3 Facebook Features that Need to Go Away Now

From its humble beginnings as a network for college students, Facebook has become the behemoth of the social media world. Feature-rich with posts, comments, likes, shares, photos, videos, groups, pages and events, it boasts approximately 1 billion users each day. In spite of being tagged in photos that we don’t appear in and tolerating some of our friends more inane posts, the majority of us still derive great value from our feeds, especially if we have gone to the trouble to curate them. Yet, there are some Facebook features that cause the most faithful of us to ask, “Why, in the name of bacon does this still exist?” Following are three Facebook features that, if they disappeared tomorrow, would have many of us bowing down before Mark Zuckerberg. 1) The Poke Far less prominent than it used to be, the Poke is a feature (if you can call it that) that has long worn out its welcome. Zuckerberg once stated in a webinar, “When we created the poke, we thought it would be cool to have a feature without any specific purpose. People interpret the poke in many different ways, and we encourage you to come up with your own meanings.” Perhaps it is my inner curmudgeon speaking, but to me it means, “I’m too lazy to send you a message, so I’ll just annoy you instead.” Seriously, if you want to say hello, just send me a message. Even an emoji or a sticker of Snoopy says more than a Poke. 2) Being added to a group without permission Facebook’s privacy control settings have a pretty steep learning curve. It can take a good long while to understand the ins and outs of who can see what, do what, tag whom or post where. Is it for everyone to consume, or should I make my posts available to friends, friends of friends or just me? Why is there not a setting for “only my animals can see this”? With all those controls in place, you still have no say in whether or not a friend can add you to a group. You can go to any group you want and with one click teleport your friends into the group with you. There is no asking for permission. It just happens. It seems like it would be simple for Facebook to add a “don’t add me to any groups without my permission” feature. They could just replace it with a “____ has invited you to be part of a group called ‘Left-handed spaniel lovers who are from New York but now live in Alabama.” At least then we’d have a choice. 3) Messenger asking to turn on notifications Don’t get me wrong. I love Messenger. It helps me stay connected and in touch with friends and family better than text messaging. But why the app INSIST that I turn on notifications every time I launch it? Whatever happened to “no means no!” Our current choices are “go to settings” or “remind me later,” which actually comes off like “comply now or we’ll keep bugging you until you do.” If I wanted notifications turned on, I would turn them. I don’t, so please leave me alone. I enjoy Facebook’s continual innovation as it seeks to reinforce its dominance as a one-stop solution for our social media needs. But if it could perform a little cleanup on aisle three it might discover a happier user base. Do you agree with me on these features? What other changes would you like to see made to Facebook? Originally posted on Inc.com