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Re:A self-driving Uber ran a red light last December, contra... by olalonde on Sunday February 26, 2017 @01:18AM (#13735961)
I'm not a heavy Facebook user, I login once every few months, but I don't feel like it has changed dramatically in the ~12 years I've been using it. There are more ads today but it's otherwise basically the same product. I haven't closely followed any of the incidents and although there are likely good reasons not to like Facebook, I don't feel like its focus has changed much. Anyways, my intention wasn't to defend FB but just to illustrate how quickly narratives change.
Re:A self-driving Uber ran a red light last December, contra... by csydas on Sunday February 26, 2017 @04:30AM (#13736439)
No, understood, I wasn't saying you were defending Facebook, but I really do think its core purpose has changed. Even the way it functions is pretty drastically different than its initial offering.

I only used Facebook when it very first started and my University was added to the list of included Universities, and I didn't use it much since I didn't really trust it. Many years later (just last year), after leaving a job and my employees wanting to keep in touch with me, I started to occasionally log in just to check for messages, and it was a completely different place as far as I could remember. Nothing seemed familiar anymore, the "clean myspace clone" aspect was pretty much gone, since the social part was pretty much gone in favor of the feed. The rest is still there, but it seems like an afterthought now as opposed to what gets shown on the feed.

Re:A self-driving Uber ran a red light last December, contra... by tehwalrus on Sunday February 26, 2017 @04:23AM (#13736423)
The biggest difference from 12 years ago is invisible though- it's the news feed curation.

It used to be that you'd see the latest things from your friends and pages. Now you see what Facebook thinks you'll want to see from your friends and what some pages paid to advertise at you.

If you haven't liked something by that person in a while, you're unlikely to see anything by them if you only log in once every few months. And if you thought you'd see updates from a page after subscribing... well, you will if the page keeps paying for adverts.

Disclaimer: I don't use Facebook anymore, if I'm wrong please correct me!