Ask HN: What Happened at Facebook?

11 points by processing 3 years ago | 8 comments

Downloaded the mobile app recently and was taken aback at how bad the experience was using it.

On load, I'm presented with two tabs 'Stories & Reels' (how are they different?) Browsing the "reels" zero videos are relevant to my interests which strikes me as weird as Facebook has over 10 years of my data? This section also cannot be hidden it seems.

I clicked on the friends section and a friend request from 10 years ago is the first thing I see (even though there was a new friend request in the last 24hrs).

The Watch "For You" section had zero relevance to my interests (Even though I subscribe to over 50+ FB Groups in specific niches).

The Live videos section is an endless stream of random videos again, not connected to any marked interests in the past. Women selling clothes, Pastor/Ministry videos and the random gaming livestream. There is no where to specify what kind of live content I'd like to see?

The Music section shocked me - the top banner music video was a song by Nickleback post dated "about 15 years ago" and the video autoplayed. Clicking on the "spotlight releases" playlist below the Nickleback video - all the playlist posts were from July 2021.

Do the app product team still actively work on the app experience or have they moved on to working on the metaverse? What is going on?

IronWolve 3 years ago |

The app is horrible. I use everything in a browser on my phone, no apps. Facebook gives fake "you have messages" and they block you from reading messages and tell you to (install the app)...

My book club moved over to mewe.com, it has chat and calendar. People got tired of facebook censorship and warnings. We just picked up and moved. I get the same updates on twitter for my favorite authors. (I just put authors in a list).

Finally, most of family deleted their facebook accounts and my adult kids don't even use facebook.

badpun 3 years ago | |

> Facebook gives fake "you have messages"

Twitter app is similar. Those Silicon Valley giants treat users like cattle.

vmoore 3 years ago |

I'm a heavy user of the app and have spotted so many bugs, it would pain me to type them all out here. I was thinking of writing a blog post detailing all these annoyances to embarrass them, but it's such a huge task!

> Browsing the "reels" zero videos are relevant to my interests

Maybe you're not as active as I am. I visited FB's 'your interests' section and they have me sussed out. They know me inside out. I comment frequently with personal info. If you mention 'I like coffee' for example in a comment, expect Reels related to coffee. Also Reels 'learns' your interests if you use it enough.

saargrin 3 years ago | |

im pretty active and all auto suggested content is just complete trash , all kinds of weird tiktok reposts and such.

not even cats anymore

uberman 3 years ago |

Increasingly, I find that companies will present you the content they want you to see (likely the content they are being paid to show you) rather than the content you want to see.

reactreflux1 3 years ago |

Sub-question: what happened to Facebook "Apps"? The things that connected to an API for developers to create (mostly) whatever they want for info or entertainment.

I remember when people would hand me business cards advertising themselves as a Facebook App developer but that work has seemed to vanish without a warning.

ev1 3 years ago | |

I want to say some point they got sued for letting/"letting" certain app devs scrape everyone's data, crawl friend of friend data, which was then immediately sold/dumped/repurposed for abuse they locked down their API

dev_0 3 years ago |

Turning to tiktok