Many people on Facebook started out using it as a tool to connect with family and friends around the world. Thousands of small businesses saw it as a way to lead people to see their products. It is also a way to help increase revenue during a struggling economy and the new healthcare mandates. Then there were those that saw Facebook as a way to reach out to others with news directly from citizens. It was also seen as a way to use freedom of speech and share with the masses, unfiltered raw news.

All of that changed a few years ago. And as the days have gone by the problems with Facebook have increased and in some cases crippled users.

Here are the five most important things that Facebook has done to demolish all of the benefits while Zuckerberg utilizes everything posted, making millions from it.

1. Knocking down a Facebook Community page. Example: CNN could possibly have millions of likes on their page. Facebook hides these posts from those that have liked the page so that only 1/8th of that total can see a notification in their news feeds. It doesn’t even have to be CNN. It could be anyone.
2. Forcing Community pages that worked tirelessly to get hundreds of thousands of likes to pay to boost a post in order for it to be seen. Then it is preset how many people might see that boosted post.
3. When you Administrate a Community page, sometimes you will have multiple admins to help you out. If one of the admin posts something that a viewer (who’s complaint has not been vetted by anyone) complains that it is supposedly in violation of the Facebook Community standards, everyone on the page gets Facebook jail. The longer you stay an admin on the page, the more violations you accumulate. That increases the amount of time you will then spend in jail. You would think that with all the Facebook geniuses that run this outfit they could target only the person who posted it. For that matter, check and vet the post that was made and quit being so sissified over every tiny little thing that might hurt their wittle fewings.
4. The new layout for pages stinks. It is a problem. The layout decreases how many posts you can see instead of using an infinite scroll. It has relocated meme’s and or videos to be at the top of every page instead of your most recent post. Even if you rearrange it, it shows only 3 posts then it shows memes and videos again. A viewer must then click “see more” to access more posts and that is limited after just a few views
5. Facebook continues to make drastic changes behind the scenes. They never stop altering things. It does not improve the use of Facebook, but it complicates how things are seen. For a page that you like, you have to ACTIVELY comment, like, share etc… in order for that page to continue to show up in your notifications. After an unknown time limit, if you don’t do this, Facebook won’t let you see the page at all. Searching for it is now a new chore because searching has changed…. again.

Facebook is difficult for just an average user. They have complicated things so that there is no success anymore unless you have thousands of dollars to pay to play. Most people can even barely make ends meet, let alone advertise a post that should have been seen. Not to mention, there is now a whole nation of headline grabbers who continue to plummet the pageviews. They do not read the article they only comment off a headline. They do not click the page, read, or share.

Between Facebook and the social media followers of today, most of these folks will eventually just pack up and move on. Especially the ones that worked so hard to get you to like their page.

Thanks, Mark Zuckerberg, we appreciate the creation of Facebook But, we never signed on for pay to play. You have killed the spirit and the bottom line for a ton of Facebook users.

I am not only a user of the Facebook social media platform, I am a social media manager.