Technical Blather: Dear Facebook App

You’ve annoyed me for the last time.

Why I deleted the Facebook App from my phone

At some point in the past month or so, the Stoopid Monkeys threw a wrench into the works. (Which translates to: Someone at Facebook updated something and fucked shit up.) I receive certain, specific notifications regarding the social media giant. My daughter shares and posts stuff that I like to see, so I get a ding when she posts. There’s a handful of people I get notifications from as well. Then there are the work-related pages. And the handful of groups that I enjoy participating in. Anything else… well, I don’t require my phone to notify me of every single time someone comments on something I commented on – now if someone, either the original poster, or another person comments on my comment, then sure, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll check on it when I get time.

Whatever it is that they changed, really fucked up my phone app somehow. All of a sudden, because I commented on something someone posted (and I know it started happening after that, because prior to that comment, I never ever received notifications unless tagged by them) I started receiving notifications every single time they posted. And when there are five notifications in the span of fifteen minutes, it gets to be a wee bit obnoxious.

Annoy me once.. Annoy me twice

Then it happened with another friend… and another. I was scrolling through settings both on the app and on the website, to no avail. I checked their profiles and saw that I did not have “Get notifications” checked. So, if I were following them… I unfollowed. I felt bad about it, but all the dings and buzzes were getting to me. I’m a serial notification checker. My daughter messages me throughout the day and evening when we aren’t together, and I always do my best to check it within a few moments in case she needs information or an answer (or something has happened).

The only other option I could think of would be to defriend these people. That was the last thing I wanted to do, and I refused to go that route. They are family. I want to know what’s happening in their lives, but I couldn’t possibly keep up with the amount of notifications coming in, especially at work. I tend to get burned out a little with social media and need a break (or a fun chat on Twitter) to keep me from yanking cords out of sockets.

I refuse to be bullied by an app to be more social.

Therefore, I broke up with Facebook Mobile. It didn’t matter that any of these people weren’t marked for getting notifications, it didn’t matter that I unfollowed them, it didn’t matter that I changed all of my notification settings on both the website and the app itself, I continued receiving notifications. I received notifications for people I didn’t comment on or have ‘get notifications’ or ‘follow’ marked on their profiles.

Regardless, it’s no longer on my phone. I still have the messenger app and the pages app, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be quite a while before I even think about installing the Facebook Mobile app.