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Facebook is cooked

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Re: Facebook is cooked

#391

Post by whyenot »

mbo wrote: 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…

As a middle aged (gen x) woman, my facebook feed is pretty good. It's filled with posts from friends and interest groups that I am a part of. The reason I no longer use FB has nothing to do with the feed, it's because Mark Zuckerberg is an awful person, and I refuse to use his product. The cognitive dissonance is great here, because I still use WhatsApp; it's the best way to stay in contact with my relatives in Europe, and I still use IG, albeit mostly for work, and sparingly.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#392

Post by disantlor »

dom96 wrote: post #383
jedberg wrote: post #204

> So: is this just something wacky with my algorithm? No, it's not. Once Meta identifies you as male, you will get almost exclusively thirst trap posts no matter what you do. It started about two years ago. Some other interesting points: A woman posted on reddit recently saying she noticed her son's feed was filled with this stuff, so she created her own instagram account, identified as a man, and had the same feed.…

Have you tried clicking "Show me less like this" on those thirst trap posts?

yes i deleted facebook eventually because they would not stop showing me this stuff despite clicking “show me less” many times

Re: Facebook is cooked

#393

Post by mrighele »

I still use Facebook. Not often, let say once or twice a month, but I live abroad and FB is the only way to contact some people.

My feed is far from good, but not horrible. Once you interact a minimum with it (like in clicking on some posts, not even putting a like), FB will adjust the content appropriately. Right now for some reason I regularly get problems from International Mathematical Olympiad, chess, and nerd stuff about engineering.

I am not surprised that those that access FB after many years find the timeline full of half-naked women, pseudo-porn and the like: it's probably what men (those still on FB at least) on average crave for.

rant incoming

It is sad. I think that the original FB, the one from middle 00's, was really peak social media: you see stuff from people you know, you interact with them, even playing games with them. You would get in contact with old classmates that you couldn't speak with for 20 years... wonderful.

The point of original FB was to use it as an aggregator for your RL; go to a party, meet some gal, and the following day you would have a new contact on FB that you could contact to go out together again. Think about getting their phone number, but one order of magnitute better.

Heck I remember somehow waking up with a terrible hangover after a party and having a number of new girls as a contact on FB and asking myself "who the heck are they?". Fun times.

Current social media (Tiktok, Instagram, etc) is about seeing how people that you don't know get a life much better than yours. Not necessarily true, but it gets under your skin. How do youngsters use social media without going mad?

Re: Facebook is cooked

#394

Post by keyle »

mbo wrote: 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…

And yet, every 3-4 posts, Facebook will start interjecting posts that are outrageous, meant to create response. If she interacts with any of those, e.g. even open it wide, or stay on it a long time, BAM, more of those posts next visits.

And the cycle continues and grinds your account down to a complete hellish nightmare where you hate your city, your local councils etc. It's all a rigged platform for creating divide and hate. It drives clicks, it drives ads, it drives agendas.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#395

Post by aembleton »

fullstop wrote: post #284
krn1p4n1c wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My feed is like this too. I rarely use FB now, but I’ve aggressively pruned and blocked anything that becomes political or negative.

I unfollowed everyone except for a few family members. It really wants to give you the infinite scroll and started showing me some really bizarre stuff. So much AI slop, and random content. For about a week it kept showing me nursing mothers, no matter how many times I said "I don't want to see this" and blocking. I have no problem with women nursing, but these were done in a way to be sexually provocative. After tha…

I can recommend using Social Fixer addon [1] on your laptop. On my phone, I use Nobook [2] which isn't quite as effective. They both do a good job though of removing loads of the useless stuff on Facebook.

1. https://socialfixer.com/

2. https://github.com/ycngmn/Nobook

Re: Facebook is cooked

#396

Post by thot_experiment »

RajT88 wrote: post #326

I agree with most of this, but complaining about Yoleendadong is some "Old man yells at cloud" stuff. My wife is a big fan, as she has a lot of funny content specific to Asian cultures. Yes, she has some relationship stuff too. You may not like her content, but she's got a few hundred thousand subscribers on Youtube, and 17 million on TikTok.

Yeah, she's great. I don't know if I would say she's not slop, but it's the sort of slop that serves as a foundational block of the lexicon of memes I use to communicate with my friends. I don't think this is new, imagemacros/memes are also slop. Maybe I'm using the word wrong?

I guess to me it's kind of synonymous with "content" [mildly derogatory] as to differentiate it from effortposting. She primarily makes content, it's not always art but it doesn't have to be.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#397

Post by eek2121 »

jedberg wrote: post #204

> So: is this just something wacky with my algorithm? No, it's not. Once Meta identifies you as male, you will get almost exclusively thirst trap posts no matter what you do. It started about two years ago. Some other interesting points: A woman posted on reddit recently saying she noticed her son's feed was filled with this stuff, so she created her own instagram account, identified as a man, and had the same feed.…

Are we using 2 different versions of Facebook? I get nothing except content from my friends. None of it is AI generated. I just logged in because the article was a bit disturbing. The only AI content I found was the small amount a couple of my friends generated, and it was clearly marked as such.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#398

Post by jedberg »

dom96 wrote: post #383
jedberg wrote: post #204

> So: is this just something wacky with my algorithm? No, it's not. Once Meta identifies you as male, you will get almost exclusively thirst trap posts no matter what you do. It started about two years ago. Some other interesting points: A woman posted on reddit recently saying she noticed her son's feed was filled with this stuff, so she created her own instagram account, identified as a man, and had the same feed.…

Have you tried clicking "Show me less like this" on those thirst trap posts?

Many many times. It works for about an hour. I gave up. I've been on the internet long enough to have a pretty strong mental ad blocker. :)

Re: Facebook is cooked

#399

Post by kube-system »

RajT88 wrote: post #326

I agree with most of this, but complaining about Yoleendadong is some "Old man yells at cloud" stuff. My wife is a big fan, as she has a lot of funny content specific to Asian cultures. Yes, she has some relationship stuff too. You may not like her content, but she's got a few hundred thousand subscribers on Youtube, and 17 million on TikTok.

This is actually the scariest part of the article for me.

It's clear we've got to the point where at a glance it is hard for those who are otherwise unaware to tell the difference between AI slop and organic content.

If nerds on HN can't tell the difference between an AI slop influencer and a fairly well-regarded human influencer... how can we expect the rest of the public to tell the difference when it comes to science, health, civics, politics, etc???

We're at the cusp of a distrust and misinformation cliff that is going to be terrifying in magnitude.

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