I am baffled any time I’m on facebook how horrid it is. Loads insanely slowly, won’t accept picture uploads at random, randomly doesn’t let you share to people in your friends group (it will just hide people for no reason). Such a terrible website. Sadly I have to stay on it for friends and music reasons (there is nothing else anyone I know uses) but man, it’s crazy how badly they want you to install their spyware app so you don’t use the browser version.
I am surprised you still use Facebook. I got off of it because I loathed how it went from a place to interact with friends to ads, rage bait and political posts constantly. It is one of the first tech products to undergo enshittification in my opinion. I read Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. It added some more reasons for me to hate Zuckerberg and company but reaffirmed what I already felt simultaneously.
Yeah I hate it but my whole community is on there. There just isnt any other things that offers the same level of ease of use.
Yes the ads and politics suck but I pretty much block all that shit so mine is just friends posting and community events.
I get it. It is convenient for following businesses and groups. It just was not worth it for me personally and I hate supporting Zuck and his evil leadership team. It also was impacting me mentally just digesting the crap that kept being thrown on my feed.
I used to work at FB a a while back (working on infra, not FE or anything user touching) and we would have private development servers and occasionally I would need to do work on the FE PHP repo (called www) and would need to stay a development server for FB.
It would connect ti the various services and database as read only and was a private copy. It functioned just like a real webswver with the exception that the cache was stone cold. It would takes MINUTES to load the front page the first time. It is crazy how much caching just makes it functional.
The problem is that there are so many services and datasets read all the time.
Some years ago, they had to raise the limit on the number of classes in an Android app in order to let Facebook work. That should tell you everything.
There’s so many dark patterns to it. You’ll notice that it’s impossible to bookmark your “friends” feed. At every opportunity you get directed back to your wall, which is 95% shit you’re not subscribed to.
And yes, uploads fail. You can’t upload webp. Uploads randomly orient 90° off.
When responding to posts, the page will jump on every keystroke. It will then close the keyboard unexpectedly and reveal a button that subscribes to 4 random groups in one misclick.
If you move away to another tab or app for 30 seconds, the whole page reloads and you lose your place.
You’d think that with a trillion dollars you could get a shitty PHP feed to work smoothly.
Zuck has us cucked.
I’ve experienced every single thing you’ve mentioned ! I knew it wasn’t just me though my friends say im crazy and the only one who has these issues lol. Probably because they all use chrome or install the garbage app which I refuse.
I am pretty sure the whole thing uses React. You know, the framework created by Facebook.
I kept telling myself the same bad excuses for why I wouldnt leave FB. Friends, Family, etc. In reality, I barely used the site, so it acted more as an easy connection to others that I didnt even really have connections with anymore because I didnt use the site.
Once it became abundantly clear they were willing to be a surveillance tool for fascist govts, I deleted my profile. I reached out to everyone to find alternative means of connecting, and the irony of that process was I connected with people I hadnt spoken to in literal years, and still talk to them now.
If you think you dont have other ways to stay in contact, you are probably incorrect. Sharing phone numbers is the easiest way to stay in contact, nearly everyone has one. I also connected on signal and discord with a variety of them.
Facebook has convinced people it is essential, but it isnt. You do not need social media to maintain social connections. You just need to be social with the connections you value.
Im glad it worked out for you but I highly doubt that’d be the case for me. Of 10 people ive asked, I’ve convinced 1 to talk to me on signal. The rest are tired and don’t want yet another app just to talk to me.
Plus, for events or music, there is nothing else. People only find events on Facebook (me included).
Thats why I suggest phone number exchanfe for texting. Its not the most secure but RCS is at least a security boost.
Events is definitely harder, so I understand that. My wife still uses facebook and tracks that stuff. Ive actually resorted to finding events in local news sources that I put into an RSS feed. If anything Ill make a burner fb account so I can access that kind of stuff, but thus far I have not needed it. Hopefully events become less of a problem as FB becomes more of a problem
It is Optimised.
Just not optimised for efficiency or ease of use.
It is optimised for extracting as much personal metadata as possible, feeding as many ads as possible, monopolising users attention and manipulating political opinions.
It’s optimized for making money
Optimized for distributing far right content in order to take destroy democracy
Sadly I have to stay on it for friends and music reasons
No you don’t
I wish that was true but I dont prefer being completely isolated from my friends.
The fact of the matter is most of them have kids and jobs and dont know shit about technology and aren’t going to install another app when “facebook works fine”.
So yes I cant really complain about it, but man how shitty their site is just pisses me off when there is no reason for it to be this bad.
I get what you’re saying but it’s not actually that kind of all or nothing situation. I’ve never met a person that would only do FB or nothing at all. Everyone is browsing FB on their phone anyway so skip the middleman and start a group message thread. Easy solution that takes almost no effort or adjustment. Nothing will ever improve if people like you and I refuse to change our habits even slightly.
Friends don’t force friends to use FB.
But the libraries the FB devs publish are considered state of the art on the web frontend community!
And if you complain, there’s always somebody to say “if you are so good, why aren’t you working at FAANG?”
if you are so good, why aren’t you working at FAANG?
Because I have a conscience!
I’ve been blocking Facebook for years but I have to say as a developer I’m absolutely in love with GraphQL. I really can’t stand having to continue development on REST APIs (though I’m equally obsessed with Conditional GET Requests as of late).
GraphQL has all the right combination of abstracting a really hard problem, ignoring the hard details, and giving you enough toggles to pretend you can solve the worst problems that makes hyping it really, really easy.
You hit on the reason I suspect the website (especially mobile) is absolutely rubbish. To get people to install the app so it can spy on your mic and camera to harvest data for $$$. Jokes on them, it just reminds me why I deleted the app and reduces time I spend on the site overall.
Facebook is optimized for other stuff. Vacuuming up data for instance. That tends to drag on performance. If you want to see a “fast” website, I believe McMaster-Carr’s is still the gold standard.
I love MMC and there should be a law to make every website function like it.
If you think it’s bad, try using the mobile version. I can assure you, it’s worse.
I find the mobile web version to be better because it’s an afterthought product. They don’t push half the crap that the flagship products have, like the desktop site or mobile app version
uses Facebook
Boomer, or Gen X?
All under 30 bud.
Facebook isnt just for your unc. Many of us are stuck on it especially for community events.
