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Comment by csydas | Hacker News Reader

I think Facebook is a considerable exception as it started as an exclusive place for University kids to plan and meet up then changed into the platform it is now where every one and their mom's mom has a facebook account and spends all their time on it. Facebook changed its audience, model of operation, and offerings completely, and also started to throw its weight around when it wanted things. This is a pretty far cry from what it had been and it also signaled the new age of the web.

Yeah people used to love Facebook. But it definitely changed its entire focus with multiple decisions and incidents, not just one or two hiccups.

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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.

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.

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!

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