Facebook, I want my friends back • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook, I want my friends back

#171

Post by ekianjo » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 3:56 AM UTC

What's the outrage for ? Facebook has never said they would never change the rules of the game. You benefit from their platform, they own it. If you are not happy with it, you should not put all your eggs in one place and have backup plans (twitter, google plus, and others) to reach your audience so that competition works properly.

Facebook is a company, it's not a democracy asking their users what they should do. They can destroy their business if the want to, and your responsibility as a customer is go and look somewhere else to signify that their new rules do not work for you anymore.

Re: Facebook, I want my friends back

#172

Post by AustinGibbons » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 4:56 AM UTC

SCdF wrote: post #139

I'm not too concerned about this from a marketing standpoint. It's unfortunate that people started to view 'likes' as an RSS feed replacement, but that opinion will change now most stuff doesn't get through. What really frustrates me is that I'm missing entirely non commercial messages from my actual friends. I've missed posts from my girlfriend for godssake, it's ridiculous. I understand that they need to make money…

Out of curiosity, do you have your girlfriend as a starred user? Is your pattern of facebook interaction notably higher than with other friends?

Re: Facebook, I want my friends back

#173

Post by incongruity » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 5:07 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #155

incongruity wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bait and switch is absolutely still accurate, IMHO, but it doesn't matter what you call it, the effect is real. First, let's unpack your justification a little – you actually offer two claims: 1) You aren't Facebook's customer. You're just a user. and 2) You agreed to let them change their services without your consent when you signed up for your account. To the first: most of us may not be their customers, but there…

Perhaps I haven't made my position clear enough. I don't disagree that users are of value to Facebook, and that Facebook has an incentive to maximize that value. What I disagree with is the action that I see taken by users who are not satisfied with the exchange of value that is going on, particularly if those users are businesses. I can understand people who use Facebook personally feeling overwhelmed when its featu…

Thanks for the clarification. While you're right, technically, users don't own their Facebook pages or the content on them, there's a common sense perception that we do – and Facebook ignores that very real sentiment at their own peril.

Businesses, on the other hand, are a less gray area, IMHO, and I'd say I agree completely with what you've written here.

Re: Facebook, I want my friends back

#174

Post by Deestan » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 6:46 AM UTC

tensor wrote: post #81

jrockway wrote: post #42

If I'm reading this correctly, the problem is that something that the author thinks should be free costs money, so Facebook is now "demanding that a $365 million dollar ransom gets collected from all the Mom & Pop businesses who use Facebook." Uh huh. "Mom & Pop business" seems to be the new "won't somebody please think of the children" line designed to extinguish all rational thought. I'm getting a little tired of i…

You talk about rational thought, but then go off on a tangent hoping all small business disappears? I'm curious what has made you so hateful towards both people who hold some ideal (that you don't share), and towards small businesses. In particular, the best restaurants in the world are small, not chains. Chains are always mediocre by their very nature. Unlike in software, which can be replicated and exported perfect…

> go off on a tangent hoping all small business disappears?

No he didn't say hope all, he said most should.

Re: Facebook, I want my friends back

#175

Post by lywald » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 8:11 AM UTC

sirmarksalot wrote: post #127

Splines wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That bugs me too. I like a lot of things, but I don't want to hear or see any of them in my timeline. I used to click "Like" on various things in Facebook, but after starting to see them in my feed I immediately un-Liked them. I'm willing to tell my friends I like Logitech keyboards, but I'm not willing to see whatever posts the Logitech PR decides to write. If I'm interested to learn about what new keyboards/mice th…

This is a tricky thing. Facebook's business model, and its value proposition to advertisers to a large degree depends on oversharing, and your "Likes" are an example of this. If somebody asked me if I wanted my email subscriptions broadcast to all my friends, I would say "heck no." But if nobody agreed to share their subscriptions, then how would advertisers get word of mouth? So they phrase it a bit differently. You…

But if nobody agreed to share their subscriptions, then how would advertisers get word of mouth?

By people talking with each other naturally?

Re: Facebook, I want my friends back

#176

Post by mseebach » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 8:30 AM UTC

owenfi wrote: post #168

tedunangst wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can find better selection, better prices, and better advice on the Internet. Also, Jeff bezos doesn't give me the "I hate young people" stink eye when I browse his store. The local hardware store opens at 9:00am. Or 9:30. Or whenever pop finishes his breakfast. Because whatever I have planned for the day is not nearly as urgent as his crossword puzzle. That shit doesn't happen at Home Depot.

Interesting point about this: I recently needed a tool while visiting a friend. I found the nearest hardware store's website and was irate that they didn't have hours listed. So I called. And while they technically closed 90 minutes previously, somebody was in setting up a new POS system they were switching to. He opened the shop and I got what I needed. That also doesn't happen at Home Depot.

