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Comment by denvaar | Hacker News Reader

Couple days ago I logged into Facebook for the first time in about 2-3 years because I wanted to download a video that I had saved there. What a hot mess.

I needed to reset my password, but the form was seemingly unresponsive. Then suddenly a message appeared in a dialog popup letting me know that I had been temporarily locked out. I eventually managed to log in.

Inside the app, I had a handful of messages from various friends who were obviously hacked, asking me to click a some sketchy link. Several posts on my feed had comments from users who seem like bots.

I found the thumbnail of the video that I was looking for, clicked it, and got a plain-text page that read: "Gone." So, I guess the video doesn't exist anymore.

It felt like some sort of dystopia.

I couldn't stop thinking to myself about how many smart people work there, and how much money the company has, yet still it was one of the worst online experiences that I've had.

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>I couldn't stop thinking to myself about how many smart people work there, and how much money the company has, yet still it was one of the worst online experiences that I've had.

Really feels like the product has been in 'maintenance mode' for a while. Probably the focus in the company has shifted to growing platforms and not declining ones. Once the grandparents are on the platform it dies.

Was it a video you uploaded? Have you considered doing a data request to see if your video is available that way?

> Once the grandparents are on the platform it dies.

Really? I thought the point of Facebook was to be in touch with friends and relatives.

I would rather say that "grandparents" were slow to adapt Facebook amd likewise slow to leave.

The decline of Facebook seems to me to be related to the feed pushing crap people don't care about and competition from Instagram, TikTok amd whatever.

Young people don't wanna be on the platform if their parents and grandparents are on it. Once those people got on Facebook the young moved to Instagram -> Snapchat -> Tiktok.

Instagram is interesting because it seems to have staying power in the face of Tiktok. Mainly just thirst traps and content stolen and ripped off of tiktok so not sure how long term it really is.

>The decline of Facebook seems to me to be related to the feed pushing crap people don't care about and competition from Instagram, TikTok amd whatever.

There is plenty of that on the other platforms you mentioned.

> There is plenty of that on the other platforms you mentioned.

Old Facebook was "social" in a sense that Instagram and TikTok is not even close to. Now they all have some sort of "recommendation" feed.

> I couldn't stop thinking to myself about how many smart people work there, and how much money the company has, yet still it was one of the worst online experiences that I've had.

Intellect by itself does not cause good. When will HN understand that? (Never.)

> Intellect by itself does not cause good.

We aren’t interested in ‘good’, it’s more about the burn rate and the monetisation strategy.

Said mostly sarcastically.

Wait until you try Marketplace. For something with so much monetization potential, it still looks and feels like it was slapped together by an intern. Using it is an exercise in frustration.

Most of the Facebook site has felt like something "slapped together by an intern" for a long time for me. But yeah, FBM really went above and beyond in that regard the last time I tried using it. It's too bad, because it does have a lot of potential as you said; Craigslist has been mostly ruined by scammers and FB has the advantage that everyone is basically a verified user and not some random person in Nigeria who wants to send you a cashier's check for more than your asking price.

The only thing from FB I've really liked was the Messenger Lite app, and they've destroyed that now. The regular Messenger app still works ok though, but it's very bloated.

> FB has the advantage that everyone is basically a verified user

When my wife sold a standing desk recently on FBM, approximately 60% of the respondents were scammers. They offered above the asking price, but wanted us to pay for a courier, for which they would repay us with cash in an envelope. The whole thing ended up so annoying and stressful, we said we'd never sell anything on Facebook again.

Wow, apparently FBM has gone the way of Craigslist since I last tried it (back in early 2022).

And Events -- they haven't quite nailed sorting events in chronological order. Maybe this is something leetcode should cover.

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