A lawsuit argues Meta is required by law to let you control your own feed | Hacker News Reader

A lawsuit argues Meta is required by law to let you control your own feed

wired.com

35 pointslladnar15 comments

I've tried using the chronological sort many times over the last 5-10 years and found it to be clearly broken almost every single time. It shows me a few things from several days ago and then says there are no more posts. When I switch back to the regular algorithm, it shows me all sorts of posts from today.

I wish I could do chron sort and specify which friends I want to (1) see only their posts, (2) see their posts and their comments, and (3) see their posts, comments, and likes.

One of the things I like about Bluesky and ATProto is that you can build your own feed algorithms to do things like this.

https://github.com/bluesky-social/feed-generator

You'd probably have to write your own UI to enable buttons / inputs to simplify the reconfiguration (I want to look at a different set of users now).

your chances of getting a mcdonalds breakfast after 10am are better

It goes until 11 where I live, and apparently the norm is 10:30 or 11: https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/faq/what-time-does-mcdona...

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-05-16

I stopped using Facebook years ago but recently returned to it to keep up with some college friends. I absolutely loathe how much Facebook keeps pushing content on me that I neither want, nor find any interest in.

To be clear, this is only on my phone. When I am using Facebook in my browser I am blessed with the F.B. Purity extension which gets rid of all of that. I realize FB wants me to engage more, and this is their hapless attempt at forcing that engagement, but it has been next to meaningless to me and deeply annoying.

https://www.fbpurity.com/&ved=2ahUKEwilwaHave-FAxVt4ckDHR5ED...

Imagine engaging users with a desirable experience they look forward to returning to vs trying to force content on them that they resort to third parties to deflect.

Way back ~2006 or so if memory serves, Facebook was actually fun and the chronological feed actually seemed to work. Something broke a couple years later and it's never been the same since. Which is especially weird to me given Mark was careful (at least last I looked) to retain majority ownership, but seems he has other priorities these days.

I make it a point to hit "block all from" anytime I see something shared, after two of those blocked I close Facebook. Like you I have a few friends who's life I want to keep up on. I don't want to see cats - unless it is their cat. I don't want to see a political meme - unless it is one they personally worked hard to create. I want to see their life, and that is often only available on Facebook (I could call that girl who lives in Alaska, but we never were close and if everyone liked me called for 30 seconds a day just to see if anything of interest happened nobody would have time to do anything else.)

When I work alone it disappears in the statistics. However I'm hoping more people start acting like me - enough that Facebook notices and starts giving an option to only see the life of my friends and if there isn't anything just let me go back to living. Right now they keep me scrolling for the friend I haven't seen in ages who might have posted something but the algorithm decides I don't want to see it even though I do.

I wasn't entirely clear from the article what it is that the suit is demanding.

It seemed sort of like 2 different things:

1) to agree not to sue him for the creation of the tool

2) To not block the tool from working

The first one seems pretty reasonable. This kind of tool should be allowed to exist (and, honestly, shouldn't even require Meta's permission or approval, this should be legal-by-default).

However, as much as such a tool seems like a good thing to me (that is, if I still used facebook at all), it doesn't seem reasonable to force Meta to not change their service to prevent it from working.

The non-chronological feed renders FB close to useless. So much for "driving engagement" at least for this user.

Personally I use FeedBro to view my facebook friends posts. You manually add each their profiles as RSS feeds, and they show up in chronological order. Just make sure your friends post everything as "public" (which mine do anyway). No more ads, no more zuck algorithm chosen crap.

The biggest reason I use FreeTube (https://github.com/FreeTubeApp/FreeTube), is because it shows me uploads in chronological order from ALL of my channels, which youtube outright refuses to do.

Can the plaintiff produce the business contract where Facebook agreed to provide the demanded services? I demand that Taco Bell bring back the 99¢ burrito. Let's all start a class action for such an unfair business practice.

It has nothing to do with Facebook providing a service. It's about what I choose to do with the service they do provide.

> Professor Ethan Zuckerman seeks to release a browser extension that would give Facebook users greater control over their platform experience ... Users who download the tool would be free to use the platform without the feed, or to curate the feed by refollowing only those friends and groups whose posts they really want to see. Professor Zuckerman has not launched this project because, when another developer released a similar tool called Unfollow Everything, Defendant Meta Platforms, Inc. threatened that developer with legal action. Professor Zuckerman files this suit to obtain a judicial declaration that Unfollow Everything 2.0, as described below,is immunized from legal liability by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

Because Taco Bell has the right to sue me if I buy a burrito and then decide to pick the lettuce out of it.

Section 230 is opt-in for businesses. If they want the protections, they have to fulfill the conditions.

Show me the contract where Taco Bell agreed not to put strychnine in your tacos.

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