
Ask HN: How much more desperate and crappy can Facebook get? - sevilo
For the past year or so, I have significantly reduced my usage of Facebook, I have stopped posting status updates, mainly just keeping my account for getting event invitations. Today for the first time, I noticed a &quot;Stories from across Facebook&quot; feature that shows content that have absolutely nothing to do with the lives of people you know, but random news articles on all sorts of topics (god knows if half of these news sources are even credible). Did a quick search of this feature, apparently it&#x27;s been introduced a few months back and there is no way for users to turn it off. Their support team simply dismissed everyone by telling them to submit product feedback rather than addressing the question on how to turn off the feature: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;help&#x2F;community&#x2F;question&#x2F;?id=10216902612096563<p>I am once again deeply disappointed by how aggressively Facebook tries to shove things down their users throats. And at this point, it really seems more like desperation to me. It&#x27;s like &quot;none of your friends have new posts, here make sure you read some news that have never been verified&quot;. I&#x27;m aware more and more of my friends have became less active on Facebook and moved off to other platforms such as instagram or snapchat, but wow, is it really become that big of graveyard now that they have to rely on showing you irrelevant content?<p>Just wanted to rant, and on the side, what does everyone use to organize and discover events as an alternative to Facebook?
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newscracker
Well, according to me, the only way to use Facebook in a sane way is to use a
browser (like Firefox) with the Social Fixer extension. [1] It allows you to
customize your Facebook experience in several ways beyond basic ad blocking
and tracker blocking.

On this topic, Facebook will continue "getting desperate and crappy" as long
as there's money to be made by keeping people addicted to something or the
other.

Long before Facebook became popular, there was this site called Meetup.com,
which is still around, for getting people with specific interests to organize
and RSVP for meetups. You could check it out.

Depending on where you live, there may be event aggregation platforms and apps
that scour the web for events and make them available for users. They make
money through ads, sponsored placements of certain events, ticket sales for
events, etc. Search online for "events <location>" or "<location> events app".

[1]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/socialfixer/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/addon/socialfixer/)

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sgeneris
Facebook is only partially to blame. The real responsibility is of the society
as a whole: the atomization and loneliness of the society which FB exploited;
the public and government that permitted digital corporations to do more or
less what they want, and the dismantling of all the protections that existed
from concentration of power in monopolies and oligopolies.

It's really disturbing how people complain about what these companies are
doing -- what did they expect would happen given the above?

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waznx
Facebook became the Microsoft of the 80s and 90s basically. I couldn't find a
good alternative for a discovery event.

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sosense
It's a free website. What do you expect?

