What Facebook Actually Is in 2024
Facebook remains Meta’s flagship social app, now stretched to cover Marketplace shopping, Groups, Reels, Meta AI chat, and generative AI stickers on top of the original friends-and-feed format. The store description leans hard into ‘curiosity’ and AI features, but underneath it’s still the same core product: a feed, a messenger, a marketplace, and a friends list. It’s aimed at basically everyone with a smartphone, from people staying in touch with family to those buying used furniture through Marketplace or joining hobby groups.
With billions of installs, it’s less an app you choose and more one you end up with because everyone else is already there. That network effect is still its biggest selling point, and also the reason many users tolerate its problems rather than leave.
Where the App Still Delivers
Marketplace and Groups get genuine praise from users for connecting people with practical, real-world value — finding deals, learning from people who’ve ‘been there, done that,’ and discovering niche communities. The dedicated friends-only feed tab is a feature reviewers specifically appreciate, since it cuts through the noise and shows what people actually came for. Reels and video calling also give it more utility than a simple photo-sharing app.
For users who invest time customizing their Feed and joining the right groups, the app can still feel useful rather than bloated. It’s a case where the platform rewards effort put into curating it, even if the default experience doesn’t.
The Ad Overload Problem
The most common and consistent complaint across reviews is the sheer volume of ads. Multiple users report that out of 20 posts scrolled, only a handful are actually from friends — the rest is ads or suggested content. One reviewer bluntly said they see ‘one post from a friend, then an ad, then a suggestion, then another ad,’ describing over a decade of gradual decline. This isn’t a one-off gripe; it’s the single most repeated frustration and it directly undermines the app’s core promise of keeping people connected to friends and family.
Video Playback and Technical Bugs
Video handling is called out repeatedly as broken: multiple videos playing audio simultaneously, ads that are jarringly louder than content, ads that get stuck after being watched, and limited mute controls that don’t work when music is playing from another app. Beyond video, users report the app freezing and crashing regularly, with no apparent fixes across updates. These aren’t isolated device issues either — reviewers note friends on the same platform experiencing identical freezing problems, suggesting it’s an app-wide stability issue rather than bad luck.
Account Security and Data Concerns
A particularly alarming complaint involves account hacking: one user had their email changed by an attacker, got no response after reporting it, and later found their friends list wiped after ‘recovery.’ That kind of support failure is serious for an app holding years of personal history and connections. Separately, users flag how much data Facebook collects from device activity outside the app itself for ad targeting, criticizing the privacy settings as confusing and unfriendly to anyone who isn’t tech-savvy. For a platform this size, both the security response and the opacity around data controls are legitimate red flags.
Final Verdict: Who Should Actually Install This
Facebook still makes sense for people who rely on Marketplace, active local Groups, or need to stay reachable by an older or extended family network that hasn’t migrated elsewhere. It’s less appealing if your main goal is a clean, ad-light way to see what friends are posting — that experience has clearly eroded according to long-time users. Anyone particularly sensitive to data tracking or who has been burned by account recovery issues should go in with realistic expectations and lock down security settings immediately. This is a utility app people keep because of who else is on it, not because the day-to-day experience is polished.
