Facebook's timeline just shows random things for some users
(attempted to submit as URL, query stripped)
https://twitter.com/search?q=facebook+until%3A2022-08-25+since%3A2022-08-24
Edit:
Reddit users complaining of this: https://old.reddit.com/r/facebook/comments/wwbfm5/news_feed_showing_people_writing_to_other_people/
Downdetector (a third-party service that asks users if they're down): https://downdetector.com/status/facebook/
Business-oriented status page (all green): https://metastatus.com/
114 comments
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For a long while, Facebook hasn’t been a platform to connect people or to connect people meaningfully. It’s either useless and random stuff while your close ones’ posts don’t appear on your timeline and vice versa, or sensational posts that cause anger, anxiety, worry, and despair.
The “algorithm” tuned itself quite well to induce and increase addiction. It’s focused. It’s intelligent. It’s purposeful. None of those aspects may help you become happier or more satisfied or more connected.
I don’t think the “algorithm” can be corrected or made better either. It’s too big, too influential, too profitable and likely too complex (due to ML). Short of getting rid of it completely and going back to a chronological feed only from people and pages you follow, nothing can be humanly done about this decline.
Find another platform and focus on smaller groups if you need or value connectedness or relevant/useful content.
The entire model of Facebook, until recently, was the social graph. It seems now that they're terrified of getting their lunch eaten, they are trying to combine algorithmic selection of what random users like the most but have no relationship to the user (Reels) with the social graph, but it's not a good fit and doesn't gel.
I might well spend more time on TikTok which looks for content I'd enjoy, but FaceBook's social network still takes priority to check regularly even when I don't have time.
TikTok and Facebook in my mind have very different use cases. It may be true that if people spend more time on TikTok they'll spend less on Facebook, but that doesn't mean these are comparable services. TikTok seems to be more of an video entertainment app and less a social app - more like YouTube with social features imo. Facebook is primarily a service to network with friends, family and businesses - TikTok doesn't really work well for this.
Admittedly I haven't used Facebook for 10+ years now so I have no idea how the Reels integration works, but it seems shoving short-form videos down users necks is probably a bad idea. Surely this isn't what the average Facebook user goes to Facebook for?
It would be like Netflix deciding YouTube was a competitor because "videos" and then adding a load of user uploaded videos to their video library.
Therefore SNs _are_ competing with each other.
You’re right - there are still people using MySpace. But I bet people at MySpace wish they would’ve reacted to the rise of Facebook differently.
Similarly, in the five months I was on TikTok it seemed like women especially were proud they made it to TikTok and made fun of women “still on Facebook”.
I think Zuckerberg is rightly afraid of becoming the next MySpace. I don’t know if there’s a way to prevent it though.
They are competing with each other over people’s time and attention. The more time someone spends on Facebook the more ads Facebook can show them, and the more data Facebook can collect. The more time someone spends on TikTok the less time they have to spend on Facebook.
It is like being at a party with friends, family, and acquaintances but you’re bored and would rather be reading a book, playing a game, watching TV, painting, etc.
No - they're both data scavengers
My usage pattern is typically 5 minutes a day, via browser with uBO, on a desktop computer. I don't/won't use or install any FB-suite apps on my phone.
I have tried to use ?sk=h_chr to force a chronology rather than 'top stories' <sic> but that doesn't seem to make any difference any longer.
Since the 'Reels' push started I've had that section appear every time I've logged in, usually within the top half dozen entries.
Every time I hamburger menu / 'Hide this type', but Hide doesn't actually hide of course -- it just promises to 'show less', which is also clearly a lie.
The product's increasingly user-hostile. The phrase 'death throes' seems appropriate.
So even if what you want is possible, it'll probably be quite barren in there.
Still, this might or might not be the case. It would be really interesting to see some kind of study that would analyse how much non-commercial content is still posted on Facebook - but I guess Facebook would fight tooth and nail against anyone actually attempting that.
By failing to tweak algorithms and enhance engagement through psychosocial means and addictive patterns, the company will be failing to serve the demands of its shareholders.
