Same observation here. That's what cemented my realization that facebook isn't for me, they just want my comments in order to generate "engagement", not actually be useful. It's my content and they make it nearly impossible to curate.
After mostly using Reddit for a while I realized that Facebook wasn't designed for having actual conversations or expressing yourself.
So for example, unlike sites like Reddit or HN, you can't downvote on Facebook. Downvoting is crucial so that the community can curate the content. Facebook (or Twitter) doesn't want you doing that. They just want as much content as possible and only care about likes/upvotes to trigger dopamine bursts. "Jane has liked your photo!!!" In anonymous sites people will just downvote you and tell you why you are wrong without mercy.
Another example. In Reddit and HN you have enough space for having actual conversations. In Facebook not only the space for comments is extremely small, but it's very difficult to know how are comments related to each other. After a couple of replies the UI stops making any sense. You don't know who is replying to who, etc. In practice, Facebook comments end up encouraging people leaving reactions to some content the user posted instead of being a place for discussion. Again, to trigger that dopamine burst when someone says something in the photo you just posted.
Of course, the objective of all this behavior shaping is to get more user engagement so that they spend more time in the platform and consume more ads.
If using the app, any mistaken gesture will undo all your progress loading previous comments to find the one referred to by another comment, which is very annoying. The UI is terrible. I usually just give up.
Everything indicates facebook is indeed not meant for conversations, which makes it doubly frustrating that people have decided to replace forums with it.
Axing the chronological feed wasn't about making the platform better, it was about making it more difficult and time consuming to use, and they lost me as a regular user in the process.
A (lay) reading of their TOS makes it less than clear this is the case. Sure, it’s yours, but they have the right to do as they please as far as I can tell. https://m.facebook.com/about/privacy/update?refid=42
Facebook wouldn't have a snowflakes chance in hell of demonstrating that even the most technically include user, or even a regular lawyer, fully understands what their agreeing to.
As far as I'm concerned, contracts are only binding if informed consent is given, and that's strictly not possible with Facebook's end user agreements.
Edit to add: what I mean to say is, we need strong legal protections for the average person in this the-user-isn't-the-customer world we live in.
You are indeed correct. Which is why GDPR, even with all of its faults, is a step in the right direction. GDPR requires what I call “informed(ish) consent(ish).” In the US a company just needs a record of you clicking “I accept” and you’re on the hook. Believe it or not this is a pretty big improvement from the recent past when they could just burry a clause in their T&C’s that said by simply being on the site you agreed to them. I’m pretty sure we have Dell & their shady software license (that you were forced to agree to before you could even read) to thank for that.