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Comment by HenryBemis | Hacker News Reader

The moment when I dropped facebook, was the time they start manipulating my timeline. One day I realized that they don't show me things in their posting order, but they were moving them around. I remember using a bookmark ending with .com/?sk=h_chr to beat them, but I gave up when I realized that this is cat and mouse game, and they will continue these shady practices.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-...

[2]: http://time.com/3951337/facebook-chronological-order/

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15m 34s, Zeynep says: "as a public and as citizens" [1]

And HERE is the problem.

Facebook sees us ONLY as Product (our data) that can manipulate/buy/sell - and treat us accordingly.

Advertisers see us ONLY as Consumers they can sell to - and treat us accordingly.

Politicians see us ONLY as Votes (not voteRs) they can snatch - and treat us accordingly.

And we let them.

[1]: https://youtu.be/iFTWM7HV2UI?t=934

Okay, so what is to be done about it?

Start with the politicians. Vote out anyone who doesn't support campaign finance reform. Then we can make our government a little less sociopathic.

Start with your attention. The impact will be even bigger than your vote. Avoid services altogether that abuse you, even if there’s some benefit you gain out of it.

Yea, I have been using an exercise of periodically deactivating my account for most of the last year. I just reactivate now when there is some major event that I want to discuss with mostly my friends from college.

In the past year that has been:

1. Hopping on for Thanksgiving week/weekend to have fun trashing talking in college football rivalry week. Briefly stayed active through the end of the playoffs since Clemson was involved and MOST chatter was sports and families getting together for the holidays.

Got back off as soon as that was over and it devolved back to politics.

2. Stayed off until Clemson made the NCAA tournament and now that we're out and it's back to politics...I'm off again.

In the next year I imagine I'll probably sign on specifically for Clemson games when I'm trying to meetup with people at different tailgates or on road trips like Texas A&M.

That is pretty much the entire value proposition for me at this point...because as much as I'd like to just keep up with family and friends, Facebook force feeds me so much junk that is almost entirely aimed at "Show this very dumb, rant thing to try to get me to argue and engage".

I'll never understand why they actively fight people wanting a chronological timeline.

Because already popular posts tend to get more popular and that encourages more engagement, and for the advertisers engagement (likes/comments) are far more important than accuracy or completeness.

I can see why the default would be an algorithmic timeline, but for the small subset of people that want the chronological, just give it to them.

Whatever happened to the idea of delighting your users?

FB has always been ignoring users (kinda like Firefox!).

See the original "wall" and the system before "timeline".

I actually like having an algorithm curate my timeline. Not everyone I follow is as equally important to me, and some posts are more important than others.

I missed out on a friend's wedding announcement, but I see posts from people I barley know. It's overblown

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