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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Totally agree with this. I remember when I first got on Facebook (it was when they just started opening it up to non-college students), and I was so excited about an easy way to keep up with old friends I cared about but had lost touch with.

I remember the very first update that I hated, when Facebook moved to much more of a "Twitter-like" interface, and the feed felt like much more disjointed, "stream of consciousness" stuff. Now it's all that on steroids - none of the social media platforms actually care about keeping you connected with your friends and family. My current FB feed is a joke, 95% of my friends rarely/never post anymore, it just got too exhausting.

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News feed is when it broke. It was described as “stalker mode”. Before to see your friends you had to purposefully visit their page and see what had happened. you had to go to another friends page to see their comments on that friend. There was some implicit privacy in all of this.

At the same time it’s probably the greatest business success of facebook.

People forget how much of an outpouring of anger from users there was over News Feed when it came out.

The public reaction to the original News Feed in 2006 would be a good topic for some 20-something to research and go viral posting about.

Graph search was the actual stalker mode.

"Find all single women near me who are interested in programming" was something else

As a closeted gay teen at the time, this stuff was very next level

When I log in now I don’t even know what to look at ha

The user hostile notification behaviour is was what broke the camels back for me.

Fake red notification indicators and email notifications for activity that didn’t involve me, with seemingly no way to opt out without disabling useful notifications.

I make it a point to hit "block all from" everytime a friend shares something from someone else. Then after two hit blocks from I'd done and log off. It had made my feed better, but not by much. It makes my life better though because it stops me from endlessly scrolling in hopes that maybe the next post will be what my friends are doing.

I encourage everyone to do the same - if enough do maybe facebook will notice and hopefully get back to what makes them valueable: what my real life friends are doing.

I used to do the same. And I got it to a point where my feed was great, I could check it every few days and get updates from people I know and community organizations.

But the issue is, it seems Facebook is now injecting algorithmic content into the feed, so suddenly my feed was full of random internet drama (that the algorithm obviously pushed because it was maximally controversial, leading to more engagement).

I deactivated my account not long after, and don't miss it.

It's sisyphean though - if your friends aren't sharing random crap you'll still have "sponsored content" injected to your feed once every... three items? Sometimes more often?

Facebook refuses to give you content without an equal serving of advertising and it makes their value proposition so worthless. I want to read updates from my friends - I don't care about other things... if you want to throw in some banner ads then whatever - but in-feed pollution is at an insane level.

I don't know why but for the past couple of years Facebook will show be exactly one post from my friends followed by endless scroll ads.

If I refresh I get a different recent post followed by endless scroll of ads. Many of the people on my friends list are frequent posters but there's no way to see their posts without getting lucky with my one slot or going to their page.

I've tried turning off plug-ins/extensions and various browsers and nothing has fixed it.

Twitter does the same damn thing now too, though I continue using just because they allow community notes on the placed ad posts, which is hilarious. Nothing like dickheads trying to sell alibaba trash for $25 getting shouted at by community notes and everyone in the replies laughing at them.

I left Facebook in 2018 and it was very nice. I worried about missing those friends, but I realized that the real world friends I see and text with regularly are more real than old schoolmates having a baby.

the way to fix facebook is to stop using facebook!

I shed my facebook 8 years ago now (around the Cambridge Analytica fiasco). There was a giant relief not unlike drawing a fresh breath from almost drowning underwater after having done so. You can do it too!

I do use discord, as that's significantly more efficient at doing what facebook has been trying do to (keep current with non-local friends), while at the same time not relying on ad's to do so. I get no targeted advertising on discord.

I encourage everyone to delete their facebook, (move any data they want off first), and explore the open internet again.

The "value" you get from facebook is often just a thin veneer over content designed (and timed) to stimulate your cortisol levels.

So just don't use it: that is the answer; this is the way.

The problem is - as the article says, there is value in the social stuff that nothing else provides.

discord. 100% of what facebook provided. 0% (so far) of any of the enshittification.

comparing the two: facebook offers literally nothing (other than a viewable dropbox like profile for your pictures, which is redundant to me)...

Discord does not offer updates from my local city government, nor from the local library, nor does it have the equivalent of local "buy nothing" groups.

Discord is more synchronous than Facebook, and without notifications hygiene, will feel overwhelming to people who are used to shouting into Facebook's void and checking it every once in awhile.

I also dislike Facebook, but it's disingenuous to pretend that Discord is a slot-in replacement.

Facebook still has all the event invitations.

lot of businesses only operate through insta or FB

picture albums

FB marketplace is the new Craigslist / Gumtree / Kijiji

Lol, "explore the open Internet" after talking about Discord, that's rich !

Currently I am a bit depressed because of realizing how much the open web communities seem to be withering right now because a lot of people seem to want to use Discord instead and exclusively. The recent threads feature especially seems to often be an excuse to abandon forums ? Despite being a way worse experience than phpBB.

EDIT : Related : Discord, or the Death of Lore [2023]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35050858

You can't block everything... facebook now shows me posts from groups I'm not even in and features comments from people I'm not connected with. They're not going to run out of groups

Facebook lately has gone through phases where my feed was full of downright creepy sexualized content, and I’m no prude. There are a few communities on Facebook that don’t exist anywhere else that I would rather not leave, but the next time I get put on the feed for every third picture being either a “sexy sport girl” or an entirely nude breastfeeding woman I might delete my account for good.

This time after “show fewer posts like this” and several blocks my feed stopped being like that after a few days… but still. Yuck.

I don’t check the Facebook feed at all. I have to use it to post and read updates in a community group, and nothing else. Never had Instagram or Threads. I use WhatsApp as little as possible.

I mostly rely on email and SMS.

Honestly, it's just easier to block/drop Facebook entirely and actually talk to the people I want to talk to directly.

Sure I miss out on some things, but I still have friends and family and I still talk to them. I won't make any broad moralistic/judgemental statements here, but for me at least I've found this to be a return to a healthier relationship with a number of people.

That just tells FB that you aren’t there for your friends, so they should fill your feed with their own crap.

100%. The original "facebook" was just that. State what classes you have, have an easy way to connect with others in those classes.

The feed is horrible. Probably good for monetization. But I just choose to remove myself from that product.

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