Facebook algorithm-bashing continued this week as a food delivery service quit the platform by deleting its page and publishing a scathing, but hilarious “break up” letter to Facebook.
Eat24, a popular food delivery app published the open letter on its blog on Sunday, announcing that it was going to delete its Facebook page the following day because it was frustrated with how the platform’s algorithm kept downgrading its posts and content.
You can check out the full letter here, but here are the best parts:
On Facebook’s push for more paid promotion instead of earned:
When we first met, you made us feel special. We’d tell you a super funny joke about Sriracha and you’d tell all our friends and then everyone would laugh together. But now? Now you want us to give you money if we want to talk to our friends. Now when we show you a photo of a taco wrapped with bacon, you’re all like “PROMOTE THIS POST! GET MORE FRIENDS!” instead of just liking us for who we are. That’s hella messed up.
On the lack of exposure regular posts get:
All we do is give, and all you do is take. We give you text posts, delicious food photos, coupons, restaurant recommendations… and what do you do in return? You take them and you hide them from all our friends.
And on the ineffectiveness of Facebook ads:
Yeah, you’re right. We made mistakes too. We actually paid for some of those annoying promoted posts. You were all like, “Dude, you gotta try out promoted posts, It’ll help you make more friends and then more people can enjoy your LOLZ.” So we tried it because we loved you. Also, YOLO.
And it’s true, we got a ton of new likes on our page. Look at all these new friends, we thought. There’s a guy in Houston, and this guy in… Bangladesh? And this girl in… Dubai? WTF Facebook!? When we said “we want to take over the world with taquitos” it was mostly a metaphor (also it was 4:20 at the time). Well, we really do want to feed the whole world one day, but right now we’re only in the U.S., so even though we love our new international friends, we’d prefer not to piss them off by showing them a photo of a delicious calzone that they can’t even order. Why did you think we wanted friends we can’t actually feed? That makes about as much sense as getting a pepperoni pizza and only one slice has pepperoni on it.
Eat24’s complaints aren’t new, and it illustrates the growing frustration of many marketers with the Facebook platform. However, Facebook responded by saying that yes, it was going to continue downgrading posts from brands because it wanted to serve its users first, giving them updates on the people they are closest to. Facebook responded to Eat24 with a post from Brandon McCormick, director of global communications.
Hey Eat24, this is Brandon over at Facebook. I was bummed to read your letter. The world is so much more complicated than when we first met – it has changed. And we used to love your jokes about tacquitos and 420 but now they don’t seem so funny. There is some serious stuff happening in the world and one of my best friends just had a baby and another one just took the best photo of his homemade cupcakes and what we have come to realize is people care about those things more than sushi porn (but if we are in the mood for it, we know where to find it Eat24!). So we are sorry that we have to part this way because we think we could still be friends – really we do. But we totally respect you if you need some space.