The company is the poster child of the Friedman Doctrine [1], which was paces shareholder value above social responsibility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
This probably shouldn't be funny to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt14c7sYTFA
- Eminem - Stan (Long Version) ft. Dido: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOMhN-hfMtY
The latter keep coming back from time to time, though. It is true that now it is filled with random posts of things I am not interested even in the slightest but it seems like it think I'd do because they're "trending" or "popular" (celebrities, politicians, shopping, that kind of stuff)
Article here at ABC -
Facebook 'down', users report bizarre glitches and feeds flooded with random comments to celebrities https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-24/social-media-users-re...
Main feed completely broken.
And the regular/long tail post backend is down, so you only see very popular posts?
Facebook shows other things: Bug!
So how did the break-things experiment go? Is it a success because the stock was at one point worth an inconceivable amount of money? Or is it a failure because it can't stand up under its own weight and will never catch up to its inevitable successor?
They could even extend their biometric capabilities could even step into the ‘slightly unethical’ realm, by perhaps detecting a flirtatious message from a profile with a cute Japanese girl, via somewhere in Northern Africa. Even just putting basic controls around messages from complete strangers.
As for whether its beneficial to society is another question.
It's not exactly a success (except from the most selfish and financial perspectives), it's more like proof you can abuse your users and get away with it.
I used facebook messenger to keep in touch with my family across the world. My family is incapable of using signal, whatsapp, sms, email, telegram, phone calls, or anything else.
I also use facebook to buy stuff on the classifieds. It's like craigslist except there's at least a picture of someone and a paper trail if they decide to murder me.
My neighborhood organizes events using a facebook group and we've been able to have festivals and organize groups to go fight against companies that want to industrialize the area.
Facebook is trash at what it was initially built to be, but it is still very useful.
What about Myspace? $800m in revenue from 115m users. The classic 'good product' story, right?
Facebook makes its money by leaving the feed an unorganized mess of random posts, leaving the user disoriented so that more eyeball time can be harvested for advertisements while the user searches for the content they want (or gets stuck mindlessly scrolling the infinite reel of videos and other content for that dopamine hit).
It's not lost on the army of six figure salaried engineers that a lot could be done easily to make the experience better. But that isn't in the interest of the shareholders. The quality is a feature, not a bug.
This is basically the same philosophy as "Worse is Better" (in contrast to "Do the Right Thing") and it's how UNIX and C took over "like a computer virus".
I'd say Facebook has succeeded in that "viral" aspect, unfortunately for society. Apparently, their broken interface is good enough for a lot of people.
Their software development philosophy is not the reason why Facebook is falling apart. It's their lack of vision, lack of respect, decency, human values, care and social responsibility.
In fact, it's sometimes unusable on Firefox on an M1 MacBook Air.
For one thing, the "report a bug" tool doesn't work in my browser but it works perfectly fine in Chrome. I can't click the dropdown boxes— they're empty. I also can't submit my report in the rare instance the drop downs work.
I also get weird trouble where my news feed will just start randomly loading crap and go into a rapid endless scroll loading new stories. The only way I can stop it is to do a hard refresh.
There are so many problems with posts not updating... You get a notification about some new comment like and when you click the notification, it just shows how it looked the last time you loaded it.
Again, the only way to see the update is CMD + R.
It's so broken and the latest interface doesn't even feel good, new, fresh, or like you want to explore.
1. log out of Facebook.
2. Delete the app from your phone.
3. That's it.
Is advising people not to smoke "virtue signalling" or just good advice?
The keyword here is network effect.
Doesn't work though because there are lists of phone numbers and addresses that can be bought that still give you access. And if you're considered a customer, which is extremely loosely defined, they can call you.
Sure, it's far from as bad as it seems to be in the US but my personal threshold is 0.
