In 2016, I made a Facebook page for a startup that we never launched.
To this day, I receive occasional emails and notifications: "invite people to like your page". The page has no content. No followers. I haven't even viewed it in ten years.
Now, it's pretty common for companies to try to re-activate users. Every few months, I get emails from Yelp or Twilio asking me to come back. Understandable.
But it's uncanny for Facebook to send me highly specific notifications for content that is just straight-up dead. There's a primitive rationale -- every notification is a chance at reactivation -- but it neglects the cost that it's off-putting for the user. And it shows product-level rot: Facebook has so much data on me, they could send much better emails to try to get me to reactivate. Wasted opportunities.
There's a lesson for platforms. Many companies ignore the "time has passed" factor in their data. They send users the same re-engagement notifications, no matter if they dropped off 6 weeks or 6 years ago. This is an especially severe pitfall in social media, where social relationships change over time, and the "friends" or "follows" that date back many years may no longer reflect the current state of the world. Letting this baggage accumulate over time, and not managing it as part of your platform, can make awkward experiences!