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Ask HN: Why Facebook requires login to view public pages?

16 points by kpocza ↗ HN
I'm not a hardcore Facebook user. There are some pages I visit regularly without logging in just navigating there via browser and reading the posts. Starting from today all pages require login, including many pages I tried from news sites to car manufacturers. Even facebook.com/facebook behaves this way. Does anyone know the reason, and whether it is a permanent or temporary change? Is the any relation with the design upgrade? I'm from Hungary. Thank you.

21 comments

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CameronNemo
Because they own the network and they want to track you. Expect it to get progressively worse before Facebook finally implodes.
pestaa
Why do you think it has a finite lifespan?
avian
Because eventually the last black hole will evaporate into Hawking’s radiation and there will be no way to further increase entropy to run Facebook’s servers.
kleer001
Previous large social networks eroded too, no reason to think Facebook is any different.
robjan
Previous networks didn't absorb the majority of the interconnected world, become one of the biggest companies in the world or have huge lobbying power.
CameronNemo
Lifespan? Don't make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Mark Zuckerberg.
poormystic
I alwayd thought its because fb wants to get power over me. I don't want that.
kevingadd
Seeing that here too. Definitely wasn't the case until recently.
4cao
The immediate reason might have something to do with the recent redesign of the Facebook website to make it more like their apps.

But broadly it's because they can.

anonzzz
Because they want to own you.
rvz
> Does anyone know the reason, and whether it is a permanent or temporary change?

Because it's Facebook. They did it to Instagram because that's also Facebook.

They will do whatever it takes to get 'real users' logging in and not window shopping on their website.

_trampeltier
That's pretty bad, I think. A lot restaurants and events (mis)used facebook as there website. We will see what does happen with these sites ..
cipherzero
Any chance this change was related to the recent scraping decision from the Supreme Court (I think) against linked in? Maybe this is to prevent people scraping content front public pages.

That and as others have mentioned I’m sure they’d love everyone to always be logged in for ad tracking purposes...

Engineering-MD
Just to confirm this has also happened to me in UK overnight, so definitely a new change and international. To echo others, I wonder what will happen to all the businesses using facebook as their main site. I’m sure some won’t care but others might see a gradual drop in foot fall
kpocza
Quite interesting. I just woke up (it's 7AM here). A quick check and everything works as before, so public pages are showing up without requiring login and with the old design. I don't understand what kind of human experimentation we were facing.