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Ooh speaking of birthday reminders - if Facebook is browsing this thread looking for things to fix: bring back the birthday iCal feed! You literally had notifi

by corobo 1y ago

Ooh speaking of birthday reminders - if Facebook is browsing this thread looking for things to fix: bring back the birthday iCal feed! You literally had notifications via my calendar bringing me back to your site every few days/weeks to say happy birthday and maybe have a bit of a browse. Now the reminders are in my todo list and I say happy birthday via text or call instead. Path of least pain in the backside. Absolutely bizarre they ditched the birthdays and events iCal feeds.

barbazoo 1y ago
Funny that you think they’d prioritize something that’d be useful, good for you.
- corobo 1y ago
  Haha of course. I was probably just one of a mere few hundred million people using it in a way that brought me back to the algorithm so it got scrapped for underutilisation :(
- pixl97 1y ago
  Boss: "you're only allowed to work on things that serve more ad views"
- reverendsteveii 1y ago
  Remember when they told us that capitalism would cause people to trip over themselves to give us what we want and need because that would naturally be where most of the profit could be had? Why do you think it didn't do that in this case? The answer of course is that facebook does serve it's customers. It serves the people who can afford to buy ads, and what it serves them is you.
  - anonymars 1y ago
    The missing ingredient is usually "competition" Same thing with the "private sector is always better" religion - if there's no meaningful competition, you end up no choice coupled with a profit motive, vs. no choice but I can at least nominally vote and be represented ISPs are usually a good example in the US. My old apartment had one provider, and wouldn't you know it, at my new apartment with multiple providers, I got five times the bandwidth for half the price. See also: enshittification
    - reverendsteveii 1y ago
      In light of competition being the missing ingredient, the question becomes how does one maintain ongoing competition in a system where the bigger of two competitors tends to win and the winner of two competitors tends to get bigger? That's exactly what happened here: Facebook was bigger than WhatsApp, and FB+WA is bigger than Insta, so FB+WA+Insta is a lot bigger than anyone else. Back in the day when Microsoft was the one in the DoJ's sights someone compared it to a dog race. Dogs don't have jockeys, so you have to figure out some other way to induce them to run. The way most tracks (probably all, idk much about dog racing but it's a useful metaphor here) do that is by having a mechanical bunny that runs out ahead of the dogs and activates their prey drive. The bunny has to be ahead of the dogs, but not so far ahead that they don't think they can catch it and give up. That means that every once in a while a dog will get the timing just right, go extra hard, and actually catch the bunny. At that point, the race is over for everyone until someone steps in to shake the dog loose from the bunny and give everyone a reason to run again. Our system is like that: we have to encourage everyone to do everything they can to catch the bunny but also ensure that they never actually do. Bill Gates was the first person in my memory to catch the bunny, and needed to be shaken loose. Now it's Zuckerberg, and probably Google, that need to be pried off of their respective bunnies so that everyone else has something to chase.
      - safety1st 1y ago
