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The Facebook aside was interesting. I've been back on FB periodically this year to try to sell some stuff after years off it and it cannot be overstated how ter

The Facebook aside was interesting. I've been back on FB periodically this year to try to sell some stuff after years off it and it cannot be overstated how terrible the basic experience of browsing the feed is, at least on mobile. It's a minimum of 3-4 ads per actual post from a human I chose to friend, and the ads are just the stupidest, trashiest stuff imaginable.

pokstad 3y ago
How about the fact that most ads have better content than your FB friends? Thats more sad to me.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  Are those ads? I think there are 3 things on Facebook: friend posts, short videos from content farms, and actual ads. The first are what I want to see, the third… well, obviously I don’t like them, but they pay the bills, right? The second are, I guess, like things Facebook puts there to hide the fact that nobody posts anything to Facebook anymore.
  - pokstad 3y ago
    The more you accurately describe Facebook, the more their ultimate demise seems inevitable.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      I mean, at this point it has been bad enough for long enough that… how do you predict its demise?
asah 3y ago
I use the web interface and it's also surprisingly bad, e.g. basic HTML bugs that interfere with engagement, e.g. text editor selection and editing bugs.
guiseroom 3y ago
I got back on Facebook just to use Marketspace and it was the worst experience I've ever had. Nothing but scams and idiots.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  FB marketplace has zero authentication for sellers. No point in buying anything from there. If you must buy something from Facebook, use specialist groups that are moderated and preferably private.
  - guiseroom 3y ago
    What was so infuriating was how, if buying, I could limit my search to a local radius, but you can't do that when selling.
  - taude 3y ago
    Weird, I've had lots of success with Marketplace as both a buyer and seller. I only do local transactions, which is the same I would have done in the past with Craigslist, but I think Marketplace is miles-better than Craigslist.
    - theshrike79 3y ago
      If you're willing to go local and meet the seller and check the stuff, Marketplace might work. It's still filled with obvious scams and reporting them does nothing. Meanwhile FB's AI Algorithm bans legit posts for selling prohibited items :D
  - itslennysfault 3y ago
    I'd say Craigslist has even less authentication for sellers and it's pretty solid most of the time. I've sold a ton of things on there and honestly never run into scammers at all. Also, I quit Facebook before they added marketplace so I can't make a comparison. I'm just going off of this thread mostly. I also know people who sell things on marketplace fairly regularly / successfully.
- 3y ago
tppiotrowski 3y ago
Just wait until your account gets hacked and you realize there's a bug with the "click here if you didn't make this change" links in the security email making it impossible to get your account back. Then navigate to Facebook.com/hacked as directed by the help docs and have it reject any attempt to recover your account because it only works with currently used email addresses and phone numbers which the hacker has removed and updated to a value which you cannot know. Does anyone work at FB or knows if they have a public facing bug tracker or ability to contact their developers? This is a pretty bad bug.
- buffet_overflow 3y ago
  This, on top of how frustrating it is to report the hacked account to Facebook. Several family members have had their profiles compromised, including the email and phone number updates you mentioned. Myself and many many other people attempt to help the situation by reporting the old profile as a hacked impersonator, only to be promptly closed by Facebook, as they cite they see no rule breaking. They reach this opinion despite the profile being massively changed, from an English speaking father of two, to a woman persona now posting obvious scam links and new family photos in a different language (and country) entirely. Even as we admit defeat on recovering the old account, often tied to a small business page, and eat the cost of starting over, the old profile still masquerades under the old name, but with reputation damaging and clearly fake content.
  - tppiotrowski 3y ago
    I wonder if the BBB can be leveraged. I can't find Meta on there but I did find an Instagram entry and they have a rating of F [1] Maybe we should post the BBB page for Meta to the front page of HN and let people voice their frustrations? [1] https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/menlo-park/profile/internet-service/instagram-1116-444438 https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/menlo-park/profile/internet-servic...
    - echelon 3y ago
      What would that do? Facebook doesn't sell anything to users. They sell marketing tools to marketers.
HideousKojima 3y ago
Also the ease with which you can get banned from the marketplace is ridiculous, with no way to appeal. We ordered some new kitchen cabinets a year ago and due to some very annoying shipping hijinks the shipment got lost. They made a second batch and sent them to us, and the initial shipment got miraculously found, so we had a second set of kitchen cabinets. I made a Facebook account solely for the purpose of selling this extra set of cabinets on the marketplace, made no other posts about anything anywhere on Facebook, and my account got banned within a week. They asked me to send them a scan of my id to get it unbanned, which I did and they unbanned me. It was then permanently banned a week later with no explanation and no option to appeal.
- cooperadymas 3y ago
  You created an account and immediately posted a high priced item for sale on the marketplace, with no other indication that you're a real person? That's classic scam-bot behavior right there. This isn't a criticism of you - what you did makes perfect sense. But I'm not surprised at all that you got caught by a ban algo. The only surprise is that you were ever unbanned.
- samtho 3y ago
  Without siding with Facebook here, that was extremely suspicious behavior.
fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
Fwiw, I think this is somewhat of a self-reinforcing phenomenon. I go through periods of actual interaction with others on Facebook (for various reasons) and the feed seems to improve when I’m interacting with posts I actually want to see. But, when I’m not using it all that much, the feed devolves back into noise.
thomasahle 3y ago
Just checked my own feed, and it was [friend post, promoted/ad, friend post, recommended group, friend post, promoted/ad, group post, friend post] So not quite as bad as your experience. At first I didn't see any ads, but that was because of adblock.
- trowawee 3y ago
  Yeah, on web with extensive adblocking it's not as miserable (or routing my phone back through my pihole install). But most people aren't adblocking, and the "normal" user experience was jarring.
dgudkov 3y ago
FB on the web is basically unusable without Social Fixer - a browser extension.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

pokstad 3y ago

How about the fact that most ads have better content than your FB friends? Thats more sad to me.

