Am I the only one who hates the way Facebook works?

[cjepson]

I have no problem with the concept of Facebook, but the execution baffles me.

It just seems that Facebook is set up in a way that runs counter to my every intuition. I'm not a computer geek, but I do use computers every day. And somehow, without fail, every time I try to do anything at all on Facebook, it either doesn't work or I can't tell whether or not it worked. I know there's always a learning curve, but it just seems weird that Facebook appears so user-hostile to me... like it was designed by people whose brains work differently or something. Does anyone else have this problem, or am I just a total weirdo?

[etv78]

I'm unclear exactly what you're talking about.

[grude]

Nope, I had a similar reaction to the android OS and the android store. Give an application access to make and receive phone calls?!? Are you crazy! And every free game and app is like that, and no one cares.

I'm not computer illiterate, but the new paradigms of use are unsettling.

[Hampshire]

I hate that it sorts posts by "top stories" whatever the hell that means rather than "most recent". I can change it but it always seems to default back to "top stories".

[slm2955]

I hate how fb makes it so easy for someone to impersonate you but so hard to get them off...

[Hello Again]

I'm also unsure what the OP is talking about. Maybe he could give an example?

Because, for example, when I want to post a status, I write it out and press the button marked "post." It's simple enough.

[Kevbo]

Not the OP, but here are some examples:

Both desktop and mobile (iPhone)

I'd like to use a photo from one of my FB photo galleries as my profile picture. Can't find a way to do that. Can't find a way to move the photo from the gallery where it is into "profile photos". Can't find any reason that only photos in "profile photo" gallery should be usable as profile photo. Killing posts from game apps requires use of invisible buttons.

FB iPhone App: No way to add a second photo to a post, or photo to comment on someone elses post. No way to have URL links display in Safari rather than FB app. Many blog sites work correctly in Safari, but not FB App. Cut and paste is disabled in FB app, so can't cut'n'paste URL into Safari. "Pinch-zoom" doesn't work in FB app.


These are just off the top of my head. I totally agree with the OP, that FB is completely non-intuitive and ignores most existing GUI norms.

[control-z]

Whatever tasks the OP is trying to do, yes I find FB difficult to use. It's not that good for novices, especially with the new layout it's very offputting. I was a novice user before but I could understand a push-down newsfeed with newer stuff at the top. Now I don't know what the hell they are doing with the page layout.

[Munch]

Originally Posted by Kevbo

Not the OP, but here are some examples:

Both desktop and mobile (iPhone)

I'd like to use a photo from one of my FB photo galleries as my profile picture. Can't find a way to do that.

In iOS: Go to the photo in question. Click on the picture. See in the top right, a rectangle with an arrow flying out of it? Click that. Select "Make Profile Picture".

On desktop: Go to a photo. Go to "Options". Select "Make Profile Picture".

Can't find a way to move the photo from the gallery where it is into "profile photos".

Only pictures you've made your profile are in that gallery.

FB iPhone App: No way to have URL links display in Safari rather than FB app. Many blog sites work correctly in Safari, but not FB App.

In the Facebook app, there's a box in the top right with an arrow flying out of it. Click that, and select "open in Safari".

It's Facebook, not the Pentagon - go ahead and click all the buttons you want so you can figure out what they do, you're not going to blow anything up.

[ZipperJJ]

I noticed on my mom's older computer (~2006 Dell) that Facebook isn't as "smooth" as my newer (2011) computer. They added a lot of Ajax features to the site which means a lot of real-time updating and if your computer's GPU (graphics) is very out of date and/or slow, Facebook can be a bit of a pain.

Sort of sounds like that's what the OP is talking about. To people with up-to-date or at least powerful machines, Facebook runs nice and smooth and automated-like. But if your machine is sort of old then there's a lag in everything you do and it adds a lot of confusion.

[etv78]

Oh, OK. In fact, I agree about looking at photos slows my computer down. To the point I need to restart it.

[cjepson]

Originally Posted by Hello Again

I'm also unsure what the OP is talking about. Maybe he could give an example?

I'm a bit ashamed to because it will probably make it painfully clear what a dolt I am. But... here goes. The first time I tried to comment on something, I was at a total loss after typing my comment, because there was no button saying anything like "Submit". Someone had to tell me that you just hit "Enter". It never occurred to me to try that... I was typing text; I assumed that hitting "Enter" would simply be like hitting the carriage return on a typewriter.

