# The Genius of the Facebook interface **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 24, 2015, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454 "2015-11-24T17:44:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/41 "2015-11-26T18:58:20Z")
> [@digs](#): > > So, Facebook thinks you should be more gregarious… “Oh, for heaven’s sake, of _course_ you want everyone to see your kareoke! Don’t be such a sourpuss!” > > Like when your mom would spot you sneaking up to bed when their friends came over for the late night cocktail party, and she grabbed you by the cheeks and made you show off for all their guests… ^This. Facebook’s ideal user, the person for whom their interface has been designed, is a narcissistic extrovert who has no personal boundaries and sees life as a drama with herself/himself as the central character. And if you are not that exact person, and want to be a bit circumspect with some aspects of your life, then FB’s response is “okay, if you’re gonna be a big grouch, here are some hard-to-find options you can tweak. And we’re gonna change them next month, because, dude, you really need to come out of your shell.” ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2015, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/42 "2015-11-26T20:39:33Z")
I’d like to hijack my own thread and join a related fallacy into the Pitting. “A fire just burned down my house!” ☹ – Shut up! You can’t complain. You didn’t pay for the fire, did you? :eek: Are citizens of countries with single-payer (free) healthcare not allowed to complain about their healthcare? I’ll leave it to someone more eloquent and intelligent to flesh out the point, but let me dismiss the most obvious rebuttal: “Free” healthcare may be taxpayer-funded, but Facebook is hardly completely “free” either. In addition to the point **swampspruce** makes, FB is draining $billions of advertising revenue from news media. One would hope that this production advanced Americans’ welfare. But instead of supporting investigative journalists, the advertising money is spent advancing FB mischief. (The decline of print media is a big deal. Where once professsional journalists helped inform citizens, now amateur bloggers repeat each others’ misconceptions and citizen information declines.) ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2015, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/43 "2015-11-27T15:41:47Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > [2] I don’t want to learn how to use Facebook (because I don’t want to use it at all). _My wife_ isn’t enamored of their horrendous interface but would like to know how to do simple things. Then you either have to teach your wife, or get her to learn how to use the Help function. Either way, I don’t see anything to complain about. > [@](#): > > If your point is that high-powered techno-nerds can, with difficulty, get around Facebook’s horrible interface, my answer is that not all FB users are techno-nerds. 😃 My 74-year-old mother can easily use FB, and she’s not a"high-powered techno-nerd", whatever that is. You know why my mom can use FB? Because she found instructions for what she wanted to do, and followed them. ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2015, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/44 "2015-11-27T16:08:08Z")
First off, I agree with you that complaining about free services shouldn’t be off the table. > [@septimus](#): > > Do those of you defending Facebook think Rona was defeating the FB philosophy by not Notifying™ all her Friends™ that she was adding the watermarks? Let’s look at Instagram. It’s a photo sharing service that lets you do very little with your photos. It entered a market that was _full_ of photo hosting sites that were well developed and feature-rich. Flickr will let you upload a full size master photo and then offer up smaller resolutions for your users. You can replace the photo, group your photos into albums, change the order of your photos. You can follow other Flickr users, like/comment/share things, etc. And Flickr is just the one I’m familiar with, but there’s lots of others. Instragram entered this market with a reduced feature set, not because the developers lacked skill and/or time, but because they had a vision for a different kind of service. You can upload a picture and apply a filter, and then your friends can like or comment. That’s pretty much it. But it was precisely this restricted functionality that made Instagram take off. Facebook is a lot more complicated, of course, but one of the ways they reduced functionality to their advantage is that they made it really hard _not_ to share things. The default privacy settings generally push the boundaries of what most users would pick if they had to set them up themselves. You can change them, sure, but you couldn’t always. And every time they update the privacy settings they take little steps to make sure your activity gets seen by more people. Facebook makes money off this, yes, but this is really more about a philosophy. They want you to expand your social network on their site, and they do that by showing you activity from your friends that involves people you don’t know. This works really well; sometimes I’ll be like, “Oh hey, I met that guy once, he’s friends with Jim, and now I see that he likes the same music I like. I’ll just friend him because the button is right here.” And now FB has caused me to create one more connection that will keep me coming back. Facebook wants you to keep posting new content because it helps with this philosophy of expanding networks. You’ll notice that it’s very hard to search through someone’s timeline. You can scroll through it but you can’t jump to a specific period in time, or search by keyword. Photos are really the only thing that exist as something you can flip through, and you get the feeling that FB would probably prefer it if you couldn’t. In a lot of ways FB is a victim of its own success, expanding into areas it’d rather not be if not for the money involved (games, business pages, etc). At it’s core it’s a site designed to connect people who want to post status updates. It’s not a photo hosting site for a photographer who wants to update their images with watermarks, and the fact that they’re not catering to that sort of user is by design. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2015, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/45 "2015-11-27T20:13:58Z")
