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People always say this and so I decided to go look at my Facebook feed and it’s entirely people with their families posting completely innocuous photographs. Th

by arjie 2mo ago

People always say this and so I decided to go look at my Facebook feed and it’s entirely people with their families posting completely innocuous photographs. The one exception is that Sadiq Khan the mayor of London is inexplicably on my feed eating at the restaurant Darjeeling Express. Did I follow him accidentally? Who knows. In any case, the reason I haven’t bothered is that the Facebook feed is entirely harmless. I wish I could show you guys. Is this entire phenomenon one of those things that people believe is happening to others and not them? Having scrolled that feed, I am confident that an unfiltered HN read would have more outrage porn than that.

rightbyte 2mo ago
It is different for different users and different at different times. It is probably especially bad with few contacts that write on FB or if you log in like twice a year. Similar confusion on HN comments about SaaS UX arise when there is AB testing and some are victims and some are not.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
8note 2mo ago
this sounds like you have some form of adblock installed that is removing half or more of the posts? the fundamental issue is that the user has no actual control over what ends up on the feed, and everyone's experience is based on what facebook decides you should see. i manipulated mine to show only leatherwork, but it'll never ever show me stuff from my friends. instead of showing me what my friends are up to - deletig any likes and telling it to never show me suggested junk - it shows an error for "add more friends" rather than show content from my friends which they definitely do have. i get the sense that facebook has marked my friends as not worth having their posts seen, so it cant add their stuff to my feed even when i dont have anything else on my feed.
- arjie 2mo ago
  That's a fair complaint. I use the chronological feed on Twitter/X as well because the algo feed is kind of meaningless. I just want to know what people I follow are saying.

by arjie 2mo ago

rightbyte 2mo ago

It is different for different users and different at different times. It is probably especially bad with few contacts that write on FB or if you log in like twice a year. Similar confusion on HN comments about SaaS UX arise when there is AB testing and some are victims and some are not.

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

8note 2mo ago

this sounds like you have some form of adblock installed that is removing half or more of the posts? the fundamental issue is that the user has no actual control over what ends up on the feed, and everyone's experience is based on what facebook decides you should see. i manipulated mine to show only leatherwork, but it'll never ever show me stuff from my friends. instead of showing me what my friends are up to - deletig any likes and telling it to never show me suggested junk - it shows an error for "add more friends" rather than show content from my friends which they definitely do have. i get the sense that facebook has marked my friends as not worth having their posts seen, so it cant add their stuff to my feed even when i dont have anything else on my feed.

arjie 2mo ago
That's a fair complaint. I use the chronological feed on Twitter/X as well because the algo feed is kind of meaningless. I just want to know what people I follow are saying.