Social (Media) Issues

Along the vast, virtual landscape, there is a wasteland filled with drama, hoaxes and food pictures. I'm of course talking about Facebook. There are many who flock to Twitter and Instagram and even some who use Google+ (whoever they are) but, without question the biggest kid on the block is Facebook. I like millions of others utilize it daily to talk with friends, see what people are up to and even manage a couple of pages and groups. I spend a lot of time on my laptop, but just as much, if not more time accessing Facebook on my iPhone or iPad. In the past few months, Facebook has been making changes, some good, but a lot of them are just plain bad.
Granted, this is going to be me bitching about accepting changes, but hey, this is the Internet and it's my Gates/Jobs/Gore given right to bitch about things if I want to.

I can understand changes to improve things, I can understand cosmetic changes to make things look better, I can even understand changes to organize things better, if they work. The changes that have been thrust upon the mobile app public in the past few months, just plain don't work.

First up was changing the default News Feed display method to "Top Stories" and removing the option of setting the News Feed to "Most Recent" from the main feed menu and burying it so far down in the menus that you have to go through two or three sub menus to find it. Some can't be bothered with the change and some just accept it as the new normal. Personally, I like my News Feed to show things in chronological order, not in whatever Facebook thinks is a "Top Story." I don't care what they're trying  to force me to see, if I wanted to see a post someone made three days ago, I'd go find it. Otherwise "Most Recent"is my preferred display.

It's not just me either, the help forums are full of posts from people asking and begging to restore the Most Recent option as the default.

https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=10103676214603280 - 90 answers and 651 votes on this topic alone, yep it's a problem and Facebook isn't listening to it's membership.

So here's what I'm doing to voice my displeasure. I'm using the Report A Problem feature in the mobile app to submit a ticket every time that Facebook decides to default my News Feed back to "Top Stories." No cursing, no swearing, a little sarcasm and that's it. Here's the text that I send;

The News Feed is broken. The default sorting option is this "Top Stories" nonsense that makes no sense at all in how it displays posts. Not sure what determines something to be a "Top Story" but if I wanted to see a post someone made three days ago, I'd go look for it.
The default sorting should be "Most Recent" so posts are laid out in chronological order from newest to oldest. That makes the most sense. If whatever algorithm Facebook is using to figure out how I'd like information displayed could actually learn, then it would show the most recent postings.
I'm not the only one who thinks so, read the support forums, lots of other Facebook members are asking for the same thing.
Get rid of this ridiculous "Top Stories" thing and make "Most Recent" the default sorting option.
Just fix it already.

and here's how you submit it.

First go to the "More" menu in the mobile app and scroll down to "Report A Problem"

Then you'll see a window asking what's wrong, click on "Something Isn't Working"

Then pick "Where Is The Problem and you'll be given a list of choices, pick "News Feed"

Then you can enter a description of what's wrong and click on Send in the top right corner

That was all bad enough and annoying enough, but hey, if they can annoy me then I can annoy back by submitting tickets and by encouraging others to send in tickets as well. Feel free to copy/past my message into a ticket or 500 if you want to send them.

Now they've gone and changed the way messages are sent/received on the mobile app. As of today, I get notifications in the mobile app that I have a message, the little bubble with the person's picture even pops up on the screen. But when I go to view the message I get a notice that I have to download and install the new Facebook Messenger app if I want to read messages on my iPhone or iPad. That was a real dick move. Why mess with what's working? Why take away what works? If they really want to present us with a messenger app, why not make it an option to use it if we choose to? Why force it down our throats (virtually speaking of course)?

Now, the reasoning that they're trying to sell it to us with is that it makes answering messages 20% faster if we swap over to this new messenger app. I call bullshit! If I'm in the parent Facebook app and a message comes in, I have to close it and open or swap to a completely different app to answer the message. That's not increasing response time, that's increasing wait time because I have to switch apps. That's ridiculous!

So again, I'm going to submit tickets about this as an issue. As with the News Feed, I've got a message done up for a ticket and here it is;

Time to lose the new, unnecessary, messenger app.

It doesn't make accessing and answering messages any faster by removing them from the parent app.
If anything, having to open a second app and then switch to that app out of the main Facebook app slows things down.

Given the failure at fixing the News Feed issues, Facebook might want to fix the main app before shoving new stuff in our faces.

I will not be downloading or installing the Facebook Messenger app. Put messages back in the parent app.

Try listening to your members for once.

Once again, go to the "More" menu in the mobile app and scroll down to "Report A Problem"

Then you'll see a window asking what's wrong, click on "Something Isn't Working"

Then pick "Where Is The Problem and you'll be given a list of choices, pick "Chat or Messages"

Then you can enter a description of what's wrong and click on Send in the top right corner

I'm going to send that ticket each and every time that I get a message that I can't answer in the Facebook app. Every reply I make in every conversation that I have to go back to my laptop instead of using the mobile app, I'm going to submit a ticket. I'm going to flood their support inboxes with these tickets.

Join me won't you?