Some of it is just wording. Like the "Find Friends" button. To me, "find" suggests searching for someone rather than simply going to the page of a person you've already friended. Also, being as old-fashioned and non-Facebooky as I am, I was thinking of the word "friends" in terms of "real-life friends", e.g., old school chums, rather than "Facebook friends". So I thought the button meant something like "search for an old school chum".

The thing that finally made me start this thread was something that happened today. I see that I have 3 pending family tree requests. So I take a look and I see the first one says "1 person added you as family but you haven't yet replied. See who it is and add him/her as relative!" The accompanying button says "Accept", which makes me a bit nervous, as it sounds like clicking it will add the person as a relative, which I don't know if I want to do because I don't know who it is yet. But I click it anyway. I get a screen that lists people who are already in my family and others who aren't, but I don't see anything about "who it is" who added me as family; all I see is an "Add Family" button. So I pick one person from the latter group who is a family member and put a check next to them, and hit "Add Family". And it generates a message to that person plus everyone else in my family list... which I eventually figure out is because all those people already had checks next to their names (which I didn't put there). So I'm sort of OK now, except that I still have no idea who it was who generated the request in the first place.

OK, a lot of this is the usual learning-curve stuff and it's pretty petty. But it just seems to be all like this, and I don't seem to have this problem with other sites... really I don't, you must believe me!!!! (pant pant)

[Munch]

The thing that finally made me start this thread was something that happened today. I see that I have 3 pending family tree requests. So I take a look and I see the first one says "1 person added you as family but you haven't yet replied. See who it is and add him/her as relative!" The accompanying button says "Accept", which makes me a bit nervous, as it sounds like clicking it will add the person as a relative, which I don't know if I want to do because I don't know who it is yet.

Well, the Family Tree is a 3rd party application, so yeah - you should be nervous about clicking on it, because it's likely spam.

[Batsinma Belfry]

I miss the days when people had to actually type what they wanted to say. Now they just "like" or "share", those annoying texted pictures.

I just found out this week, (thanks **Chick-fil-A!,) that if you "like" a picture, it shows up on your friend's feed. Why even make like and share, separate options?


*** The bad news - I lost some conservative friends. The good news - the remaining ones are praying for me, so maybe I'll hit the Lotto soon.

[Telemark]

Originally Posted by Batsinma Belfry

I just found out this week, (thanks **Chick-fil-A!,) that if you "like" a picture, it shows up on your friend's feed. Why even make like and share, separate options?

That's not quite true. Friends see a selection of your activities, depending on their settings and on your settings. Liking something is an activity, so is sharing but they have different weighting and settings.

[Quimby]

What I hate most about the newer Timeline layout is how it alternates posts side to side. The human brain doesn't work that way (at least mine doesn't; it wants to just go straight down). Why not put wall posts on the left and check ins, photos etc. on the right?

[WhyNot]

Originally Posted by cjepson

I'm a bit ashamed to because it will probably make it painfully clear what a dolt I am. But... here goes. The first time I tried to comment on something, I was at a total loss after typing my comment, because there was no button saying anything like "Submit". Someone had to tell me that you just hit "Enter". It never occurred to me to try that... I was typing text; I assumed that hitting "Enter" would simply be like hitting the carriage return on a typewriter.

Great example! And to make matters worse and more non-intuitive, there are some sections of Facebook where hitting Enter IS like hitting the carriage return on a typewriter, and you have to find the correct button to click. Sending a Message works like that, last I checked.

So I said Missy a Message and I hit Enter to send it and it doesn't work and I hunt up a button. Then I see something she posted and make a Comment and want to write more than one line so I hit Enter to create a new paragraph and...whatever the second thing I wanted to say was, it's now not there, because I hit Enter which it takes to mean Submit.

And yes, every single time my SO wants to change his Profile picture, he's got to ask me how to do it, because he can't remember. And I can't, either, so I've got to open my own profile and look around to remember that, unlike every other website ever, in order to make a picture your profile, you ignore that picture and fiddle with the one you don't want to be your profile. Stupid.

[control-z]

Also getting to your friends list takes several clicks. And when I (rarely) want to send a message, I'm never sure whether its public or private. A lot of my problem is inexperience, but I am a programmer and I can say its certainly not intuitive.

[Lamia]

Originally Posted by cjepson

Some of it is just wording. Like the "Find Friends" button. To me, "find" suggests searching for someone rather than simply going to the page of a person you've already friended. Also, being as old-fashioned and non-Facebooky as I am, I was thinking of the word "friends" in terms of "real-life friends", e.g., old school chums, rather than "Facebook friends". So I thought the button meant something like "search for an old school chum".

