Ask HN: Can someone explain why Meta makes such bad design decisions?

7•Desafinado•1mo ago

I logged into Instagram from a browser yesterday and for the first time they offered me a modal to 'Freshen up my feed' by following a bunch of suggested accounts. Fair enough, but the kicker was that this modal forced me to follow new accounts before it would let me see my feed again. Until I selected accounts and clicked submit, the only button I could click to clear the modal was greyed out.

This sounds like I'm throwing shade, but I genuinely don't understand what would cause the Instagram team to make a design decision like this. It is so obviously anti-human and annoying that I can't comprehend why they continue to do stuff like this.

I get that on some level forcing users to follow more accounts adds to engagement and growth, so on an economic level it makes sense. But in practice what they're actually doing is proving to their user base that they're a soulless company, over and over again.

Can someone explain to me why they keep doing stuff like this? Is it some kind of cultural dynamic where employees are unable to stand up for human decisions? Or are they really just this oblivious?

Comments

chistev•1mo ago

That's crazy. They just keep getting worse with each new "update".

It's for the money.

It's why I refuse to turn on my reshare or use the reshare option on WhatsApp.

I can't scream this loud enough. Leave my apps the way they were!!!

nacozarina•1mo ago

software-by-committee: the bigger the committees in charge the worse the software they produce

Desafinado•1mo ago

Curious, do you know that this is the answer or is it a guess?

reliefcrew•1mo ago

Their design decisions aren't as bad as you think. You just haven't come to terms with how the "free" internet works yet.

Desafinado•1mo ago

I think they are bad decisions despite the economics of it, though. Maybe they're good for Zuck and execs in that they're squeezing every ounce of remaining life from the company before it dies. But they don't seem to have much of a coherent plan in making their products actually enjoyable for real people. It's always the path of least resistance, automated crap, or safe but dumb decisions.

Google and Amazon strike me as companies who build good products. Meta does not, despite it being the 'free' internet.

I would genuinely like to know why I'm wrong and these decisions aren't as bad as they seem.

reliefcrew•1mo ago

> I would genuinely like to know why I'm wrong and these decisions aren't as bad as they seem.

Because it's not a $1.6 trillion dollar hobby or charity. They need to make money, full stop. This can't be emphasized enough.

As such, they view users more as a hybrid of volunteers and products. Then they monetize generally by selling the engaged users to advertisers. At this point I'm pretty sure they have financial models customized to individuals and they probably determined you're not worth providing service to unless you view more adverts... thus forcing you to engage more with the feed system.

They did what they had to do and you went ahead and accepted it; that's a good design. If you stop using them or switch to another service; then it would be a bad design.

What's the alternative? Put together some aesthetically beautiful design that lets users walk all over them while Meta foots the bill? That won't work because they'd go out of business. It's a matter of give and take.

Desafinado•1mo ago

Right, I think everyone gets that, but clearly treating the actual users of their applications as products isn't working and hasn't worked, as evidenced by most people abandoning those applications

But maybe it's too late in the game for them anyway. Even if they tried to build a more engaging product the trust the public has in them has vanished, and few tech savvy users would care.

The alternative I'm suggesting though would be a design that attracts people to and sustains the product. But they likely needed to do this fifteen years ago while also avoiding all of their scandals.

Every minor dehumanizing decision they make chips away at their credibility among all but the dumbest people. Those people may stay because Meta has their contact list, but after a while absolutely nobody is going to be loyal to them. Being human sometimes goes a long way.

reliefcrew•1mo ago

Forget the speculation and aesthetic/subjective judgments for a moment. My point is they have to do something with users who free ride on their system. They decided to give them an ultimatum. And, this sounds like a reasonable design decision to me.

What else do you do with those users... let them free ride ad infinitum? Do you have a better solution? After all, you can only woo those users for so long before it's a sunken cost.

Desafinado•1mo ago

I don't see how, in the scenario I mentioned, that just allowing a user to click away from a modal is a problem, though. Are they not losing value from alienating users who they do stuff like this to? Are they really gaining any value by forcing them to follow accounts they don't want to follow?

It just sounds like they have no better ideas to me. Why not just make the feature human and build a little bit of customer loyalty? That's kind of my point. After a while people get so tired of this crap this might be why these users provide Meta no value.

