Tip of the iceberg. Something happening with greater frequency: I can highlight ‘Répondez’ or ‘Write a reply’ in Facebook’s comment boxes, but I can’t actually comment or type in them. But I can make graphics outside of Facebook and paste them in. This was a bug I used to see perhaps once a year, but now it’s every time I go on (a few times a week).

It’s interesting to note that someone as noted as Doc Searls encountered a Facebook bug, which prompted me to comment with the below.

Few things work on this site now. I’ve frequently been unable to share since I joined in 2007. Every now and then I can’t like things, and regularly, Facebook removes the choices of hearts, sad face, angry face, etc. If I type a link, Facebook sometimes appends some letters from the status update to the end of it, so when it generates a preview, that results in a 404. Every now and then, with increasing frequency, whatever I type into a status update appears in all caps and bold type (and no, I don’t have caps lock on). On almost all groups I see three posts—nothing older. Notifications and messages fail to load over 90 per cent of the time. Often I cannot comment, but I can highlight the words ‘Write a comment’, so I have to resort to making an image featuring text and paste it in the comment box! I cannot see my advertising preferences: they have not loaded for the last few years, even if I leave the window open for an entire day while I am out (I only get a spinning wheel).
   I’m no tech, but as a layman what I see is a website disintegrating, with more and more bugs weighing it down. Above is what I experience now but if I go back over the years (especially when there was a Getsatisfaction forum), there were other bugs. I still remember when Facebook stopped working on the 1st of each month! But 2020 certainly marks the year when I get a whole bunch of bugs simultaneously.
   My theory has always been that Facebook’s resources are all spent hosting bots that there is nothing left for legitimate users!

   I didn’t even add that I can’t see any Facebook video now (they don’t play at all), and there’s no point posting Instagram links as, despite the two companies having the same parent, Facebook won’t show the image:

   As to the new look, I have very little confidence. When asked why I was switching back to the classic template, something which will be impossible soon, I wrote (not that these schmucks will care):

You can’t tag companies when editing text. You have to begin writing on a clean line, often retyping the post to do it. Waste of time, you’re making Facebook less and less relevant.
   When looking at groups people in a group queue have joined, you can’t see as many, which makes it harder for group admins to detect fake accounts (as you guys are pretty useless at doing it).

   When a friend (a person of colour in the US) wondered why she was seeing a lot of attacks against the Republican National Convention and none against the Democrats’, even though she is apolitical, I responded (inter alia):

Facebook has plenty of ex-staff and insiders who point out it will always amp up things to get people upset or outraged, as scientifically—thanks to the work of Professor Fogg at Stanford—people engage more with these. Armed with what they have collected, the algorithms will make a call one way or another to ensure they show you things that will provoke a reaction. As the algorithms have been designed predominantly by white American men (and I know: not all white American men fit into this), I really believe they won’t take in the experiences of people of colour like us, and arguably they won’t understand the international nature of your work. For instance, Facebook used to stop working on the 1st of each month, as our walls would freeze on the 30th or 31st. We would have to wait till it was the 1st in California, which meant in our summer, we would have to wait 21 hours each month for Facebook to work normally. These folks aren’t smart when it comes to “outside California”, let alone outside the US.

   To confirm my theory, I looked on my wall and was being fed multiple posts by a Facebook friend I barely knew—someone whose request I must have accepted over a decade ago, with whom I have had no interaction. He is an American, and was dismissing the protests and the existence of racism in his country. Why would Facebook show me that of the 2,300 people I am connected to? Simple: to provoke a reaction. These were views contrary to what I believe in, and it probably gathered that. It’s no longer about being connected to your friends—and hasn’t been for a long time. It’s the outrage machine, where they want you to fight.
   And this is me, someone who no longer goes on there for personal stuff, still encountering bugs and its ongoing negativity like there was no tomorrow.
   I stand by my saying that Mark Zuckerberg is a compulsive liar on Radio New Zealand National on Tuesday in the ‘I’ve Been Thinking’ slot before The Panel, where yours truly made his début as a panellist. (Prior to that I called in as a guest, once in 2010, and once in 2020.) Facebook is a site that now does more harm than good.

   Finally, I will leave you with this gem (every now and then I come up with one) from Twitter:

These days, some say their opinions are as valid as the next person’s. No, they’re not. Not if they’re badly argued or reasoned. A fair society doesn’t mean all opinions are equal. And an unfair society means that bad opinions have undue weight. In my opinion.

— Jack Yan 甄爵恩 (@jackyan) August 27, 2020