Comment by gjm11 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gjm11 | Hacker News Reader

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> I guess they didn't really do a good job there

Not if their goal was to make the non-mobile version of their site usable on your phone. But if their goal was to make the non-mobile version of their site unusable on your phone, they did just fine. (Why would they want to do that? To encourage people to use the mobile version. Why would they want to do that? Among other reasons, to make them use the Messenger app.)

Yeah, that's pretty conspiracy-theory-y: it implies that Facebook did something that was unequivocally bad for user experience, in order to push people into interacting with their services using the methods they prefer. But then, disabling messages in the mobile website to push people into using the Messenger app fits that description perfectly too.

> that's pretty conspiracy-theory-y

I don't think that it counts as a conspiracy theory at this point. I think their intent is very clear.

Here's Facebooks strategic cookbook according to my experience and opinion:

   1. Advance into new territory
   2. Make it nice and cozy to attract enough people
   3. Fence it off and lock people in
   4. Go to step 1

Examples would be:

- Anonymity

- XMPP support for their chat

- making the time line a clusterfuck (is it actually still a _time_ line or what do the call it now?)

- the reach of public posts on business sites (unless you pay)

- the whole thing how facebook videos are treated unequal to videos from other sources (probably everything originating from facebook sources is treated as more relevant in your timeline, who knows...)

- we also have the facebook articles thing where publishers will likely leave a few kidneys behind when they try to get out of it again

The fun thing is that as soon as people feel comfortable using a certain feature, they don't really notice how they get locked in. Like a prison with walls so far you can't see them. Keep living inside and build your life and house and whatever have you. When the walls close in, you either leave everything behind or rearrange yourself according to your new overlords.

Edit: formatting

It doesn't have to be a conspiracy. They provide a mobile site, so they don't test or develop the desktop site on mobile.

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