Note that many of the arguments against my Pitting could be applied to a broad class of Pittings. “I don’t like the way XXX Bank charges excessive fees.” – That’s their profit-making model. Don’t you like capitalism? Keep your money under the mattress if you don’t like banks. “I disapprove of XXX Terrorist Group beheading journalists.” – They’re a terrorist group, for heaven’s sake! Join a different group if you don’t like XXX. > [@GrumpyBunny](#): > > … get her to learn how to use the Help function. And it’s especially annoying when peoiple feel a need to “contribute” who’ve not even understood the complaint. At least the other detractors noted that FB didn’t want my wife to upload-without-posting. **Grumpy** couldn’t even figure out that much. ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/46 "2015-11-28T01:17:36Z")
Jesus Christ on a motherfucking rye crisp, **septimus**. I understood the complaint. You obviously _ **really** _ don’t understand the concept of **social media**. It’s for _ **sharing** _, you dumb bastard. That’s why the default is to share. What Facebook “wants” is irrelevant. You can work around the \*\*\*default settings \*\*\*(as the super tech heads call them) and make it do what you want. The fact that you didn’t want to have to read the instructions isn’t the programmers’ problem, it’s yours. Sorry you have a stick up your ass, pal, but it isn’t my doing. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/47 "2015-11-28T02:24:36Z")
> [@Joey\_P](#): > > Remember, Facebook _only_ knows what you allow it to know. If you don’t tell it what shows you watch or where you work or what your birthday is and won’t know these things and people wouldn’t be so creeped out by it. In fact someone I know just mentioned that his kids put pictures of their kids (his grandkids) on facebook and he wishes they would email them to him. I suggested he get an FB account and he refused for, more or less, the OP’s reasons. I suggested to him the same thing I’ve told other people. If you just want a FB account to keep in contact with a small group of people or see pictures of the grandkids, set it up, use a fake/shortened name, use your spam email account, don’t fill in any information, go heavy on the privacy settings and don’t upload any pictures. Facebook isn’t magic. It can only work with what you give it…so don’t give it anything to work with. It seems more direct to just e-mail. > [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > Facebook knows where you work if you add coworkers as friends. Facebook knows what your birthday is if anyone wishes you happy birthday on Facebook. Facebook knows where you were every time you get tagged in a picture that has location data (and any time their face recognition can find you, even if you’re not tagged). > > You can certainly limit this by adding only a select few people, but you really can’t control what information other people give Facebook about you. And they can easily give quite a lot without thinking of it. That, too. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2015, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/48 "2015-11-28T02:40:08Z")
> [@erysichthon](#): > > And if you are not that exact person, and want to be a bit circumspect with some aspects of your life, then FB’s response is “okay, if you’re gonna be a big grouch, here are some hard-to-find options you can tweak. And we’re gonna change them next month, because, dude, you really need to come out of your shell.” Of course–but it’s one thing to come out of your shell, and it’s quite another to _live your life_ on Facebook. There are several people whose friend requests I accepted–because what the hell, why not?–and now I have to wonder, or rather, I have to serious doubt, whether I still respect these people. They post dozens of times a day, at all hours of the day, and it’s basically the same (re-posted) shit in a different form over and over again. It can only mean that they spend just about their every waking moment on Facebook, and all I can think is, “Jesus, get a fucking life.” ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2015, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/49 "2015-11-30T15:04:52Z")
Doper can’t figure out/hates FB! Film at 11. Reposting: > [@GrumpyBunny](#): > > Jesus Christ on a motherfucking rye crisp, **septimus**. > > I understood the complaint. You obviously _ **really** _ don’t understand the concept of **social media**. It’s for _ **sharing** _, you dumb bastard. That’s why the default is to share. > > What Facebook “wants” is irrelevant. You can work around the \*\*\*default settings \*\*\*(as the super tech heads call them) and make it do what you want. The fact that you didn’t want to have to read the instructions isn’t the programmers’ problem, it’s yours. > > Sorry you have a stick up your ass, pal, but it isn’t my doing. I am the least techy person out there. I don’t like sharing my life online. But I have a FB account to keep up with family and organizations. I checked the appropriate setting and maintain my privacy. I simply cannot understand why this is such a difficult concept for some or why it engenders such hate. Do you hate hammers if you hit your thumb while nailing? FB is a tool. Don’t use it if you don’t know how. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2015, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/50 "2015-11-30T15:40:03Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > I think your point is that FB will allow you to conform to its anal retentive model. Does the idea of adding something to your Album without immediately sending notifications seem so very absurd? In not sure that heavy sarcasm is making you look smarter than Facebook. It seems much more likely to me that Facebook has made it hard for your wife to do what she wants to do because Facebook prefers she didn’t do that. Facebook openly steers users towards doing things in certain ways. It’s not bad design; it’s intentional. ---
