I wanted burritos. Facebook Search sent me to a dead restaurant 45m away

I wanted burritos. Facebook Search sent me to a dead restaurant 45m away(surgehq.ai)

25 points by amauboussin 4 years ago | 33 comments

lom 4 years ago |

45m, for most of the world, means meters. When I first read the title I thought that was awesome! Just around the block. But reality disappoints.

LAC-Tech 4 years ago | |

For some reason in my head I immediately read it as "45km". Because that seemed like an appropriate amount of distance for it to be weird.

ddalcino 4 years ago | | |

As a US citizen, I read it as 45 miles, which is as terrible as I would expect from Facebook.

loloquwowndueo 4 years ago |

What blows the mind is why would anyone use Facebook instead of google search or your phones map application to find this kind of thing.

oh_sigh 4 years ago | |

I think the author didn't actually go to this burrito restaurant, but rather just wrote an article as if he was going to go to the burrito restaurant. From the intro:

> We’ve written about the decline of Google Search, and how to rigorously measure it through human evaluation. But why stop at Google? We’re starting a new blog series of real-world ML evaluations, where we investigate search and recommendation systems – whether YouTube, Meta, TikTok, or Amazon. In this post: an evaluation of Facebook Search!

mimikatz 4 years ago | |

For some businesses Facebook is great, bars that have events, getting a better feel for an apartment complex, a couple other things like that. I won't use it as a maps but to find a place hosting a trivia night it is really useful.

dreamcompiler 4 years ago | |

The idea that I would ever let Facebook know my location, or even use the Facebook app rather than visit it in a browser ... +shudder+.

luxuryballs 4 years ago | | |

You described me perfectly back before I deleted Facebook, follow me and you too can savor every moment you get back by never going there again!

jlee4219 4 years ago | |

obviously would use Yelp or Google maps first, but I'm still pretty surprised at how particularly bad Facebook seems to be at this

JasonFruit 4 years ago | | |

Maybe Facebook doesn't really care if it's bad at that category of search, since nobody in their right mind would use Facebook to figure out where to get burritos.

lifeformed 4 years ago |

Sometimes I'll be on Google Maps, zoomed into my city near me, and search for a store I know exists nearby, and it'll zoom out to space, rotate the planet, and zoom back into Iraq to a vaguely similarly named place.

prawn 4 years ago | |

I'm usually in Australia. Sometimes my searches when I have poor connectivity will end up favouring Morocco - maybe that was the last time I shared my location data with them and they can't triangulate from cell towers or something else? Though you'd think they might infer a location from current map view.

pigeons 4 years ago | | |

The Walmart near me must have setup its wifi access points in a city on the other side of the country from me, because when I'm near it, google thinks i have visited that city.

Mandatum 4 years ago | | |

Fucking Melbourne, Florida is such a pain in the ass.

LegitShady 4 years ago | |

I had someone give me some GIS data for a project and when projected all the points appeared on the other side of the world. Took me a minute to figure out they needed negatives on their longitudes.

pxc 4 years ago | |

You gotta love the animation for adding drama to the error

listenallyall 4 years ago |

Bla bla bla none of this is real, it is an ad for an AI training Saas.

weird-eye-issue 4 years ago |

I've never seen 45m to mean minutes

happytoexplain 4 years ago | |

I see XXm for minutes all the time (USA), but definitely not in contexts like this where it is easily confused for miles (edit: or meters).

SnowHill9902 4 years ago | | |

It’s used for elapsed time not for time intervals. They have the same units but different usage.

labster 4 years ago | |

How did it take them three quarters of an hour to walk only 45 meters?

weird-eye-issue 4 years ago | | |

Is that context in the title?

lstamour 4 years ago | |

I was about to say I’ve seen it, but nope, I agree. Even putting it in context, like “1m43s” isn’t something I’d see often. “1 min. 43 sec.” is what I would expect.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 4 years ago |

> I was hungry the other day when hanging out in SOMA in San Francisco, so I tried searching for "burritos near me"...

It’s unfortunate that they did not compare this to Google Maps.

I have had very positive experiences using Maps for queries like this.

umeshunni 4 years ago | |

The entire article is a PR piece for some "AI" startup

causality0 4 years ago |

Google Maps does this regularly. When I forget to include the word "closest" in my voice commands it will inevitably ask me to choose between the Pizza Hut that's 4.5 miles away and the one that's 28.7 miles away. On the upside, it never fails to correctly drop the second half of my perennial response of "the closest one, you fuckwit".

Ancapistani 4 years ago |

I can't believe Facebook's "Marketplace" search beat out literally anything. It is easily the worst search experience I've ever had.

Syzygies 4 years ago |

Wow. You were in Richmond and didn't stop at Tacos Los Primos (550 23rd St, Richmond, CA 94804, in parking lot)?

I'm a https://masienda.com/ devotee who regularly makes masa from scratch (nixtamalized Oaxacan corn) for tacos with fire-roasted salsa including garden tomatillos. I still live for my next visit to Richmond, for the tacos.

At least Facebook got the trip to Richmond right. If you want to stay in SF, the Primavera stall at the Saturday farmers market by the Ferry Building is worth the wait.

coenhyde 4 years ago |

The author made an error of judgement of not abandoning his investigation to go to Best Coast Burrito in Emeryville.