I deleted my Facebook account recently ONLY because of how spammy the notification system is!
I didn't want many sources for my news feed so I unsubscribed to all of my hundreds of friends save a few. This redeemed my faith in the news feed, although I would have preferred to have just turned the whole feature off honestly.
The problem came when I stopped using Facebook often so I wouldn't have any notifications, at which point Facebook would arbitrarily fill my notifications with updates about random posts of random friends of mine (i.e. "John posted a picture! Mark updated his status!") to whom I was not in any way subscribed to or particularly interested in. Clearly, Facebook wanted to lure me back into their world by spamming my notifications, and there was no way to turn this behavior off.
This approach to UX is condescending and pathetic. No more Facebook for me.
I refuse to install Messenger, so I'm actually annoyed by FB's lack of notifications (by email) when I receive a FB message. It used to be the case that FB would email you the message text. They switched that to "you have a message, click here to see it," but now it seems to be completely random whether I'm ever notified. The immediate effect on my behavior is that I find myself logging in to FB frequently just in case I have a message, and then falling into the endless scroll of crap in my feed.
Used to happen to me all the time. Wondering if I got any Facebook messages, log on, spend half an hour wandering through the news feed. Big time suck.
I'd guess this is why they're sending message notifications only sporadically? I've been thinking of setting up a little service for myself to monitor the FB web interface messages and then forward their content by email so I never have to look at the damn thing.
It's shocking how bad the Facebook UX and App are. Bloated download size. Weird A/B testing of the UI. The "time"line showing you want it thinks you want to see rather than chronological order. As you said, pointless, spamy notifications that person A commented on person B's photo from 6 months ago. The list goes on...
Agreed. The tactics they've sunk to in order to try grab attention are borderline signs over general descent toward turning into a pile of mess that something will soon replace.
I didn't want many sources for my news feed so I unsubscribed to all of my hundreds of friends save a few. This redeemed my faith in the news feed, although I would have preferred to have just turned the whole feature off honestly.
The problem came when I stopped using Facebook often so I wouldn't have any notifications, at which point Facebook would arbitrarily fill my notifications with updates about random posts of random friends of mine (i.e. "John posted a picture! Mark updated his status!") to whom I was not in any way subscribed to or particularly interested in. Clearly, Facebook wanted to lure me back into their world by spamming my notifications, and there was no way to turn this behavior off.
This approach to UX is condescending and pathetic. No more Facebook for me.