If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It: Bring Back Polls on Facebook Group Chats
Nicolette Petra
Once upon a time, the poll function in Facebook group chats provided a sense of ease and certainty when it came to decision making. Where posts on our feeds are riddled with anarchic comments and disagreements, and video calls are often glitchy and difficult for people to have natural group conversations with, the poll was a means of democracy and clarity.
However, at the beginning of this year, Facebook disabled the poll function in Messenger. While polls can still be conducted in Facebook groups, when you hover over the poll icon in Messenger you’re met with the following pop-up: “Polls are temporarily unavailable while we work to make improvements to Messenger. Check back soon for the updated version of polls.”
Several months later and no updates have been made. It seems the universe’s current chaotic energy knows no bounds. Group chats with friends have become a slew of times we’re available or unavailable to chat. Deciding who will undertake certain tasks in work and society group chats have similarly taken on an added level of difficulty. Scrolling back and back and back to find who can make the group call or meeting has become a tedious pastime at best but also a very real one.
Fixing the poll function in Messenger is by no means the biggest issue or priority Facebook is facing at the minute, nor should it be. The social networking behemoth is struggling to keep up with the mounting fake news on COVID-19; it’s attempting to implement an alert system which will notify users when they have interacted with false information relating to the virus; and it has faced a significant pull-back in ad revenue as the small to medium businesses which make up a significant portion of its ad revenue continue to suffer the economic impacts of the pandemic.
On top of these setbacks, Facebook is attempting to do battle with Zoom for video call users. In the last three weeks, Zoom usership has jumped 50% to 300 million daily users. In response to its growing competitor, Facebook announced on Monday that it would be rolling out Messenger Rooms, “free video calling for up to 50 people through its Facebook and Facebook Messenger applications.”
A new way to host meetings and stay connected is no doubt a welcome addition to our technologically-based socially isolated lives. However, polls in group chats are vital to clear communication. They champion efficiency and sidestep unnecessarily convoluted conversations. They’re the equivalent of the “this meeting could have been an email” meme.
If Facebook were to reinstall this original function rather than focus solely on its fight for the attention economy in the video-call-sphere, it would grant its users a small mercy that goes a long way in enhancing how we communicate at a time when we are in large part restricted to doing so online.