The problem is that most celebrations of small businesses suffer from a fallacy along the lines of (exceptional service can only happen at small businesses[1]) => (all small businesses will have exceptional service).

1: And that's not even true. Amazon (the physical bit, at least) have outstanding service. Whenever a shipment doesn't show up, they refund it, no questions asked, even though it shows ask being delivered at my office address (presumably lost between the reception and me). They've sent me two new Kindles, not literally no questions asked, because they did ask, and I admitted to having broken it myself by accident - they just didn't seem to care about the answer. Pret-a-Manger (a sandwich chain in London) has consistently blazingly fast service and unwavering cheery staff.

Re: Facebook, I want my friends back

#177

Post by fkdjs » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 8:40 AM UTC

I haven't logged into facebook for a long time but this seems to be what's happening.

x) Disallow users from merely being a fan of the page, instead replacing that with "like"

x) Now make it so businesses can post to their page and the post shows up in the newsfeed for those who like the page. Previously only friend updates were shown. So liking a page has the side effect of getting spam by the company.

x) Facebook has now successfully facilitated spam, which is necessary for

x) Their new spam-prevention algorithm, leading to the end goal:

x) Now that Facebook has facilitated spam and we accept limited posts, the antispam filter can be circumvented by paying Facebook.

Voila, Facebook is now the post office, and spammers pay the post office to bulk spam you. Imagine if you went to local businesses and said, "Hi, I like you guys", that resulted in spam to your snailmail mailbox. You said, "Cut that out, that's wrong." So they fixed the problem they created, but now that the businesses are hooked, they can charge them for the ability to send out spam.

Facebook could easily make it so users are in charge of their filter, but this is counter to how Facebook wants to make money, so the UI is horrid for this and no one does this in practice. Imagine a UI where users rank friends of order of importance, with an easy UI, and the most important friends of mine are the ones who I am more likely to see. O wait, I have just described g+. Facebook will never have such an intuitive interface("close friend" is horrid), where you the burden of filtering is put on the user. Facebook wants to control that filter.

Eventually it will get to the point where you don't even need to like a page, you will get spam from the highest bidder, decided by auction. One of the main purposes of 'like' was to get users accepting communication from companies, once that was done, then they went in to monetize the link, before that it was just friend to friend chit chat, which doesn't pay the bills.

Re: Facebook, I want my friends back

#178

Post by thedudemabry » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 9:31 AM UTC

martin-adams wrote: post #55

enraged_camel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I object to Facebook making this decision for me. Facebook makes a lot of decisions for you. It's a free service, so it's their prerogative. If you don't like it, you can always deactivate your account like I did.

For a free service is sure does come at a cost. I get people I don't know commenting on photos of my 1 year old because a friend posted it to their wall.

I agree. In a slightly different light, using Facebook is most definitely not free. You're entering a contract where they supply a valuable infrastructure, and you provide valuable, detailed, personal information. Information then sold to 3rd parties.

When the user's perceived value received falls short of their perceived risk of releasing personal information, they should rightly be upset. And probably quit.

But in terms of brands using Facebook, I'm not sure the same contract applies. They get valuable exposure using the infrastructure, but contribute nothing of value to Facebook. I have a hard time believing ordinary users would complain if all brand pages were suddenly dropped. Those users would continue to share branded content organically if they so desired. I don't believe that a one-sided beneficiary has much room to complain at all.

If your business model is selling shit given to you for free, you'll have to find a new way to make money once your source changes his mind. One way to enter into a mutually beneficial contract is to purchase ads (or promoted posts). If they cost too much, then they've lost your business. But they never really had it in the first place...

Re: Facebook, I want my friends back

#179

Post by sodafountan » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 9:35 AM UTC

Look, I get the point, if I were advertising on Facebook I'd be peeved too. But look at it this way, the Facebook news-feed is one of the most valuable assets on the internet, its a personal look into one's life, it's viewed by millions of individuals multiple times over the course of a day. If Facebook just throws ads from all of the things that you've liked over the years into that stream then there'd be less activity in general because the user's wouldn't be seeing what they came for, there friends, less activity hurts everyone invested in Facebook. Less activity wouldn't happen though, I think you would see a lot of people unlike things that they're tired of looking at, and then you'd be in an even worse position. I think the Facebook promote makes perfect sense.

Re: Facebook, I want my friends back

#180

Post by martin-adams » Thu, Oct 25, 2012, 11:22 AM UTC

jamesjguthrie wrote: post #151

martin-adams wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a free service is sure does come at a cost. I get people I don't know commenting on photos of my 1 year old because a friend posted it to their wall.

If you don't like your friends sharing your photos you can disable sharing.

Maybe, but doesn't help when it's actually their photo, just a photo which I have a vested interest in who see it. It's also not my job to educate my friends how to share content because I'd only end up upsetting them.