I'm not sure what you were doing wrong, but the "Find Friends" button does almost exactly what you thought it should do. It takes you to a menu set up to help you search Facebook for people you know in real life (e.g. people who went to your same high school) but who are not yet your friends on Facebook, and also suggests possible real life friends based on how many mutual Facebook friends you have.

[Mangetout]

I use Facebook a lot - but there are quite a lot of things I don't like. The interface has settled down a bit recently, but for a while, they kept on changing where things were and how they worked. I still haven't switched to Timeline.

I pretty much hate all these social apps that want to install themselves, then post on my wall as if they're me - and block app postings from others when I see them, especially games - I wish there was a way to block app postings by default - I'm interested in what my friends say themselves, but not inane updates from apps and 'social reader' things.

[Bob Ducca]

I find this thread hilarious.

I imagine if this board was around in the mid-80's we'd be dealing with threads complaining about programming those new-fangled VCR's. "Why is it always flashing 12:00???? It's 3:30!"

[etv78]

Lamia-If you have 1 mutual friend, you still get "person you may know".

[WhyNot]

Originally Posted by Bob Ducca

I find this thread hilarious.

I imagine if this board was around in the mid-80's we'd be dealing with threads complaining about programming those new-fangled VCR's. "Why is it always flashing 12:00???? It's 3:30!"

Except that this is a thread full of at least internet literate folks, if not computer geeks. It's not that we don't "get" social media or how to post on a site with a well designed or intuitive interface (er...my post is my cite).

I think it's more like my whining a few years ago that with my DVR I couldn't watch one show and record another, while my creaky old VCR let me do that two decades before! (Dual channel DVR's finally put a rest to that complaint, thank goodness.) It's not that I don't understand the technology, it's that the technology kinda sucks.

[Lamia]

Originally Posted by etv78

Lamia-If you have 1 mutual friend, you still get "person you may know".

Yes, I know. The friend finder also seems to take into account things like how recently you added the mutual friend and whether you and the suggested friend live in the same area/went to the same school/work for the same employer, but I don't know what their formula actually is and I didn't feel the need to get into all that when trying to explain what "Find Friends" was to someone who was confused on the subject.

[etv78]

Yeah, I see "you may know", and think,"Um, actually I don't."

[listedmia]

The only facebook annoyance I have right now is that it doesn't show updates from all friends. There is a list of maybe 50 people whose stuff shows up in my newsfeed. I can take people off this list and put other people on, but I cannot select more than 50. I want EVERYBODY. Well, not everybody, but everybody I actually know or find interesting, and that's more than 50 people.

[Batsinma Belfry]

Originally Posted by Telemark

That's not quite true. Friends see a selection of your activities, depending on their settings and on your settings. Liking something is an activity, so is sharing but they have different weighting and settings.

True. But most people just leave the default settings. I have access to three accounts, and fiddled around with the settings to see what shows up, and what doesn't. If it's from a third party and/or has a picture, most of your friends will see what you 'like'.

[MsWhatsit]

Facebook is actually extraordinarily un-intuitive. I have to agree with the OP on this one. And what makes things worse is that they're constantly tweaking and changing the user interface without ever publicizing these changes, so it's this constant process of trial-and-error to figure out how the site works. I honestly think this is completely deliberate, because if you don't quite understand how, for example, all of the privacy settings work, it's harder for you to shut out sponsored pages and advertisements and so forth, and of course Facebook wants you to see those things.

Here's how things work right now, by the way, as far as what things other people can see. This is as of today. For all I know, tomorrow it might change.

When you comment on or Like a friend's photo or status update, check to see what the privacy settings are on that status update or photo. This will be visible next to the timestamp at the bottom of the post. It might look like a silhouette of a person, or like a globe, or like a little gear. Hover over it, and it will say who the post is visible to: Public, Friends of Friends, Friends Only, or Custom.

If you Like or comment on a Public post, then your Like or comment will show up IN THE FEED of every person who is friends with your friend.

Example: I go to Facebook. I look at my news feed. In this feed it says "Mary Jones commented on Jason Brown's photo!" and the photo, along with Mary's comment, shows up for me. I'm friends with Mary. I'm not friends with Jason. Why did the post show up for me? Because Jason set the privacy on that photo to either Public or Friends of Friends.

