Facebook not friendly?

Facebook has been having issues all day. It was down completely this morning when I got up and was like that for a couple of hours. I saw that same message at one point, so I guess they are getting it all worked out. It's fine for me now.

 

Facebook has an algorithm in place that forces you to use the "top stories" feed instead of "Most Recent". They put more ads into the top stories and want you to have to scroll past those.

Up until today I was still getting my friends feed (see below) but all posts were 2 or 3 days old. Nothing newer. Most recent feed was the same way. The only way I can see the most recent stuff posted is to use top stories. And, this afternoon, no matter what "feed" I use, I only get about 5 posts... most of which are older.

Also, I use an add-on called Facebook Purity that hides all ads. It has many functions one of which is automatically switching to either most recent or a friends feed when I start up Facebook. I've used it so long, I don't even know if those who don't use it have the option for the friends feed. I read the information about the algorithm on their facebook page yesterday since many people were complaining about it.

The outage today was something entirely unrelated to this issue as this has been going on for quite some time for some people.

 

Lol I have no friends on Facebook on purpose! I use it for a support group and my sons soccer league. Lol

 

guess it happened while I was asleep. I’ve had it happen before when it’s been glitchy

 

LOL. I have no facebook. I de-activated it for almost a year and finally completely deleted my account.

 

Evidently Facebook made an announcement a month ago that they are getting rid of the newsfeed. That is how they are shutting down all the misinformation that has been put out these last few years. Unfortunately this is also hurting all those companies and individuals that use Facebook as another form of advertising.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/15/18266488/chris-cox-quits-facebook-news-feed-privacy (Long article but some good nuggets of information in it)

They also released some code changes on Friday which seem to be causing a lot of the problems with the feed. Of course, nobody works on the weekend to fix them. My feed this morning gives me exactly 1 post no matter which newsfeed I look at. Every refresh gives me something different.

At this time you can't even let your friends on Facebook know what is going on because they aren't seeing your posts. I have posted very little in the last year and I don't see that changing.

 

I noticed the same thing yesterday. I guess I'll just sign up my family and friends on my Flickr account so they can grab photos if they don't fix things soon. I only use facebook to keep in touch with family that live far away and share pictures.

 

Well, mine has not improved at all since early this morning. I was reading that the mobile version worked better for your feeds so broke down and looked at it (mobile is too small for me... I can't read anything). Nope. Nada. No difference. Still not getting more than 5 posts.

It is really sad because I didn't join Facebook to see ads. I joined to connect with family and friends who live far away from me. I no longer see their photos or posts. Sad. He really did have a good thing going for a long time but greed got in the way.

@AJK I hope your business ads get posted but I'm thinking they won't be seen by many at all. I am not seeing anything from any pages that I do follow. Even people that I have set as "see first" are not showing up in my newsfeed and haven't for quite some time.

 

I've informed my family that if I need to know anything, I won't find it out on fb. They all know how to get ahold of me if they need to tell me something.

 

I wish! Everytime I deactivate my account, I end up in a group that only communicates on Facebook. My school group is on FB, and so are all my homeschool groups.

 

I hung on to my deactivation (because of Messenger) for so long, but finally cut the chord. It wasn't easy, but I did it.

 

If I had any other way of finding out about homeschool events, I would let my school group go I think. That's really all I check on FB anyway. I even set up my bookmark to go to the homeschool group and not the general page.

 

I slowly convinced the few groups I was in that I wouldn't be available on FB anymore. I had a few friends who lived in Europe who I chatted with on Messenger, but now we chat on Instagram Messenger.

 

I still like FB. It's not perfect, but it's free and it's a way to connect with people who I would otherwise not be able to (at least not on the same level).

 

I didn't experience any of this Facebook glitchiness of the past week. I mostly read it on my phone -- I do most of my FB reading while waiting for my kids' in their activities -- but I think I read on my iMac a couple of times. I'm with @SeattleSheri There are good uses of FB. I look forward to a better interface someday, and I'd be willing to pay for an ad-free alternative. I already pay subscriptions to Backblaze, Adobe, Smugmug, Netflix, etc. But until the tech industry gets that figured out, I'm using FB to connect with other photographers and homeschoolers, read and share news about my family and friends, our activities, and current events . . . and it's going well. I've learned to star the people I want to show up in my feed first and how to navigate directly to my groups, and I make sure to click a reaction on things from people I want to see more often and not do so on things I want to see less of.

 

I am glad you are back to normal.

 

I never noticed anything was even going on, lol. Glad it is working better for you