Tamsin Clark (15 KP) rated Facebook in Apps
Jan 20, 2018
Business pages have to pay to be seen and if they make posts and don't pay for them, they find their reach grossly reduced. Certain news outlets are encouraged and bolstered while others are all but hidden, and the 'trending' news always shows the very worst of the worst stories. There is also a lot of this 'fake news' around, where articles will show up with stories that are entirely untrue but made to look real, which takes even more time to research than it does to read in the first place. I'd say another 50% of posts are clickbait too. Feeds have been altered over and over again to the point that they're now almost impossible to customise to see what YOU want to see and not what Facebook wants you to see. And all the while, each click you make, each comment you write is read by the site and used to customise adverts and content to you, whether you like it or not. Even in messenger.
When it comes to content, Facebook does provide a good amount. On a personal level, if you restricted your feed to ONLY people you know in person and they didn't join any groups or flood your feed with game updates, then it would be a fine site to use for actual social interaction. It's possible to upload multiple images and videos, use links to display pages, media or otherwise that are of interest. You can set up alerts too but beware of being inundated by a million alerts every moment. There is a messaging service too; if you use a browser then it's all on the same site but if you use the apps, you have to have a separate app for Facebook and messenger and they don't work together, even though the Facebook app has a messenger icon as part of its design. It takes up a LOT of room on a phone, especially if you don't have much to start with. Also, if you block someone on messenger (even for a laugh) it automatically unfriends you on Facebook, yet supposedly the two are not connected so go figure.
I recently stopped using the site. I have a profile still as I have a lot of images and life events that I want to keep but I now barely browse once a week. Every thread descended into an argument, too many people use it as a troll hub to release the tensions of their unhappy lives on others while avoiding all responsibility for it. It ended up a bad way to waste time and made my anxiety issues a lot worse too.
The App itself can be quite hit and miss - updates seem to be rolled out before they're properly ready, so you have issues where timelines don't update, comments don't load, etc. Whenever there's an update, while it may resolve one problem, it typically brings a whole host of others.
There are also the problems with Facebook itself, not least the prevalence of cyber-bullying that goes unchecked, the fact that Facebook seems to apply its rules in an incredibly haphazard way - allowing violent images to remain while removing those which, while perhaps "provocative" in the sense of being thought-provoking, are not indecent, obscene, violent or really in any way outrageous, and the rather concerning issues around the security/privacy of user data and increasing number of adverts on the site/app.
While not having yet run its course, Facebook is going to have to come up with newer and newer ideas to remain relevant, and have to improve its security and "policing" structures to keep users happy.
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