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Comment by walterbell | Hacker News Reader

> It was around Day 9 that the most telling thing happened: Facebook noticed my absence ... I was being shown a new kind of notification: “Check out Jim’s comment on his photo” or “Jane commented on her status” as though someone else using Facebook is something I ought to be notified about. These contrived notifications were the “Emperor wears no clothes” moment for me. It became obvious then that Facebook knows its users have better things to do, and quietly hopes they don’t notice how little they get out of it.

Good observation, just saw this recently.

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Same here. And I had the exact same reaction. a.) Good, I have been gone long enough for them to take notice. b.) How sad is the state of current engagement. You have to resort to sending me emails about my 2 friends "Joe commented on Sara's wall" click here to see what he said. How sad. You could provide utility, instead, you choose to pimp me out for a click.

From a marketers standpoint its an easy sell. We increased users CTR and time on site, wahoo! From a business standpoint, there is a slow churn and dissatisfaction which erodes the value created until the user has a negative viewpoint and distrust of the service.

I hate those notifications.

I use Facebook pretty much exclusively as a way to discover and congratulate people on major life events (birthdays, weddings, babies, etc.). I use it maybe once a week, but I actually really do appreciate being notified about e.g. someone's birthday - it's a gentle reminder to catch up with that person.

The first time I got one of those generic "Jane commented on her status" notifications, I assumed something major had happened: Someone had passed away, had a major life change, etc. Of course, it wasn't that - it was something much more trivial.

The birthday notifications/etc. are useful enough that I keep the app on my phone, but the incredibly vague "so-and-so updated their status" notifications are pushing me towards finding alternatives.

Right? It ended up being a bigger decision because I like getting notifications when someone does something related to me but I can't stand getting those generic notifications about other people's activities with other people. So I blocked the notifications by revoking the app's notification permissions. Sucks but they did it to themselves.

I am really annoyed by services that do not let me control which events give me notifications, and how those notifications reach me (in app, push, email).

> but I actually really do appreciate being notified about e.g. someone's birthday - it's a gentle reminder to catch up with that person.

Just put their birthday in a calendar app. You'll be reminded every year, and you won't have to rely on Facebook. Best part is, their birthday doesn't change, so you only have to do it once!

Or even better, to their contact details in your phonebook, and get an app that reminds you of them. I now get notifications for the birthdays I care about, and can disregard Facebook reminding me about some vague acquaintancies.

I moved all of my friend's Facebook data into MonicaApp [1] [2] (open source friends crm, you can self-host if you want, I pay to support the dev). I get reminders for any events per-relationship, and there's a reminders API [3].

[1] https://www.monicahq.com/

[2] https://github.com/monicahq/monica/

[3] https://www.monicahq.com/api/reminders

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