Facebook Foibles: Notifications UI

Not for the first time, I triggered an unexpected Facebook dialog box today.

While reading “notifications,” I clicked the “x” to the right of a notice, thinking it would make that notice “disappear” and allow others to rise “up” to the top of the notification panel.

After all, that is what the “x” means: close this thing or clear this search box.

The Facebook response, however, is a macro one, not micro: “Do you want to hide all notifications from Likes?” Ummm … no, I want to delete (not hide) this notification. If I can report this single notification instance as “spam” why can’t I “hide” this one instance?

The user interface is inconsistent. For example, in the Facebook “messages” section, the “x” works as expected: it deletes the message. Why does Facebook notifications violate this standard UI expression?