What this effectively means is that if you Like or comment on any Public or Friends of Friends post, a shitload of people that you don't know are going to see your comment appear in their feed. Some people don't care about that, which is fine, but I think it's nice to know.

If the privacy on the post is set to Friends Only, then whatever you Like or comment will only show up in the feeds of people who are both your friend and the other person's friend. (In the previous example, if I were friends with BOTH Jason and Mary, I'd have seen her comment even if Jason set the privacy on the photo to Friends Only.)

I hope this makes sense. It would probably be easier with screenshots but I don't care quite enough to go that far for an explanation.

[Quimby]

Facebook also reads the contacts in your phone (if you have the app of course). That is the only explanation for the fact that it has suggested people to me that it would have no other way of knowing I may know them.

[Digital is the new Analog]

Originally Posted by Quimby

What I hate most about the newer Timeline layout is how it alternates posts side to side. The human brain doesn't work that way (at least mine doesn't; it wants to just go straight down). Why not put wall posts on the left and check ins, photos etc. on the right?

Being in South Florida, every time I see a Timeline layout, I think about the old Butterfly Ballot. Certainly a good example of something to model a communications scheme after!

-D/a

[MsWhatsit]

Originally Posted by Quimby

Facebook also reads the contacts in your phone (if you have the app of course). That is the only explanation for the fact that it has suggested people to me that it would have no other way of knowing I may know them.

Possibly those people have given Facebook access to their email contacts, and if you're in there, that's another way it could know.

[Beware of Doug]

FB is easily understood if you think of it as a dumbed-down, common-denominator environment. It makes it easy to do what most people are there to do most of the time, and damn hard to do anything else.

[control-z]

Originally Posted by MsWhatsit

Possibly those people have given Facebook access to their email contacts, and if you're in there, that's another way it could know.

On a cell phone applications can easily access your contacts. Android apps will tell you that in the permissions list before you install them, but there is still no granular control if you want to refuse that one permission. You wouldn't need to supply a password or anything. Once the app is installed it could be very subtle in its request to read your contacts or possibly not ask you at all.

[grude]

I used an open browser window to watch the trailer for Prometheus, I didn't log in to FB or log in at all or click anything related to FB.

The person who had apparently been logged into FB in the open browser session then had constant updates posted on their wall from movie PR accounts, they never figured out how to get rid of them as defriending didn't work.

I have no clue what I did, the invasiveness of FB is creepy!

[elbows]

Any idea how to avoid the timeline crap.

I liked it the old way, now when I log in, it's the new way. A trial, or some shit, I can only choose 'convert now' which is the opposite of what I want to do.

I just want it shutoff and go back to the old way where it still made a little bit of sense to me. Now I'm contemplating closing my account because I hate it so much.

[MsWhatsit]

Originally Posted by elbows

Any idea how to avoid the timeline crap.

Sorry, once you've switched (voluntarily or not) there's no going back.

Originally Posted by control-z

On a cell phone applications can easily access your contacts. Android apps will tell you that in the permissions list before you install them, but there is still no granular control if you want to refuse that one permission. You wouldn't need to supply a password or anything. Once the app is installed it could be very subtle in its request to read your contacts or possibly not ask you at all.

I know; I was just suggesting another possibility.

[GESancMan]

Originally Posted by elbows

Any idea how to avoid the timeline crap.

I liked it the old way, now when I log in, it's the new way. A trial, or some shit, I can only choose 'convert now' which is the opposite of what I want to do.

I just want it shutoff and go back to the old way where it still made a little bit of sense to me. Now I'm contemplating closing my account because I hate it so much.

Facebook Purity. It doesn't actually change it back, but it will reorganize how you see pages, amongst other things.

[BigT]

I'm pretty sure it's deliberate. Facebook doesn't have to be intuitive to get you to use it, because it is practically ubiquitous. So the only thing they have to worry about are their advertisers. And, as I've repeatedly read, Facebook gets more money from its advertisers by pointing out not only how many people see their ads, but how long these people are even on Facebook, and thus available for advertising. It's the same reason why Facebook goes around buying things like Instagram when people were spending more time there. (And I suspect Pinterest will go that way too, assuming they can resolve the legal problem of people posting pics they don't own.

The thing I personally find annoying is that, for some stupid reason, to get to your friends list, you have to go to your own profile, and then click on your friends list. I think they want you to have to scroll through your feed, where all the apps do all their advertising.