That's interesting, because I've never been able to find a second time a video that popped up in my feed. For my experience, videos on Facebook might as well be ephemeral. forever vanishing the moment my feed refreshes itself automatically.
Their entire UX is based around the algorithmic feed, which obfuscates the true quantity of actual content on the user's timeline, thereby allowing a higher density of ads and other sponsored content without the user necessarily being able to tell or prove [1]. But the sliding window of the feed still moves forward in time, so content that you don't interact with enough to be recorded in the activity log just falls off, never to be seen again.
In 2014, Facebook Paper was an effort to reimagine how Facebook surfaces content [2][3], but despite rave reviews it fizzled and was killed in 2016. It was part of a wider effort to pivot into being a publisher of original content and not merely a social aggregator, and although Paper was discontinued prematurely, the effort faced several hindrances, including news publishers' pushback against Facebook's content framing [4] and Facebook's role in the dissemination of fictitious clickbait.
Facebook is so multifaceted that its current way of presenting content is woefully inadequate, and doesn't fit their ambitions.
[1] Reusing an old line: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=niftich+true+quantity+of+actua... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2014/1/30/5360358/facebook-paper-ip... [3] https://www.wired.com/2014/02/inside-look-at-the-creation-of... [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14126073
Years ago I had the app installed. The fact that they wanted not one, but two hugely bloated apps on my phone is the reason they haven't been on my phone in many years.
A year or two ago they made the change to disallow access to messages from m.facebook.com, so I started using mbasic.facebook.com for messages. Recently they blocked the mbasic.facebook.com entirely for iPhones. It's clear that there reason is to force mobile users to install messenger, because messages are still available on m.facebook.com and mbasic if you visit in a desktop browser.
I already have a FB app on my phone, Instagram, which is more useful for messaging in my circle and less annoying. I refuse to be forced to install their app, so the only response to this is to stop using messenger. Already my messages are going unchecked and will stay that way until I get to a desktop.
The vagaries of finding content you saw minutes before, and the almost entirely random way posts and everything is organized, is frustrating too.
I've found it nearly impossible to search for anything on Facebook that isn't a person, and even that is difficult.
Edit: does anyone know of somewhere I can be informed of changes about this by Facebook?
Searching for previous discussions about this on a Hacker News, I see other people say that the mbasic Does or doesn’t work for them at various times.
I follow CGPGrey who does 3~7 min videos, and the main use case is a user looking at it when it pops up, and let it fade into the void after that.
Do that for 3M people in roughly 24h, and it’s done. The rest of the life of the video will have minimal financial returns from that point, and the creator can focus on the next viral topic.
Though maybe it's just me but I don't go to Facebook looking for video content because I can't actively seek anything I'm interested in or find that cool video my friend told me about. If someone says they saw a cool video in Facebook I go look for it on YouTube first.
You can see all the videos you watched as a list in your activity log.
This link works after inserting your username:
https://www.facebook.com/username/allactivity?privacy_source...
It's not working for videos you did not watch long enough.