Fuck AI

There’s a reason their company has only stolen or bought ideas, I don’t think they’ve innovated at all.

You could say that again. Young people might not be aware, but in the mid-late 00s Facebook underwent frequent changes. Anyone else remember the fun, personalized features you used to be able to put on your profile? I remember having a "flair" app/widget/whatchacallit that looked like a bulletin board pinned with buttons. You could pick existing "flair" or make your own, and build a quirky, personalized board that reflected your interests. There were loads of add-ons like that, as well as games (such as the infamous Farmville), all of which made each Facebook profile unique.

But over time, Facebook got rid of such features, while adding on features that were clearly stolen from other social media sites. From introducing chat, to adding likes/"reactions", to prioritizing group pages on the feed over your actual friends, Facebook was shameless in introducing changes that were stolen from other sites, none of which users ever asked for. I remember ranting after most updates, asking why Facebook was culling its own individual identity in favor of cloning other sites. Today the site is unrecognizable from the early days. The features that made it fun for me back then are all gone, replaced with features that make engagement more shallow and forgettable.

I used to write blog posts in Notes (a feature that is either gone or hidden from pages, last I checked. Which was a few years ago.) That change hurt for me in particular, because when a friend of mine passed away in 2011, I wrote a eulogy and poem on a Note and shared it with his family. Now, I can't find it anymore. Like it poofed away into the ether without a warning. What the fuck, Facebook?

Those who've only used Facebook over the past decade have no idea what they missed out on. There are reasons Facebook got popular in the early days, reasons which no longer exist on the platform today. It's like Zuck decided to take a living, successful organism, cut out its healthy limbs and organs, and morph it into a Frankenstein's monster built of other sites' parts. All while it was still conscious.