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Comment by ulfw | Hacker News Reader

Facebook doesn't just have a Whatsapp and Instagram "problem". They have a core Facebook problem.

The Facebook app and websites have barely innovated in years and the changes they HAVE made have slowly but steadily eroded the core user experience. What was once a SOCIAL NETWORK - a place where friends could come together or new friendships were made - has become a disjointed "news" feed full of gossip, fake news, Russian propaganda or US politics division. All this interspersed with cat pics and buzzfeed top ups.

It's hard to find and enjoy the 'social' aspect of this social network if it's full of oddly unedited "news" footage.

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10 years ago I would routinely go to facebook and see friends saying what they were planning to do and make plans with them. Facebook served a real purpose in college (we got it my junior year iirc).

Now its nearly all trash. People bitching, posting memes, sharing slideshows, etc. The only thing I go there for is 1 specific local group and even that is pointless because there is a discord.

Facebook is essentially dead to me, and certainly dead to all my younger cousins 15-19 yos. I feel like I must be missing something, because I have no idea why anyone would visit. It's so negative and low quality.

I agree with you about the news feed. FB messenger is still the easiest way to contact people (almost everyone has it, you don't need any information being a name). Events are great for easily informing people of what you're doing. Groups are great for alerting a group of people to some information (basically better mailing lists).

Same here. Though I have no way of disambiguating what is FB changing and what is me and my friends getting 10 years older.

Sounds like alienation. Have you tried communal living? Getting more in touch with your friends will make you a more genuine person and you will feel more humanized.

I too have considered communal living as a solution to feeling less enamoured with Facebook than I used to be.

I think it's just something that happens with growth. At first it's a small group and it's cool, then your group gets larger, it's still cool, but now more to manage.. then at some point the group gets so large that unless you're trying to push something, there's often very little that you want to say to your 3rd grade teacher, some guy you met on a bus, your old roommate from ten years ago, your boss, and your grandparents all at the same time.

I disagree. There were very specific product changes Facebook made a while back that fundamentally changed the experience of using Facebook. It was all related to Facebook trying to clone Twitter: public posts by default, emphasis on news articles, emphasis on paid content, deprecation of events, deprecation of groups, and deprecation of photos.

With the implosion of Twitter, Facebook has since undone a lot of these changes, but the damage had already been done. People had already learned to stop going to Facebook to be social.

I don't remember them deprecating events (though I'd believe it), and I definitely don't remember them deprecating photos (like, that one I am having a hard time even conceptualizing, given how awkwardly core Photos has been to Facebook feature set for as long as I've been using it, which has been a very very long time now). Can you provide more context for this?

> The Facebook app and websites have barely innovated

They even do the opposite. Maybe a half a year ago they removed one of the best features Facebook had - the event calendar. My guess is to promote a standalone events app that was released around that time.. but the app doesn't seem to be around any longer, and the events calendar is still gone. Replaced by a shitty list of upcoming events.

They still publish an ical. Just got to https://www.facebook.com/events/calendar/ and click on Upcoming Events on the right.

That's good, but the UI/UX was actually quite great. Differentiated between invites/accepted events, showed birthdays separately, even had opportunity for suggested (sponsored) content (not sure if that was ever used). It was very quick and easy to find past events too.

Random screenshot for those who didn't see it: https://ucarecdn.com/9bd0a297-7576-41ee-9580-f7ee0ef50943/

Facebook threw away one of their best social features: events. It used to be front and center when you logged into Facebook. Now it's hidden away in menus.

Instagram is headed in the same way. The main feed used to be a simple linear progression of pleasing photos from only the people you chose to follow.

Now they have all sorts of things cluttering the feed besides just Ads... Recommended Posts, Friend-Invite Recommendations, Mid-feed stories.

The clutter is making it less and less enjoyable to use the app, and I've started considering dropping the only social platform I actively use.

i think at least part of the problem is that when they were a social network, they pushed so hard for everything to be shared with as many people as possible that users stopped posting as much personal stuff.

I always tell people Facebook went to shit when they tried to clone Twitter. It was a series of product strategy blunders after another until Facebook became the dysfunctional un-social network it is today.

This whole mess started when Facebook decided that they know best what you would like to see.

> Russian propaganda

Sure you're not spreading your own here?

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