Why I Hate Facebook

I do, you know. I hate it for a couple reasons, but the primary one is the user interface sucks. It’s just horrible. And since I’ve apparently turned Friday into my free, shortform, random topic day, let me explain to you why.

Ignores My Settings

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve gone to my timeline and seen garbage from last week. “What the hell?” I would shout, and look to see that my timeline is ordered by something called “Top Stories.” Interesting, because I know for a 100% fact that I set it to “Most Recent.” But no, no, Facebook changed it. So I change it back:

And don’t ask me how many times I’ve had to turn chat OFF.

Click Don’t Matter

This is worse on iOS where I have to click twice on every single link, but it’s bad on the sort order, which is not a link but a drop down. Only since it’s right above the post in my timeline, I have to wiggle my mouse around until I magically click the right place for it to work. Using Facebook on my iPhone means I have to use their app, which behaves radically differently from the normal app, so thanks. Now I have to learn everything twice.

Unfollow Does not Mean What You Think It Means

If I comment in a thread, I follow it. Okay. I can see why you do that, and while I’d like an option to default that to off, I’m not going to argue. But when I make a comment, sometimes I click ‘Unfollow’ right away, because I just wanted to say one thing, or post “Congratulations on your baby!” and move on. That’s the end of it, right?

Nope. Every time someone ‘likes’ my comment, I get a notification. Every. Smegging. Time. I’m witty. Lots of people like my comments, or find them helpful, or whatever. That means I get a lot of BS notifications I don’t give a horse’s patootie about.

Wrong location For VERY important information

Do you know how to ‘tell’ if a post can be shared? Some can, some can’t you see. Let me help. This post is public and can be shared:

This post is friends only and cannot be shared:

Different icons, different meanings. Where are these icons? At the bottom of the post. Why is that a problem, you may ask? After all, the share button is down there too! Not everyone shares with share buttons. A lot of people will copy what someone says on FB to a blog. If they don’t happen to scroll down (which, let’s face it, a lot of us don’t), and don’t happen to know magically that a globe is public and a group of little people is a friends-only thing, they’ll copy the post content, paste it to their website, and share with the world.

I’m not so naive to think anything I put online is ever fully ‘private.’ But I’m intelligent, experienced, and I work in IT. I understand the world around me, and how the digital world shares data. If it’s online, someone will see it, share it, and make it public. Not everyone gets that, and they get upset.

How could Facebook fix this? Put at the top of the post “Friends Only!” or “Public Post” so it’s clear right away.

Bad Colors

Did you know you can embed Facebook posts in WordPress?

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151997270514795&set=a.10150154582169795.302445.251152514794&type=1

That’s my high school celebrating soccer season. The link for embedding FB? Grey. Pale grey. In the image below, I’m hovering over it. It’s still grey. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was plain text!

There should be a color change when you hover over a link, a noticable color change.

But wait, there’s more!

I’m sure there is, but at over 600 words, lets call this a day. What annoys you about Facebook’s user interface?

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)

I’m Mika (aka Ipstenu) and I’m complicated. I’ve been on the net since the days of dedicated terminals and Novation CAT modems and solved Missionaries and Cannibals (or Goats and Cabbages) before I was six, and blog about WordPress and technical/computer things at Half Elf on Tech.

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