[shrvtv]

The company, which hasn't been able to figure out the UI hell of the core product for more than a decade now must never be trusted with processing payments.

Especially when you know where the data will end up, what will happen to it next and how the company makes money (98.5% from targeted ads)

[poopypoopington]

they've been processing payments for over a decade

[praseodym]

By relying on Adyen to accept payments (https://www.adyen.com/press-and-media/2022/adyen-publishes-h... and search for Facebook)

[aldebran]

I think they have figured out their UI. It’s just not for the thing you care about. It’s “figured out” to maximize revenue.

[code_duck]

Whenever they achieve a decent UI, they change it six months later.

[anderspitman]

I'm confident the UI for their customers works great. Problem is you're not the customer.

[openknot]

It’s really not. I’ve managed Facebook and Instagram ads for a non-profit educational group, sending Meta thousands of dollars for ad campaigns, and the UI for purchasing ads is poor, by the metric of whether the software “just works.”

There are separate webpages for creating a Facebook ad campaign (Ads Manager is one, plus there is a separate option with less features; I believe this is the Boosted posts function). The Ads Manager also displays a popup that the software might not work fi you have an ad-blocker enabled. For my devices, it’s slow and buggy in any browser except for Chrome.

The UI for managing Pages as a business is also poor. In the past (with previous Facebook Q&A forum posts documenting this), Facebook would automatically convert text posts by a Facebook page into a job listing, without asking for confirmation (!), making it unintuitive to undo. Separately, it also has limited categories for Facebook events (there is no category for educational events; the closest is the “Home” category).

Facebook has also removed certain popular features in the past, such as initially hiding, and then removing the feature to Share a post with the feature to “Keep the original post” (so only the link is shared, but not the post text that accompanied it by the original poster). The feature was lost due to a Facebook redesign, which is baffling because this reduced the likelihood of Facebook users to share content.

Maybe it’s different for larger customers (though I suspect they use the same tools), but the poor UI is frankly ridiculous for paying advertisers. Perhaps it does make sense, though; their competitor is Google Search and Display ads, which also have user interface problems (e.g. refusing to let you publish an ad set you’re willing to pay for, with very minimal messaging as to where exactly the error is, prompting multiple forum posts by other users). It’s effectively a duopoly, as other social media advertising channels are far less effective (maybe not LinkedIn, though LinkedIn is pricier), and newspaper ads are far more pricey (with higher minimum ad spend) with lower reach.

[prox]

Not only that, but the amount of platforms they launched. First it was from your page, then they made a business page, then it became some ad manager, then it became facebook for business on a completely different URL. Not too mention the retooling and breaking what worked. Everytime I coached my client to work with FB ads, the system had changed again.

And that’s with the typical docs not reflecting the current state.

[qualudeheart]

Facebook ux has been on a downward spiral all decade.

[sidcool]

Yep. OP and all of us are not the customers, but the product.

[paulcole]

> Problem is you're not the customer.

What do you mean by this?

[hinoki]

Meta Ads Manager has a much higher app review score than the Facebook app ;)

[squiggy22]

No surprise there. Consumer apps versus business apps reviews are hilarious.

'My boyfriend dumped me on this app last week. One star.'

'This app listens to my conversations and serves me ads. One star'.

At best it's the product not the applcation being reviewed. At worst, it's the general public howling at the moon.