The Facebook Lag When Typing

Recently I noticed that when I type a comment or write a post on Facebook there is a considerable lag between when I start to type and when it appears on screen. We’re speaking about more than a second of lag.

For an instant I was thinking that it might be because the local drive is getting full and the machine is suffering so I checked storage and it is fine. I then tried to type something in Bluesky and noticed no lag.

I’m typing this blog post in Visual Studio and there is no lag either. I expect that Facebook is loading a huge amount of data into ram. and doing plenty in the background. It might be pre-loading reels and more. With Firefox Developer edition I could watch what is happening but I am not that curious- I’m more interested in the implications.

A few years ago, when I noticed, on an old mac book pro that Chrome was slowing down my machine I switched web browser and the difference was considerable. So considerable that years later I still haven’t returned to Chrome.

I didn’t dump Chrome, out of Anti-Google sentiment, although if they’re destroying forests in Finland and they see fines as part of the cost, rather than a punishment then I might have to re-think, yet again, about my use of Google.

I already self-host my photos and store them in the Swiss cloud via Infomaniak, to avoid giving Google access to too much.

Out of curiousity I queried Gemini and it gives the line you’d expect. “Disable ad blockers for the site”. Of course I won’t do that. Some of us read Mindf*ck, and various articles on the topic of Facebook and its activities.

Chrome were so busy designing the app for modern machines that an old machine was no longer able to run Chrome.

Facebook has the same issue with the web browser version of their site. Every letter sends data but, if like me, you have ad blockers and quarantine facebook within its tab, then each key stroke is a request and each request is blocked, so it takes time for my typing to appear.

The typing lag that I see on Facebook is a safety feature in two ways. The first is that typing, and seeing a lag, discourages me from posting, and secondly by lagging it reminds us that if we type a post, and delete it before sending, the data has already been sent to Facebook, and thus nothing is private. I have only noticed this on Facebook. Other sites, for now, seem better behaved.

I like this lag. It reminds me to dump Facebook once again.