Starnes Dot Com

Facebook Is Broken

Facebook intentionally limits how many posts you can see from your Friends and the Pages you Like.

You don’t see all that your Friends post — and all that the Pages you Like post — in your News Feed.

If you want more people to see your posts — as a Friend or as a Page — you have to pay Facebook. Facebook calls it “Promote.”

When I become Friends with someone or Like a Page, I want to see everything that Friend or Page posts — this should be the default action.

Facebook says no. 

And there is no simple setting where you can select “See All Friends’ Posts” or “See All Pages’ Posts.” If you want this simple functionality, it can be hard work.

I have now gone through every single one of my 700+ Facebook Friends and adjusted the settings at each profile so that I can now see everything each one of my Friends post. This is the only way to see all posts by all Friends.

Facebook makes you work to get the functionality that Facebook should offer as a default or allow with a simple setting.

In the same tedious way that I changed my Friends’ settings, I have also added every single Facebook Page I’ve Liked to an Interest Group I call “All Pages.” I can now see all posts by every Page that I’ve Liked. Again, it took a lot of work to get the functionality that should be the default action or changed with a simple setting.

Breaking the basic function of the Facebook platform to make money is bad.

Making money by adding value is right — trying to make money by taking away functionality and then charging users to add it back is wrong.

I really like Facebook and have written in sincere praise of it more than once, but it is broken.