As some of you know, I don’t usually check Facebook very often. I recently logged in to FB after a while and while I was browsing, I got a little pop up on the bottom left corner of the screen telling me that someone had shared a photo in a group that I follow 6 mins ago. So I clicked on the pop-up and it took me to the group. There I immediately noticed that the post that Facebook had told me about had actually been made 5 hours ago. I had noticed this in the past in my notifications but never had a pop-up about it before.
This basically shows how much Facebook’s algorithms and UX trick you into engaging more on the site and stay there, by showing a message about a new post 6 mins ago they made me click over to check it out. However, this was posted over 5 hours ago and I might have already seen it. This is not a one time event, looking at my notifications, I see this happening very frequently…
Screen shot of the notification and the actual post. Note the time in each.
Are others seeing this as well? At least with Twitter, I don’t see a message that someone has just tweeted something and then find out that that was sent hours ago. This along with all the other nonsense that Facebook is doing is why I don’t use it very often. I am on it mostly because others are there and they share pics etc from our trips & travels on it. I am planning to do a full download of my entire Facebook account activity so that I have a record of it. I don’t think I will delete my account as of yet, but this is bordering on pushing me into deactivating the account.
– Suramya