hey I'm going climbing / surfing / caving, anyone want to join"? or "I'm in town X, anyone want to hang out" or "BBQ at mine." Facebook is useless for that now and there isn't a replacement. Hopefully, something with critical mass will rise from the ashes.
  • JohnFen 4y ago
    But there are a ton of replacements for the use case you describe. Telegram and the like (even WhatsApp), or just plain old email are useful for what you're describing.
    • foobarbecue 4y ago
      They all either have friction (email) or lack critical mass in my communities (telegram, Whatsapp, signal, etc.)
• 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
  Quit social media! You don't miss what you don't see.
• SunghoYahng 4y ago
  What will happen to React or PyTorch if this trend continues?
  • propogandist 4y ago
    >PyTorch strengthens its governance by joining the Linux Foundation https://pytorch.org/blog/PyTorchfoundation/ https://pytorch.org/blog/PyTorchfoundation/
• aleksandarbos 4y ago
  this is what my latest interaction with instagram looked like before i deactivated the account: 1. i'm consciously opening instagram to see what people/pages i'm following have to offer 2. i'm watching some random "suggested" reel of lion saving baby giraffe from two crocks 3. ads 4. closing the app and asking myself of what am i doing out of my life?
• commandlinefan 4y ago
  I got back on FB after having given up on it for years and now my feed is nearly all leftist memes (not exaggerating - super left-wing pro-marxist/pro-communist stuff), no matter how many times I try to "hide post", they just keep coming. I'm starting to remember why I left Facebook in the first place.
• alkonaut 4y ago
  Facebook has lots of good corners of their products. Marketplace is ok-ish. Events is OK. Even Messenger is an ok sub-app of Facebook. The one app that’s unusably bad is the “feed” (or whatever it’s called these days). I use Facebook almost daily but can’t understand why anyone would use the feed bit. Even back when it was friends’ posts it was bad. Now that it’s half commercial half TikTok rabbit hole why does anyone even use it?
  • smileysteve 4y ago
    Market place, through messenger has significant fraud for sim/phone hijacking. Things Facebook's controls are supposed to achieve that Craigslist suffered from
    • alkonaut 4y ago
      What's that fraud? To me all it does is let me send a FB messenger to someone on my block who's selling some used gadget, and I walk over there and buy it. How does fraud or phone numbers even enter into it?
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 4y ago
  Yeah, but the original FB did not even have a "feed". Hence these complaints are about an uncontrollable "feature" (a so-called "feed") that no one asked for. The idea that someone starts using some software or website because it looks useful (original FB had no advertising) and then later the software or website unilaterally decides to morph into something else (FB did this very early on with the addition of a "feed") reminds me of the phrase "bait and switch".
• stjohnswarts 4y ago
  Not if you unfollow everything other than your friends :) and use "most recent". Still got ads though.
• t0bia_s 4y ago
  There are many browser add-ons that completely removes feed from FB. Since I use FB exclusively for adding links to my personal portfolio, thise plugins are handy and keep me away from distraction everytime I need to share anything.
• floatinglotus 4y ago
  Ugh, I detest that I have to use Facebook for anything at all.
  • oofbey 4y ago
    Why do you? Just stop. Delete your account. Unless there's something genuinely work related, there are other (and better!) ways to talk to your friends and family.
• gausswho 4y ago
  I'm done with Facebook too but let's not post low effort reddit posts here with made up numbers for a headline.
• vatotemking 4y ago
  Tip: Use android firefox with ublock and open m.facebook.com
• kojvec 4y ago
  Hi
• cardiffspaceman 4y ago
  I go on Facebook once a week and browse the 'bell'. My family and friends' posts are generally there. Facebook seems to only show the joke feeds and such when I browse 'home'. So if I really want to be focused I begin and end with the bell.
• ahallock 4y ago
  I wish I could delete my FB account. I only keep it around to manage app social logins and keep in touch with a few family members who haven't gone to Telegram yet.
• phendrenad2 4y ago
  For FB's entire existence the economy has only gone up. Now we're going to see if social media as a business can survive a crash. The 2008 mortgage crisis killed MySpace, so I'm not optimistic. At least they have VR.
• orangecatlover 4y ago
  Is this because no one is using Facebook anymore besides updating their profile picture every year or so? Everyone I know only uses Facebook for messenger
• ID1452319 4y ago
  I'm going to buck the trend here and say that I'm actually using Facebook more than in the past. I am member of a few groups, which are quite niche, but genuinely interest me. I always browse by Most Recent and by checking every day I know I don't have to browse past posts which are more than a day old. FB does a decent job of notifying me when my friends post, so I can see all of those via notifications. While I do get ads and suggested pages, these don't seem intrusive with the above approach. Maybe its just me?!?!
• rixrax 4y ago
  Sort of not related at all, but I decided to try FB marketplace for selling a couple of extra laptops. And oh-my-gawd, it's even worse than Craigslist. In first 24 hours this pattern with semi obvious fake accounts trying to buy the laptop has repeated already 3 times (and come on FB, I refuse to believe you cannot detect this crap if you actually wanted to, and at minimum WARN the seller that you're likely dealing with oredatory buyer): Me: <lists the laptop at marketplace; pick up only> Daryl: Is this still available? Me: It's still available Daryl: okay good. did you have an idea if what the shipment cost to Scotland?? I want to get it for my Scottish girlfriend. I'm currently in Scotland Me: No dice. If you want it, come pick it up from Santana Row. I'll sell for cash only. I don't know what's the actual scam here, but all these guys ask (in Spanish too btw) Is it available? If yes, they have some excuse for wanting it NOW, but not being able to pick it up, and then ask me to use a courier etc. Suckers!
• cptnapalm 4y ago
  Not really related, but the last time I was on Facebook, its ads were so wrong I actually tried to improve it. It targeted me for endless hip hop ads. I don't like hip hop; nothing I've ever liked on FB had anything to do with hip hop. So, I told it I don't like these ads. Instead of trying to show me things that I might actually be even mildly interested in, it fed ever more hip hop ads to me. It was so aggravating, that I just closed FB out and I don't think I've ever logged in again.
• peacefulhat 4y ago
  I pitched to an engineer that worked on Facebook newsfeed ranking that they make a setting to let me hide all reposts because my feed was entirely political links and meme images. He didn’t buy that life updates from friends was what I wanted to see, very adamant that if I used the “I don’t like this” button, eventually it would find content I liked.