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Comment by snarfy | Hacker News Reader

I was noticing this morning that their "I don't want to see this" feature seems to be stored client side. For a second while the page is loading I'll see an article that immediately poofs away because the client side js reads the setting and hides the article.

Every single time this morning that I refreshed the page, I saw a few articles poof away. They really want me to see the tabloid crap I marked as don't want to see.

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more likely the JS that hides the content or the JSON containing the hide filter are loaded/run/processed after the content

Facebook could be processing this client side instead of serving the content already filtered so you could un-hide content almost instantly. Either that or ease of development.

I think it's doubtful that Facebook wouldn't store that information server-side (you know, to achieve even better ad targeting). Maybe it's both, though.

I think the Facebook "I don't want to see this" data is stored server-side, but the code that actually hides posts runs as client-side javascript. That would explain why the client spins so much loading/hiding posts you've hidden, and why the hidden-ness is persistent across browsers.

I've gotten the impression from several accounts that, despite their prestige, Facebook's application code is often unbelievably janky, and this just confirms that.

I often have this same experience. I find the experience of having the article "taken away" to be very irritating.

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