[smt88]

Facebook was amazing before it allowed you to see strangers' comments and before news was in your feed.

My feed ("timeline" at the time) was composed entirely of friends' personal life updates, conversations, jokes, etc. There was political stuff, but nothing more extreme than you'd hear at a party.

The news in the feed famously killed all of that. The worst part is that it would show you your friends at their most extreme, for example responding to rage-bait articles

It's not hard to build a great social network, but it's extremely hard to monetize one.