**Author:** ![kiz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/7feea3/32.png) [@kiz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kiz)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2015, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/51 "2015-11-30T17:21:42Z")
> [@erysichthon](#): > > Facebook’s ideal user, the person for whom their interface has been designed, is a narcissistic extrovert who has no personal boundaries and sees life as a drama with herself/himself as the central character. And if you are not that exact person, and want to be a bit circumspect with some aspects of your life, then FB’s response is “okay, if you’re gonna be a big grouch, here are some hard-to-find options you can tweak. And we’re gonna change them next month, because, dude, you really need to come out of your shell.” I couldn’t agree with this more. I’m one of the “bit circumspect” and I’m grateful I have other “bit circumspect” friends there who know more about hard-to-find options to tweak. The one I’ve found most helpful are the ones where you can filter posts so only certain people see them 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Macca26](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/13edae/32.png) [@Macca26](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Macca26)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2015, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/52 "2015-11-30T18:00:30Z")
What, is she hosting a bunch of professional photography on facebook, warranting some sort of watermark? (Otherwise, watermarks are dumb) I mean, for one thing, Facebook compression is so awful these days her photos would be unusable by third parties. And for another thing, yeah, Facebook is for sharing. I really don’t get what’s so hard about deleting an old album full of photos you want to remove, creating a new album and mass posting the corrected photos into it, and then removing the update from your timeline about it (if you do it all in one shot, then there’s only one update to manage). Wham, bam, done. It’s all changed and nobody will notice. If the problem stems from “I want to tag Ashley in this old photo I’ve re-uploaded, but it’ll notify her!” well tough nuggets. As others have mentioned, Facebook is meant for in-the-now sharing. It is designed and honed to do this. It’s not a photo hosting site and doesn’t try to be, which is why it doesn’t allow editing of old photo uploads. If my friend was doing this and a bunch of notifications are unavoidable, all I would need is one status post from her saying, “Sorry guys, I’m re-uploading all my photos and re-tagging people! Your notifications will blow up for one day only!” and I’d understand. Besides, it’s a good method to reminisce by. ---
**Author:** ![Joey\_P](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/919ad9/32.png) [@Joey\_P](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joey_P)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2015, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/53 "2015-11-30T18:11:43Z")
> [@BlackKnight](#): > > Exactly. Joey P’s statement is simply false. I have never had a Facebook account. I have never given Facebook _any_ information about myself. Nevertheless, they clearly know an awful lot about me. For example, I routinely get spam from Facebook asking if I know persons X, Y, or Z. 90% of the time I do. Facebook knows my group of friends, family, and acquaintances _even though I have never given it any information whatsoever_. I’m not even sure how Facebook has my email address, but it does. (One of my addresses, anyway.) That’s because your friends let facebook ransack their address book. Facebook doesn’t know anything about you other than that your email address exists and possibly that a few people that are friends on facebook all have your email address in their address book. I’ve never understood why people let FB go through their address book, I’ve never done it, but I don’t think they give you anything for doing it. At best, maybe you get a few extra friends out of it, those last few holdouts that haven’t signed up yet. But, again, Facebook isn’t magic, they’d didn’t divine your address. Someone you know gave it to them, and that’s all the information they have on you. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2015, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/54 "2015-12-02T05:35:23Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > It sounds like your wife wants to use Facebook as a photo storage space, when it’s not meant for that. Fuck you. ---
**Author:** ![Renee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/renee/32/287_2.png) [@Renee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renee)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2015, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/55 "2015-12-02T05:52:14Z")
😕 > [@DrDeth](#): > > Fuck you. Huh? ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2015, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/56 "2015-12-02T06:00:34Z")
> [@Renee](#): > > 😕 > > Huh? DrDeth has a bit of a thing going in another Pit thread and he’s starting to follow people into other threads now. Stress of the holidays, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2015, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/57 "2015-12-02T06:38:03Z")
> [@TroutMan](#): > > DrDeth has a bit of a thing going in another Pit thread and he’s starting to follow people into other threads now. Stress of the holidays, I guess. Guinastasia followed me just to insult me in one BBQ Pit thread, why can’t I return the favor? ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2015, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/58 "2015-12-02T12:48:37Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Guinastasia followed me just to insult me in one BBQ Pit thread, why can’t I return the favor? You’re a naughty girl. A naughty, mouth breathing girl. ---
**Author:** ![IDtenT\_Error](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@IDtenT\_Error](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IDtenT_Error)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2015, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/59 "2015-12-02T14:41:22Z")
> [@TroutMan](#): > > Stress of the holidays, I guess. More likely the stress of not being able to troll Game of Thrones threads, anymore. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2015, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454/60 "2015-12-02T15:18:27Z")
Wait till these threads lead the FBI to Dr Deths boneyard of people who disagreed with him IRL. Pee Wee Herman will play him in the Criminal Minds adaptation. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-genius-of-the-facebook-interface/738454.md?page=4)