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Okay, I'll share a pet peeve about Facebook. It's when a post appears in my feed which I can do nothing with except share it. I can't interact with it in any other way except sending a friend request to the poster, who isn't a friend. The only reason it appears in my feed is because one of my friends interacted with it in some way.

I realize this is because the person who posted it locked down all interaction with their posts, but in that case I really don't need to see it, do I?

I consider this a bug, but clearly Facebook does not.

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Yeah I don't understand the reasoning behind that either. Annoys the heck out of me though.

Agreed.

It's not a bug -- it's because the user has chosen those settings. They decided to set their posts to visible to whatever more-than-friends group but not their comments as well. I find it quite irritating as well.

I said: I realize this is because the person who posted it locked down all interaction with their posts

You said: it's because the user has chosen those settings. They decided to set their posts to visible to whatever more-than-friends group but not their comments as well.

I think we're in agreement. :)

The bug--in my opinion, this behavior is unwanted and thus to me a bug--is that Facebook shows me a post at all when I can't interact with it.

Hmmm. I wonder if Social Fixer has a setting that will block these posts.

You know, I re-read your post twice just to see if you'd noted that and managed to miss it every time, I'm so sorry.

I understand why somebody might want such behavior, though it feels kind of.. narcissistic, maybe? to me. I wonder if some cases if people realize they're doing it but of course I can't ask directly.

No, no apologies needed. I thought it was funny! :)

It does seem narcissistic if they mean to have their posts appear that way to friends of friends' feeds. More often, though, I suspect people don't realize that's the outcome of their settings. It makes sense that someone would want to lock down comments on their public posts so that trolls can't troll.

I don't know why someone would block likes on public posts, though.

I have those moments of annoyance when I go to "like" or comment, and discover I can't, but there is often value to me in reading comments people on my flist have made, or articles they have "like"d but not "share"d.

The facebook behaviors that get to me are (1) when they show me an article with a bajillion comments because one of my friends commented on it, show me a snippet of the comment, but give me no easy way to navigate to their full comment within the comment threads, and (2) when they show me new posts from pages ostensibly because some people on my flist (not me) have liked that page (not the post). I think (2) only happens when the page owner has paid to promote the post.

I dunno, I'm starting to think lots of Facebook's "I'll fill your feed with random garbage that is meaningful to your friends but not you" is a really great feature. It's making me consider all but stopping using Facebook, which is probably a net win all around. :)

(Okay, maybe my idea of a great feature and Facebook's are a little at odds. :) )

Your fundamental misunderstanding is about the nature of BookFace.

You're not the customer. What you want, what's best for you, is nearly irrelevant.

You're the product. Their design decisions are all about their ability to collect data and sell it, plus advertising space.

<grumpy old man> Use a mailing list, not FB, if you want to have something resembling a reasonable conversation.< /grumpy old man >

Edited 2015-09-17 17:54 (UTC)

I know that.

You misunderstand the purpose of my post.

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