And in subsequent years they've done everything to hide this feature from the users and make it much harder to access (it used to be on the left navigation bar, now it's under 'Friend lists' (which also has been renamed at least twice) and also it disappeared from the mobile app)

That's a great example of building a feature as one of the cornerstones of your product vs adding a feature to tick a checkbox.

Yes but it is so hidden and “ancient” that I would be surprised if more than 1% of users actively uses it.

I’ve given up trying to find anything on facebook... I just post a picture once in a while and talk to whoever comments on it.

I can't even use Facebook without it freezing anymore. I'm using containers and locking down on tracking (no umatrix or noscript though) and Facebook literally craps itself everytime I have it open, helps keep me off of it. It must be my exact setup cause I do the same setup on every laptop / workstation and it slows to a crawl, though mobile.facebook.com works just fine... oddly enough. And I know if I use a vanilla browser it works just fine...

Any specific reason “no umatrix”?

It's more work than I care to perform I just have a typical adblocker (Adblocker Ultimate).

Search discovery is by far my biggest pain point, and I say it as a fan.

I disagree with the GGP (I think) about Facebook wanting you to wade throw a river of crap so you stumble on ads. Their ads have been spot on to my interests so far.

I think an onioned version of Google plus circles could help Facebok influence the AI without preventing discovery.

But TBH, had G+ really been a contender at this point? This sounds like the creak of an abandoned house by now.

That's only half the feature, though.

The killer feature with circles is being able to post different things to different audiences IMHO, which Facebook can't do without different accounts.

Of course you can, I've posted things visible for only specific lists before.

That's not quite what I want -- I don't mind tech things being visible to family, but I suspect they're following me for the baby photos. So I don't want circles, or friend lists, that block people from seeing things, so much as a functional tagging system that lets the viewer decide which of my circles/lists they want to be in.

And I want it simple and easy to understand and use, even for non-techies, such that it "just works". And a pony.

This would be nice actually. Did Google Plus have this?

No, but I agree that it would be a nice feature. Not so much as a tagging system, but this strikes me as something good they could finally do with all their ML/AI stuff.

I have friends who will post photos, and I'll love for FB to detect that they often post single photos, and allow me to subscribe to just those. Even if it means relying on FB's algorithms deciding what posts make the cut.

The same goes for friends who will occasionally post blog-style stuff. While I'd prefer it if they actually blogged, being able to go to their profile and getting a FB-suggested 'type' of post to subscribe to would be peachy.

Other algorithmic suggestions I can imagine: - the friend who consistently posts great links to longer-form journalistic articles - the friend who posts mostly 'funny comics/pics', but actually funny ones - the friend who seems to know half the town and diligently clicks 'interested/going' for events that I am also interested in. - and the above possibly with an option to drill down and get more specific suggestions (I'm sure FB could segment the events at least by a crude party/political dimension. - the family member who posts all sorts of weird crap, but also the interesting family-related updates. It can't be that difficult to detect which of their posts are the family updates (and perhaps there could be a 'suggest category/tag/whatever' feature so that my dad can diligently mark these updates (which I know he would!).

With the above, or even a crude version of it, I could see myself browsing FB quite a bit, and I wouldn't mind the occasional sponsored post (which could be targeted specifically to the feed/mood I'm in).

I'm sure there's a lot I'm missing about all this, but I feel moderately confident that FB is not doing this, not because of particularly good reasons, but because they're stuck in a particular 'mode' and a bit too conservative about it (shortsighted advertising). I can't tell if this is just because they're a big corporation at this point, or because of 'SV incentives', or going public, or whatever else.

Yep, the privacy and sending specific things to specific circles and all was spot-on in G+. Or even specific people, groups, even non-G+ emails.

You can do that and indeed could do that before Google+ was even announced. It wasn't even tricky, you could create lists, set any one as the default, then when you wen to post just click and select the lists you wanted to appear to, or alternatively the ones you didn't want it to appear to.

I never got the whole circles thing as a unique selling point... like that functionality existed in Facebook beforehand and the reason people didn't use it much is simply because for a personal social media it's not that useful. I've used it maybe a handful of times in 10 years.

I mean I guess maybe because circles are a nicer design concept?

Again, Friends Lists. You can most certainly post to only certain groups of people.

Though let’s be honest here - anything you post on Facebook (or any other social media) you should assume is public, regardless of privacy controls.