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Facebook is cooked

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Re: Facebook is cooked

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not fake. I've also seen these and checked commenters' profiles. Real people, in the 35-50 age range.

How can you tell by just looking at their profile? Bots have for over a decade been able to generate a profile with a real looking picture (usually just scraped from the web) and a realistic sounding bio.

Tangent but reddit allows people to hide their post/comment history which is fine I guess but it's not great for that reason, trying to see if an account is a bot or not. Other than age can't tell anything about that account.

I notice more and more accounts use it, particularly the spicy commenters. Which is whatever, I try to stay away from social media now, this is SM here but at least it's more technically oriented/useful.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#292
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YT is like this too, if you're not logged in, thirst trap, crazy stuff until you build up a search history (even not logged in)

Not sure why people are downvoting this, it's absolutely true. I watch a lot of youtube on my TV and I can tell in milliseconds if it's logged me out and I'm seeing the default feed. It's fully insane and inane.

It only takes me a few seconds of scrolling in a private window to hit an AI-generated cat head on pregnant human woman barfing rainbows on the floor: 63M views. Really makes you believe in the dead internet theory, just that they're all in their own little slop algorithm world. Or maybe it's ipad babies after all.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#293
post #229
post #202

My mother is an international flight attendant in her 60s. I recently caught a glimpse of her Facebook and I was shocked to discover a version of the website that seemed to be the platonic ideal of exactly what all the Facebook PMs intended. Her feed was filled with the photos of her friends and coworkers international trips and holidays, posts in groups for planning activities in her most frequented cities. But I di…

I have this with Twitter surprisingly. I only use it for animal pictures, art, and to follow artists. I usually just use the Following page, but my FYP is always just... animal pictures and art, exactly what I want. No weird right wing shit, no weird crypto shit, no drama or ragebait shit, etc... somehow. I know some day it'll break though.

Same. It feels like the real trick is to get platforms to think you're some kind of important person that could hurt the platform if served too much ragebaits.

And it also feels like they're compelled to maximize ragebaits for some reason - maybe the Web2 is running out of "advertiser friendly" contents.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#294
post #10

I'm a parent in my 50's. "Peak Facebook" is years in the past for me. But it was great for a while. My spouse, friends, friends' spouses, and I were all sharing stories and pictures of our kids, travels, and experiences, such as dining experiences or hikes. There was so much joyous sharing. And it wasn't done for clicks, views, or monetization. It was just friends, sharing their experiences, encouraging each other, e…

What do your social groups use nowadays?

Not parent, but, depressingly:

  1. Signal
  2. BlueSky
  3. Discord
  4. WhatsApp
  5. SMS
This list is presented in order of preference, and in reverse order of prevalence.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#295
Fb deserves huge credit for their 'reels' algorithm. I follow a bunch of science influencers, and their content frequently blows my mind, and it's just one great vid after another.

Something I would love is 'social media dotfiles', so I could export my list and share it with others. And vice-versa.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#296
post #202

My mother is an international flight attendant in her 60s. I recently caught a glimpse of her Facebook and I was shocked to discover a version of the website that seemed to be the platonic ideal of exactly what all the Facebook PMs intended. Her feed was filled with the photos of her friends and coworkers international trips and holidays, posts in groups for planning activities in her most frequented cities. But I di…

The skeptical observer would suggest because her demograph votes, serving ads which benefit Facebook shareholders is good for business.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#297
I declined when "facesmash", whatever, was invitation only, and am only now considering how to set up an advertising presence there, sortof, as I am overwhelmed with customers wanting things made, so may just stay on page 7 of search, and just keep answering the phone

Re: Facebook is cooked

#298

This is not unique to Facebook. Reddit has seen a large uptick in AI-generated posts, or repeated posts from the past. I think we need to recognize that social media of 2026 is not the same as what we had in 2006. AI generated content, regardless of if it is image, video, or text, is here to stay. And it will only get better and more convincing as the technology improves. What people really need to ask is this - what…

It's not about what users want. It's about what's profitable for the company.

What I want from Facebook is to see what original words, images, or videos my friends and family thought was worth sharing with the world today, and I want to see clearly when I've reached the end of that. I probably don't need to spend more than ten minutes once a day on that.

It's profitable for Facebook to show me as many ads as possible. If I wasn't an aggressive adblock user, the thing I want would have much less potential profit than all the third-party content they want to show me.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#300
I think the key here is engagement is based a lot on content quantity, not quality. If your feed doesn't have a lot of natural quantity associated with it then FB will find something to stuff in there. The reality is that most people don't have a lot of quantity on their feeds from their friends so that means they get the AI slop to fill the void. At least that is my complete guess on a root cause of (some) of the FB slop. I haven't logged in for 6 months and I am now checking it 1-2 times a year because the last few times I logged on it was pushing hate content at me.
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