Facebook mystery

[BluebirdBoogie]

It's just occurred to me that I haven't seen BBC News in my feed for ages. So I checked to see that I hadn't Unfollowed them. And they're a Favourite!

This was about a week ago and since then I've Unfollowed and Followed, added BBC World Service and BBC ... and still nothing.

I even went to the BBC News feed, commented and liked a post, turned on notifications for it. DH liked my comment, it came up as a notification but I'm still not getting anything at all on my feed, not even that post.

Please can anyone offer any advice? It's not that I'm desperate to see BBC News but it just seems a bit odd.

I can't help you, but I have exactly the same issue with one of my friends, who is also a favourite! I've unfollowed him and then re-friended him, but it makes no difference. I only know he's posted something because DH tells me he has!

So if someone has the answer to this, I'd be very interested too.

Facebook have deliberately downgraded news sites in their algorithm because the news industry is pressuring them to give them a cut of the mega profits they make from the number of people who use their sites to search for news. It’s an incredibly dangerous situation because it means FB has a worrying amount of power over which news is prioritised and disseminated. I would recommend directly visiting a range of news websites each day instead of trusting FB to dish it up to you.

https://www.ft.com/content/8ebb8854-426b-46f8-9c5c-b8f988c298f7

@JaniceBattersby that's very interesting and sort of what I was thinking.

I also follow The Guardian, but don't get any news from them, only feature pieces.

What is more worrying is that news sites such as The Guardian and Independent now also have a maximum amount you can read before blocking, whereas other sites do not. It feels as though the papers doing the best journalism are (rightly) fighting the battle for funding while the worst and most divisive are becoming the go-to for free news in the CoL crisis.

I am also having this with a friend, I've tried following her even to get new stories (she isn't well atm and I worry I am missing things) but she doesn't even pop up as a friend when I physically type in her name, it even suggests people I am NOT friends with over her! It's really weird as I know she hasn't blocked me or filtered me in any way as I have told her I simply don't see her posts and I joked that she maybe had blocked me, which she confirmed she hasn't.
Something very weird going on.

This happened to me with a friend and I had to start commenting more on her posts, before they came up!

My Facebook feed has suddenly become mostly ads and random posts from people I don't follow. I have to scroll down for ages to see a post from an actual person, and when I do it's usually a couple of days old.

No idea what's going on over there, other than a huge desire to shove ads in our faces. But I want to see REAL posts from REAL people.

Same here, tis a miracle if it's actually something I'm interested in let alone from someone I actually know!

But I can't comment on his posts because I don't see them!

I agree. I get constant post after post in my feed from some of them, and none whatsoever from others, even though I know they are active and posting. It is bizarre and really annoying.

If you want to see what your friends or favourites are posting, go to the menu (in the Facebook app it is the three lines in the top right hand corner), then click on 'feeds', which will give you options of all/favourites/friends/groups/pages.

If you click on friends, you can scroll down through everything your friends have posted, in chronological order, not messed around by any algorithms. Unfortunately there is no option to make this your home feed...

But that doesn't work for me either! (And I know because I generally read FB via my feed/friends). If I search for my friend, his page comes up, but the last post on his timeline that I can see is over a year old. It's like looking at someone's page who isn't one of your friends - yet I know he is my friend!

Are the things you are missing possibly being posted in the form of 'stories' rather than actual Facebook posts?

I don't think stories come up when you search for someone's page, and they don't come up if you are reading things via feeds rather than the home page.

Maybe ask your DH, since you say he still sees things this friend posts. Or could the friend possibly have set his default posting settings to show posts to a specified list of friends, rather than everyone? It would be quite easy to do that once and forget you had set it as default.

But whether it is one of those things or just some odd Facebook algorithm thing, it is all ridiculously complicated - there should be an option to revert to 'prehistoric' mode on FB, without all the 'new and improved' stuff.

Yes this is what I have - I've just tried to do exexpats advice which sounded great, but I'm not seeing anything past 2017!!!

I had to put my friend's name in the search and get to her page like that. Then make a few comments over a couple of days.

I live in Canada, and all news sites were blocked from Facebook in 2023. All news is blocked from all meta sites. Maybe they are doing the same in the UK ?

No they're definitely posts and not stories @exexpat

I think I need to check his FB settings to see if there's something 'wrong' at his end!

(Sorry for derailing your thread @BluebirdBoogie!)