571–580 of 890 posts
This really is what makes everything worse isn't it? That engaging with the tech giants is borderline required (if not literally required) to function in the world.
I never seriously used Facebook; only once when a reallife buddy wanted means to communicate and I did not have a smartphone. But it was already really awful back then.
Now that AI spams down and eliminates real human beings, I guess many of these anti-social websites will die. Or at the least be in serious decline from where they can not easily escape anymore. Because which real human being wants all that AI slop?
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…
This is the tech version of "nobody I know voted for Nixon": FB's position in the US & Europe is very misleading from a global perspective. In the Philippines, say, Facebook is the internet. Every business runs on it. People use it instead of news. Everybody uses Messenger to chat. You get free minutes with your phone that are specifically for FB/IG/Messenger.
Addendum to this: my filipina aunt is elderly and I was absolutely shocked at the amount of highly specific AI generated content seemingly targeted directly at her on Facebook. Except instead of thirst traps it was a weird mix of outrage porn, religious imagery, and kids + pets being cute, singing or rescued from odd situations. I asked a few questions of her to try and figure out if she like really grasped that it w…
The algorithm has been given a job todo. First priority on any platform is engagement and a well functioning, complete human being is not going to be engaged by rage bait and hate. They are rare, precious jewels. The shit gets dumped on people who are lonely, have a grudge, feel left out. It is relentless and escalates until their brains cook. Algorithmic social media is a massive social harm. The people who are in d…
>These platforms need to be shut down and people with a conscience need to stop using them, regardless of their own positive experiences, to deny them the power of network effects and their impact on the vulnerable. In places where media is very biased to one political idea, online platforms like Facebook can be a breath of fresh air, people can share their ideas, voice their thoughts and concerns and express their o…
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My wife was complaining about far right knuckle draggers turning up in her feed. I assume the algorithm was shovelling more of them at her because she was rubbernecking. I told her to try a "block every time" approach. It took about two weeks until her feed was (mostly) free of them but it still throws one at her now and again. I offer this as a data point about how hard it is to turn a polluted feed around. But I'm…
How can we complain that everyone is siloed and no one talks to each other and complian that their feed is full of ideas outside of the silo.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My wife was complaining about far right knuckle draggers turning up in her feed. I assume the algorithm was shovelling more of them at her because she was rubbernecking. I told her to try a "block every time" approach. It took about two weeks until her feed was (mostly) free of them but it still throws one at her now and again. I offer this as a data point about how hard it is to turn a polluted feed around. But I'm…
I mainly want to clean other people's feeds. There are an enormous amount of people that I need to undergo an algorithm detox.
The internet is a mistake for a lot of people and I don’t think we can fix that.
> 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.…
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I just tried to repro this. On my Facebook account, I scrolled through 30 posts without seeing anything thirsty. Mostly synthesizer stuff, stuff for my kids' schools, and a few posts from friends. It definitely knows I'm male because the ads are for men's apparel. Instagram was the same. I never ever watch reels or other short form video, so maybe that has something to do with it.
You didn’t try hard to repro it. Facebook uses your likes / groups / searches to customize your feed. If are active and don’t delete your old content, you have already trained FB to avoid the thirst traps for your account. The article author said he was off-site site for 8 years, so FB was offering him random high engagement content to stuff his feed so he didn’t reach the end.
> 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.
if meta identifies him as guy and he don't get a thirst trap after a minute then it's totally not "almost exclusively thirst trap".
I thought during the pandemic FB marketplace was going to go somewhere. I thought they would try to solve physical delivery with like an Uber service and credit network for financials etc. it would be huge.
But no. What has happened is that primary dealers are now flooding marketplace with fake low ball posts to make it unusable and destroy the secondary market.
I recently was shopping for bunk beds and lo and behind there were hundreds of not thousands of posts just for my local area all from maybe a dozen or so accounts created around 2023.
This is somebody's business (spam order flow as a service) and I assume that they pay fb enough for some API they fb literally doesn't care.
My theory is that every single feature on FB is a/b tested to be as bad as it can be if it maximizes screen time. Search doesn't work. You can't find your profile settings or feeds easily. All on purpose to maximize the time you spend there.
The feed has been dead for me for ages. I would recommend many users simply use it as a storage log book and increase FB costs by requesting all your data occasionally.
It's one of the worst companies out there for explicit bad behaviour IMO.