        For a start, and it might even be enough, you strictly enforce anti-trust laws which are already on the books that prevent sufficiently large firms from acquiring their competitors and doing exclusivity deals. These laws have largely been ignored for decades and I don't know what to call that other than blatant corruption of our government, but it's slowly starting to change, in a bipartisan way. Microsoft escaped the worst of what the government wanted to do to them for their anti-trust violations. It may not go so well for Google as they hold the distinction of being the only company in US history to have been tried and found guilty in three separate cases of possessing three illegal monopolies all at the same time. Two example measures under discussion in the court at the moment are forbidding any renewal of their browser default deal with Apple, and forcing them to sell off Chrome. We will see soon enough what comes next.
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    And, any time some company gets close to "give us what we want and need," the company will be bought by Facebook, or funded by VCs, and new ownership will "correct" the problem.
  - asimpletune 1y ago
    Honestly, everything would be much better if either a.) people just paid for stuff or b.) governments decided ad-tech in its present form should not be a thing, and regulated the retention of personal data as a liability, to make targeted advertising less-personalized/unprofitable. As a system for discovering price, free markets work really well. The downsides comes from politicians not understanding/caring the limitations of free markets and what kinds of problems they're simply not intended to solve. These are the economic factors beyond price. More broadly, they're our values. If we outsource the need for philosophy/wisdom to the free markets then there is no reason why the market will not demand child labor, 7 day work weeks, single use everything, and privatized security forces. We failed to take action earlier, and the same kind of stuff has already happened to the environment. Not to mention that gambling and security fraud are making a comeback.
    - reverendsteveii 1y ago
      I'm 100% with you on the idea that it's time to start paying for services on the internet instead of the ad-funded model we have today. The problem is that the people who decide when and how to monetize things seem to be moving toward a model where they charge you for the service, sell your data and feed you ads.
      - bdangubic 1y ago
        100% this… everything you pay for is already selling your data and will eventually feed you ads.
        asimpletune 1y ago
        If lawmakers regulated data retention to make targeted advertising unprofitable, then businesses would have no choice but to compete for customer’s money directly by providing value.
- philjohn 1y ago
  They already send an email or push notification ... so yeah, there would be very little metric movement to justify this as having enough impact for year end PSC.
- fallingknife 1y ago
  We don't pay them, so really why would they? I don't do work for people who don't pay me either.
jandrese 1y ago
iCal feeds don't bring you into the site. The whole point of Facebook is to be a walled garden that discourages you from going elsewhere. You're lucky they are not like X and deprioritize external links. Or maybe they do, I have not tested it myself. https://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people https://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people
- corobo 1y ago
  I would click the link in the event to go say happy birthday to the person! I guess I wasn't the norm though aye, it's big numbers that matter
- wwweston 1y ago
  The popular wisdom is that FB has deprioritized external links -- some accounts on FB are now posting an image with a blurb and then saying "link in comments." I don't know if they're doing it on rumor, official communication, or having tested clickthru rates themselves, but several of these have large enough media operations that all of those sources are plausible.
sunnybeetroot 1y ago
Sounds like you use iOS? Add the birthday to the friend’s contact and it’ll appear in your calendar automatically. You’re welcome in advance.
- corobo 1y ago
  Interesting idea and kinda really makes sense.. I guess at the time I just chucked them into todos as I have plenty of friction free ways to get tasks into Todoist haha. I'll give it a go, nice one

