[hoherd]

One of the biggest steps down in Facebook history was their removal of RSS syndication. There was a time in the past when you could subscribe your Facebook account to external RSS feeds. The entries in those feeds would create new content on your "Facebook wall". This essentially let you use any third party that supported RSS to publish content into your Facebook feed.

Facebook removed that feature. The effect of this was that people had to create content within facebook instead of outside it. This reoriented the flow of content creation so that it must originate inside of Facebook, removing the ability to use FB as a passive consumer of content created in a workflow where the creators chose the entire flow.

IMHO this is one of the biggest steps down ever in FB history. It was one of the biggest attacks on the open web, and I'm sad to say that it mostly worked, and the internet at large is worse as a result.

[wombatpm]

The other step down was when you had to pay in order to guarantee that your post was seen by all of your followers.

[clickety_clack]

It’s hard to believe now, but Facebook was a good product for a while there.

[pmdr]

That's why I wonder if, deep down, Zuck realizes the walled slop garden he's ultimately created instead of what it looked like he'd set out to create 18-20 years ago.

[sehugg]

2011. This in my memory is the year of the industry-wide vibe shift from open APIs to walled gardens/cesspools.

[alex1138]

Speaking of industry wide shift, how many companies has FB fucked up by proxy?

I refer to the video metrics scandal. How many video autoplay and other things has everyone felt obliged to copy because Zuckerberg (who seems to care about nobody) made FB into a fradulent company?

[0xpgm]

I guess it happens when engineers stop driving decisions and the finance people take over. Won't be too good for the company's valuation if people can access the content elsewhere.

I guess that's why Discord is also locked down as much. They have community content that is inaccessible anywhere else but Discord.

[fuzztester]

I don't like this engineers vs. finance people / MBA divide that I see parroted a lot on HN. And obviously, it's parroted by engineers.

Like, all engineers are saints and the other side are all sinners. What crap. Get real, guys. There are all kinds of multicolored and multidimensional people.

Having been on all 3 or 4 or 5 of these sides :) (dev, sysadm, manager, consultant, ...), I have seen that.

Grow up, folks, and enjoy life in all its richness.

.

[alex1138]

Yeah but Zuck has always been a nasty piece of work. He wasn't "just young" and "grew up" when he wrote those IMs. See: (to list just one) the constant copying of Snapchat

[nicbou]

To be fair, it benefits a platform’s users to reduce automated posts in favour of real contributions.