bee_rider 3y ago
Are those ads? I think there are 3 things on Facebook: friend posts, short videos from content farms, and actual ads. The first are what I want to see, the third… well, obviously I don’t like them, but they pay the bills, right? The second are, I guess, like things Facebook puts there to hide the fact that nobody posts anything to Facebook anymore.
- pokstad 3y ago
  The more you accurately describe Facebook, the more their ultimate demise seems inevitable.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    I mean, at this point it has been bad enough for long enough that… how do you predict its demise?

asah 3y ago

I use the web interface and it's also surprisingly bad, e.g. basic HTML bugs that interfere with engagement, e.g. text editor selection and editing bugs.

guiseroom 3y ago

I got back on Facebook just to use Marketspace and it was the worst experience I've ever had. Nothing but scams and idiots.

theshrike79 3y ago
FB marketplace has zero authentication for sellers. No point in buying anything from there. If you must buy something from Facebook, use specialist groups that are moderated and preferably private.
- guiseroom 3y ago
  What was so infuriating was how, if buying, I could limit my search to a local radius, but you can't do that when selling.
- taude 3y ago
  Weird, I've had lots of success with Marketplace as both a buyer and seller. I only do local transactions, which is the same I would have done in the past with Craigslist, but I think Marketplace is miles-better than Craigslist.
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    If you're willing to go local and meet the seller and check the stuff, Marketplace might work. It's still filled with obvious scams and reporting them does nothing. Meanwhile FB's AI Algorithm bans legit posts for selling prohibited items :D
- itslennysfault 3y ago
  I'd say Craigslist has even less authentication for sellers and it's pretty solid most of the time. I've sold a ton of things on there and honestly never run into scammers at all. Also, I quit Facebook before they added marketplace so I can't make a comparison. I'm just going off of this thread mostly. I also know people who sell things on marketplace fairly regularly / successfully.
3y ago

tppiotrowski 3y ago

Just wait until your account gets hacked and you realize there's a bug with the "click here if you didn't make this change" links in the security email making it impossible to get your account back. Then navigate to Facebook.com/hacked as directed by the help docs and have it reject any attempt to recover your account because it only works with currently used email addresses and phone numbers which the hacker has removed and updated to a value which you cannot know. Does anyone work at FB or knows if they have a public facing bug tracker or ability to contact their developers? This is a pretty bad bug.

buffet_overflow 3y ago
This, on top of how frustrating it is to report the hacked account to Facebook. Several family members have had their profiles compromised, including the email and phone number updates you mentioned. Myself and many many other people attempt to help the situation by reporting the old profile as a hacked impersonator, only to be promptly closed by Facebook, as they cite they see no rule breaking. They reach this opinion despite the profile being massively changed, from an English speaking father of two, to a woman persona now posting obvious scam links and new family photos in a different language (and country) entirely. Even as we admit defeat on recovering the old account, often tied to a small business page, and eat the cost of starting over, the old profile still masquerades under the old name, but with reputation damaging and clearly fake content.
- tppiotrowski 3y ago
  I wonder if the BBB can be leveraged. I can't find Meta on there but I did find an Instagram entry and they have a rating of F [1] Maybe we should post the BBB page for Meta to the front page of HN and let people voice their frustrations? [1] https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/menlo-park/profile/internet-service/instagram-1116-444438 https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/menlo-park/profile/internet-servic...
  - echelon 3y ago
    What would that do? Facebook doesn't sell anything to users. They sell marketing tools to marketers.

HideousKojima 3y ago

Also the ease with which you can get banned from the marketplace is ridiculous, with no way to appeal. We ordered some new kitchen cabinets a year ago and due to some very annoying shipping hijinks the shipment got lost. They made a second batch and sent them to us, and the initial shipment got miraculously found, so we had a second set of kitchen cabinets. I made a Facebook account solely for the purpose of selling this extra set of cabinets on the marketplace, made no other posts about anything anywhere on Facebook, and my account got banned within a week. They asked me to send them a scan of my id to get it unbanned, which I did and they unbanned me. It was then permanently banned a week later with no explanation and no option to appeal.

cooperadymas 3y ago
You created an account and immediately posted a high priced item for sale on the marketplace, with no other indication that you're a real person? That's classic scam-bot behavior right there. This isn't a criticism of you - what you did makes perfect sense. But I'm not surprised at all that you got caught by a ban algo. The only surprise is that you were ever unbanned.
samtho 3y ago
Without siding with Facebook here, that was extremely suspicious behavior.

fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago

Fwiw, I think this is somewhat of a self-reinforcing phenomenon. I go through periods of actual interaction with others on Facebook (for various reasons) and the feed seems to improve when I’m interacting with posts I actually want to see. But, when I’m not using it all that much, the feed devolves back into noise.

thomasahle 3y ago

Just checked my own feed, and it was [friend post, promoted/ad, friend post, recommended group, friend post, promoted/ad, group post, friend post] So not quite as bad as your experience. At first I didn't see any ads, but that was because of adblock.

trowawee 3y ago
Yeah, on web with extensive adblocking it's not as miserable (or routing my phone back through my pihole install). But most people aren't adblocking, and the "normal" user experience was jarring.

dgudkov 3y ago

FB on the web is basically unusable without Social Fixer - a browser extension.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]