And I guess, if they're already making ridiculous profits, why not just accept that some of your users are low value monetarily but do provide value by being on the network at all.

reliefcrew•1mo ago

> some of your users are low value monetarily but do provide value by being on the network

That's not how advertising works. If you're not looking at the advertising, you don't provide any value, nothing. In that case you're now a losing proposition and they don't want those users because they're lowering margins and ROE. It's about good decisions that make money... goodwill only goes so far on the balance sheet.

Now, you got my full explanation. If you still don't understand why it's not as bad a design as you first thought... we'll just have to disagree ;-)

Make Trust Irrelevant: A Gamer's Take on Agentic AI Safety

Show HN: Sem – Semantic diffs and patches for Git

Hello world does not compile

Show HN: ZigZag – A Bubble Tea-Inspired TUI Framework for Zig

Metaphor+Metonymy: "To love that well which thou must leave ere long"(Sonnet73)

Show HN: Django N+1 Queries Checker

Emacs-tramp-RPC: High-performance TRAMP back end using JSON-RPC instead of shell

Protocol Validation with Affine MPST in Rust

Female Asian Elephant Calf Born at the Smithsonian National Zoo

Show HN: Zest – A hands-on simulator for Staff+ system design scenarios

Show HN: DeSync – Decentralized Economic Realm with Blockchain-Based Governance

Automatic Programming Returns

Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation [pdf]

The Search Engine Map

Show HN: Souls.directory – SOUL.md templates for AI agent personalities

Real-Time ETL for Enterprise-Grade Data Integration

Economics Puzzle Leads to a New Understanding of a Fundamental Law of Physics

Switzerland's Extraordinary Medieval Library

A new comet was just discovered. Will it be visible in broad daylight?

ESR: Comes the news that Anthropic has vibecoded a C compiler

Frisco residents divided over H-1B visas, 'Indian takeover' at council meeting

If CNN Covered Star Wars

Show HN: I built the first tool to configure VPSs without commands

AI agents from 4 labs predicting the Super Bowl via prediction market

EU bans infinite scroll and autoplay in TikTok case

Benchmarking how well LLMs can play FizzBuzz

Why I Joined OpenAI

Octave GTM MCP Server

Show HN: Portview what's on your ports (diagnostic-first, single binary, Linux)

Voyager CEO says space data center cooling problem still needs to be solved

Make Trust Irrelevant: A Gamer's Take on Agentic AI Safety

Show HN: Sem – Semantic diffs and patches for Git

Hello world does not compile

Show HN: ZigZag – A Bubble Tea-Inspired TUI Framework for Zig

Metaphor+Metonymy: "To love that well which thou must leave ere long"(Sonnet73)

Show HN: Django N+1 Queries Checker

Emacs-tramp-RPC: High-performance TRAMP back end using JSON-RPC instead of shell

Protocol Validation with Affine MPST in Rust

Female Asian Elephant Calf Born at the Smithsonian National Zoo

Show HN: Zest – A hands-on simulator for Staff+ system design scenarios

Show HN: DeSync – Decentralized Economic Realm with Blockchain-Based Governance

Automatic Programming Returns

Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation [pdf]

The Search Engine Map

Show HN: Souls.directory – SOUL.md templates for AI agent personalities

Real-Time ETL for Enterprise-Grade Data Integration

Economics Puzzle Leads to a New Understanding of a Fundamental Law of Physics

Switzerland's Extraordinary Medieval Library

A new comet was just discovered. Will it be visible in broad daylight?

ESR: Comes the news that Anthropic has vibecoded a C compiler

Frisco residents divided over H-1B visas, 'Indian takeover' at council meeting

If CNN Covered Star Wars

Show HN: I built the first tool to configure VPSs without commands

AI agents from 4 labs predicting the Super Bowl via prediction market

EU bans infinite scroll and autoplay in TikTok case

Benchmarking how well LLMs can play FizzBuzz

Why I Joined OpenAI

Octave GTM MCP Server

Show HN: Portview what's on your ports (diagnostic-first, single binary, Linux)

Voyager CEO says space data center cooling problem still needs to be solved

Ask HN: Can someone explain why Meta makes such bad design decisions?

Comments