If you could delete your Facebook profile, congratulations! However, you should realize that not all people can do this. If your society is not reliant to Facebook, then good for you, I also hate Facebook and Gualdrapo seems to hate it too (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32576061). However, giving incomplete replacements (especially the infamous "migrate them to another messaging app!") would just result in backfiring and further entrenchment of Meta products. Worse, if that other service really improved a lot they will no longer try it due to past experience. Short of a) Facebook being no longer tolerable to a majority of your friends and b) there's a viable replacement for Facebook's features (especially it's group features - a phpBB-like forum is not good for this), it'll be hard to fully remove Facebook.
I think that's a nuanced distinction that very much comes down to exactly how the other person suggests getting off facebook. If I get the impression that the commenter cares about the well-being of somebody and suggests it as a solution, I tent to categorize it as "good advice". Example: "I had the same problem / know of people who had the same problem, getting off facebook seems to help".
On the other hand, when it's a barely related topic (nothing about mental health, only related to the company) + there's no actual person to care about + the comment is very standoff-ish, I jump to virtue signaling.
Unsolicited advice, especially when given in a tone like this, is often much more about the giver of the advice than anyone else imo.
Personally I despise Facebook as a company and a service, but the amount of flak HN gives them is straight-up ridiculous. Facebook is indeed bad, but is this site really going to forget the military contract work Microsoft does, or the religious manhunt Apple aids China in? And yet, when people here about these war crimes they don't suggest throwing away their computer or finding a new replacement service. They just... keep using it. Same as Facebook users. Same as Macbook users. Same as Windows users.
And all of this is fine!
The overall goal shouldn't be to dictate how other people use the internet. Facebook has a right to exist, and we have a right to hold it in check with relevent litigation. If people think that Facebook violates the law, then let's hold them accountable! Otherwise, your complaints are genuinely useless in the context of discussing healthy browsing habits on HN.
But I have friends
You’re proving my point. If you travel you can’t use txt message to keep in touch with anyone
I have a "fake" account to talk to one or two people who refuse to use anything else, so I have to use messenger to get their attention. I never actually "use facebook".
Its up there with people that get triggered by how "people get triggered by the most insignificant things these days".
If the society in which one lives is backwards to the point of mandating a Facebook account to interact on a basic level... it might be time to turn on, tune in, drop out.
Gualdrapo's post doesn't actually say anything about why he _needs_ to use Facebook. Neighboorhood groups and FB marketplace are not necessary to live. I think we might be conflating needs and wants here.
Being accustomed to doing things in specific ways is not a need.
That's why it's de facto forced on to you. Ministries (Americans: Departments, not religious ministries) are usually only reachable either on Facebook or by physically traveling hours to their office. Facebook groups are the communication platform for any community point-of-contact, and most are set to only be accessible by having a Facebook account.
As a society, is it avoidable? Yes. As an individual? Good luck convincing others. It might be hard to wrap your head around it if you were not living in such an area, so thank your government that you have a say on your communication.
Could you send mail through the post? Call on a telephone?
Technically? But in my experience as a foreigner that have lived in Thailand, mail services are atrocious. It's unlike in Singapore or UK where it's excellent. It's even weirder considering parcels on the Amazon-equivalent (Lazada and Shopee) are faster on this one.
> Call on a telephone?
Mobile-to-telephone charges are obscene to the point that it's cheaper to use an international VoIP service to call (just to remind you that most people here are those who would skip and never experienced any telephones altogether) and unsurprisingly these are the kinds of government to ban unapproved VoIP to its citizens.
I have used Thailand here, but it's the same in Brazil (or from what I heard nowadays, was, but they still apparently used Meta's services extensively) except for the citizen-legal VoIP loophole.
Can you give one example? A link to their website or FB page would suffice.
There are lots of reasons. Yes they aren't literal needs as in you are going to die, but sometimes the cost of not using facebook is significantly greater than the cost of using it.
The mobile web page works fine (and actually seemed to have a different front page algo - at least some time ago)
I do heed my own advice; I do not have the FB app installed on my phone.
Sounds like your modern ranking algorithms e.g. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google etc.
Kind of like the commercial breaks of old, except for doom scrollers.
It also forces the feed to load in chronological order, if you like
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[0] https://socialfixer.com/