by corobo 1y ago

barbazoo 1y ago

Funny that you think they’d prioritize something that’d be useful, good for you.

corobo 1y ago
Haha of course. I was probably just one of a mere few hundred million people using it in a way that brought me back to the algorithm so it got scrapped for underutilisation :(
pixl97 1y ago
Boss: "you're only allowed to work on things that serve more ad views"
reverendsteveii 1y ago
Remember when they told us that capitalism would cause people to trip over themselves to give us what we want and need because that would naturally be where most of the profit could be had? Why do you think it didn't do that in this case? The answer of course is that facebook does serve it's customers. It serves the people who can afford to buy ads, and what it serves them is you.
- anonymars 1y ago
  The missing ingredient is usually "competition" Same thing with the "private sector is always better" religion - if there's no meaningful competition, you end up no choice coupled with a profit motive, vs. no choice but I can at least nominally vote and be represented ISPs are usually a good example in the US. My old apartment had one provider, and wouldn't you know it, at my new apartment with multiple providers, I got five times the bandwidth for half the price. See also: enshittification
  - reverendsteveii 1y ago
    In light of competition being the missing ingredient, the question becomes how does one maintain ongoing competition in a system where the bigger of two competitors tends to win and the winner of two competitors tends to get bigger? That's exactly what happened here: Facebook was bigger than WhatsApp, and FB+WA is bigger than Insta, so FB+WA+Insta is a lot bigger than anyone else. Back in the day when Microsoft was the one in the DoJ's sights someone compared it to a dog race. Dogs don't have jockeys, so you have to figure out some other way to induce them to run. The way most tracks (probably all, idk much about dog racing but it's a useful metaphor here) do that is by having a mechanical bunny that runs out ahead of the dogs and activates their prey drive. The bunny has to be ahead of the dogs, but not so far ahead that they don't think they can catch it and give up. That means that every once in a while a dog will get the timing just right, go extra hard, and actually catch the bunny. At that point, the race is over for everyone until someone steps in to shake the dog loose from the bunny and give everyone a reason to run again. Our system is like that: we have to encourage everyone to do everything they can to catch the bunny but also ensure that they never actually do. Bill Gates was the first person in my memory to catch the bunny, and needed to be shaken loose. Now it's Zuckerberg, and probably Google, that need to be pried off of their respective bunnies so that everyone else has something to chase.
    - safety1st 1y ago
      For a start, and it might even be enough, you strictly enforce anti-trust laws which are already on the books that prevent sufficiently large firms from acquiring their competitors and doing exclusivity deals. These laws have largely been ignored for decades and I don't know what to call that other than blatant corruption of our government, but it's slowly starting to change, in a bipartisan way. Microsoft escaped the worst of what the government wanted to do to them for their anti-trust violations. It may not go so well for Google as they hold the distinction of being the only company in US history to have been tried and found guilty in three separate cases of possessing three illegal monopolies all at the same time. Two example measures under discussion in the court at the moment are forbidding any renewal of their browser default deal with Apple, and forcing them to sell off Chrome. We will see soon enough what comes next.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  And, any time some company gets close to "give us what we want and need," the company will be bought by Facebook, or funded by VCs, and new ownership will "correct" the problem.
- asimpletune 1y ago
  Honestly, everything would be much better if either a.) people just paid for stuff or b.) governments decided ad-tech in its present form should not be a thing, and regulated the retention of personal data as a liability, to make targeted advertising less-personalized/unprofitable. As a system for discovering price, free markets work really well. The downsides comes from politicians not understanding/caring the limitations of free markets and what kinds of problems they're simply not intended to solve. These are the economic factors beyond price. More broadly, they're our values. If we outsource the need for philosophy/wisdom to the free markets then there is no reason why the market will not demand child labor, 7 day work weeks, single use everything, and privatized security forces. We failed to take action earlier, and the same kind of stuff has already happened to the environment. Not to mention that gambling and security fraud are making a comeback.
  - reverendsteveii 1y ago
    I'm 100% with you on the idea that it's time to start paying for services on the internet instead of the ad-funded model we have today. The problem is that the people who decide when and how to monetize things seem to be moving toward a model where they charge you for the service, sell your data and feed you ads.
    - bdangubic 1y ago
      100% this… everything you pay for is already selling your data and will eventually feed you ads.
      - asimpletune 1y ago
        If lawmakers regulated data retention to make targeted advertising unprofitable, then businesses would have no choice but to compete for customer’s money directly by providing value.
philjohn 1y ago
They already send an email or push notification ... so yeah, there would be very little metric movement to justify this as having enough impact for year end PSC.
fallingknife 1y ago
We don't pay them, so really why would they? I don't do work for people who don't pay me either.

jandrese 1y ago

iCal feeds don't bring you into the site. The whole point of Facebook is to be a walled garden that discourages you from going elsewhere. You're lucky they are not like X and deprioritize external links. Or maybe they do, I have not tested it myself. https://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people https://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people

corobo 1y ago
I would click the link in the event to go say happy birthday to the person! I guess I wasn't the norm though aye, it's big numbers that matter
wwweston 1y ago
The popular wisdom is that FB has deprioritized external links -- some accounts on FB are now posting an image with a blurb and then saying "link in comments." I don't know if they're doing it on rumor, official communication, or having tested clickthru rates themselves, but several of these have large enough media operations that all of those sources are plausible.

sunnybeetroot 1y ago

Sounds like you use iOS? Add the birthday to the friend’s contact and it’ll appear in your calendar automatically. You’re welcome in advance.

corobo 1y ago
Interesting idea and kinda really makes sense.. I guess at the time I just chucked them into todos as I have plenty of friction free ways to get tasks into Todoist haha. I'll give it a go, nice one