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Facebook Lies to Your Lock Screen to Make You Tap

Facebook sent me a push notification saying someone replied to my comment. Nobody did. The real event, sitting in the app, was a stranger commenting on a group photo. The push had rewritten it into something personal, on iOS and Android both. The error only ever breaks one way, toward the tap.
Facebook Lies to Your Lock Screen to Make You Tap

facebook is back to some hella obnoxious notification shenanigans.

over the last few days i noticed new notifications saying something to the effect of "$person added a reply to your comment in $group".

i found this odd because the comment i left was not something warranting a reply. but okay, maybe someone replied accidentally, so i let it slide. i checked the reply, and it was not an actual reply, but a new comment on the same post. this kept happening, to the point where i was going wtf?

before i continue, this is happening both on ios and android. the most recent flavors of ios and oneui 8.5.

at this point i checked notifications inside the facebook app itself. lo and behold, there was no such notification with that specific wording. the actual wording in-app was "$person also commented on a photo in $group". this made more sense, and it mirrored the activity i was seeing.

the push notification manufactures relevance that does not exist in the underlying event.

this is not a notification bug. it is wording engineered to make ordinary group activity feel personally directed at you so you tap it. facebook did not notify me about what happened. it rewrote what happened into something more likely to make me tap.

that is engagement bait built directly into the notification layer, and it is completely fucked up.

but also completely on brand for facebook. if the actual event is not compelling enough to drag you back into the app, apparently the solution is to make it sound like something happened to you personally and hope curiosity does the rest.

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