Even better was when messenger split off from fb proper into its own app, but still showed a notification bubble with red exclamation marks (or some such, it's been a while) that you couldn't dismiss. clicking opened the page to install the messenger app.
I deleted my account.
So not only hostile but incompetent.
A broken feature on the mobile version nudges towards app installation, a broken feature on the desktop version does not.
This means that there is some benefit for Facebook to not fix the mobile version.
If a bug persists and benefits the company, we should - by principle - never assume it to be a bug.
We see the same right now with reddit, where old interfaces slowly (and clearly intentionally) crumble away, permanently signalling to the user that it is time to switch to one of the interfaces with a higher ad density.
I reported the spurious notifications, then eventually gave up and disabled notifications for the entire app at the OS level.
And as a revenue-generating set of eyeballs they can monetize and sell to said video content creators.
1. https://www.fbpurity.com/news/important-news-facebooks-legal...
Another meta problem is that there seem to be no authoritative product person that can force his/her vision on the product so you get hundreds of visions colliding and fighting for changes. IMO it’s much more valuable to have a coherent vision being enforced for the product, otherwise you get this frankenstein-like collection of apps.
Finally, the fact that HN is such a hater of facebook means that most fb engineers have deserted HN and they’re not reading the excellent ideas and feedback that this community sometimes provide. It’s a shame, because I still completely believe in Facebook as a good product for the world.
I was looking through it, and it started scrolling on its own. Dozens and dozens of stories flashed before me.
Something is really odd, FB has lost a fair bit of my online time recently.
I think you may be right. Just let me pay a few bucks and just show me my friends.
Scrolling through Facebook is like walking through an Outlet Mall in a foreign country.
Which is understandable, because FB optimizes for clickability and shows very few posts of those who rarely post (and whose posts really deserve attention imo) so after seeing no reaction from their friends ("are they ignoring me?" - no, FB just decided not to include your post in their feeds) they just gave up.
facebook is an ad business. to that end, they do try to improve the user experience wherever necessary to advance the goals stated above, but that's it.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook...
Well, people believe the craziest things so you are in good company.
But on the important point on whether facebook is salvageable with a user subscription model: extremely dubious. In some sense adtech has ruined the concept of users paying for a good product and there is poetic justice in that. The magic wand that turns users into product wont turn product into client.
What might work is "social as public or semi-public infrastructure", namely getting cities, companies, states or even countries paying for user accounts of residents, employees etc. as a sort of benefit.
But even in the unlikely scenario facebook would relinquish its residual adtech earnings in favor of a new and less lucrative business model it would likely face stiff competition from newcomers with less historical baggage
So it seems my company is doing that (it's called "workplace from meta" now) and it's ridiculous as you get the worst of both worlds.
I assume people who say that haven’t had a good experience with fb, but it changed my life when I was younger. I still use to track all my friends across the world.
> In some sense adtech has ruined the concept of users paying for a good product and there is poetic justice in that
Twitter blue
In short, the newsfeed succeeded in making me always feel left out. Checking it several times every day was never good enough.
Subscriptions work when either the user makes money from pushing the content, or actively wants the content they’re provided. On the former, boosted spam has already been implemented, ultra targeted ads are another form of this, and stalking users to push private messages to them is already Linkedin’s bread and butter.
On the latter, the issue is of course that the “content” (people’s post) isn’t and won’t be worth paying for in general. I won’t be paying to read my relatives bickering about stupid issues. Random people’s funny takes and viral jokes will be spread on other networks so paying for it won’t make sense either. I’ll subscribe to my favorite novel, manga or tv show, or check a well put newsletter or podcast. None of that has a place on the blue app.
Facebook at this point has a very specific niche, and trying to get out of that niche either puts it in competition with better/less toxic/griftier services, or canibalizes other meta products. In that sense pushing facebook in a completely new direction is a tall order. If a PM had a crazy novel idea, they’d better execute it in Instagram or a completely new product than have it get beaten to death in facebook.
> haters
I was following a bunch of very talented and idea prolific designers and engineers working at facebook. IMO they haven’t left HN or Twitter or the public place. They left facebook instead.
Or were laid off :))
But more seriously I still believe in fb. I still know a lot of great people there.
You can always return the contempt by extracting all our data out (provided that's important to you) and permanently shutting down you account. I believe that's the most efficient thing you can do to tell FB to go to hell.
Edit: I honestly believe that any FB user this is the most harmful thing you can do to them.
Quitting Meta means not getting to be in those circles anymore.
Basically you're subject to the lowest common denominator.
Message contents also aren't the only kind of data that Whatapp knows about. Facebook doesn't need message contents to monetize your communications. They almost certainly harvest Whatapp's metadata and tie it to everything else they know about you.
If you like the service, that's great. Use it and enjoy. But don't assume that your communications are secure.
WhatsApp encryption is strong enough to defeat criminal investigations in my country. That has to count for something. They got so angry about it they blocked WhatsApp services for days and jailed Facebook people.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/abigailtracy/2016/05/02/whatsap...
A few years back I changed the e-mail to a fake e-mail. I accidentally typo’d my mobile phone number due to which it now resolves with a Philippines prefix. This prevents me from verifying their ‘looks like you’re trying to do a suspicious log-in’
They won’t give access or delete my account despite:
- me knowing the current password
- providing old passwords
- indicating to them the old e-mail address to my account
- verifying that I have access to that e-mail account
- verifying that I own the ‘old’ phone number to the account with a phone bill (!)
- indicating I am willing to provide a scanned ID
- indicating two friend on my ‘following’ list that would be willing to verify its me trying to access the account
At this point I have pretty much done 5-factor authentication and they still won’t accede.
Thankfully I am an EU citizen and the data commissions are currently extremely trigger happy with GDPR fines, so my hope is this forced them to resolve it, or make it cost them tens to hundreds of millions for not doing so.
Fuck you and your scummy illegal practices, Meta :)
Then seemingly at random it starts showing me short-form sort-core porn videos.
Instagram used to be about fun and creativity, now it's a trashy tabloid that's entirely made of Page 3 content.
For instance mine will show friends stuff until this message, then it starts showing me the random trash.
I'm guessing they're going for engagement (random content > already seen content) but it's always my cue to close the tab, quite handy
Yeah. They're an advertising company. They make money by spamming users with noise. Contempt for other human beings is in their DNA.
They don't want you to disable the red dot. They want it there 24 hours a day bothering you until you give in and watch those ads disguised as videos just to get rid of it and find some peace. They'll actually run human experiments on their users without their informed consent just to find out the exact level of annoyance they'll tolerate without deleting their accounts in disgust.
If you try to disable the red dot, they'll ban you. It's against their terms of service to not be bothered by notifications. You need to submit to this abuse if you want or need to use their services.
You can still try anyway. Make a plugin to delete the dot. Then a few days later you'll find they scrambled the page structure on purpose just so you could no longer interface with it, precisely so you could not defeat their little nagging dot.
"Contempt" doesn't quite do it justice. They delight in our suffering and profit off it.
I actually tried to figure out how to get rid of this at some point, but it definitely wasn't a priority for FB to give me control over this.
I'll never forget the open contempt Meta has shown for me as a user of their products.