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Facebook is cooked

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Re: Facebook is cooked

#651

Post by dakolli »

Aldipower wrote: post #624
dakolli wrote: post #455

Deleted mine in 2013 :flex: I mainly didn't like people being able to stalk me after high school, but I find that I have a very different world view than people that did continue to use it (usually), I also find it really easy to tell if someone is a heavy facebook user by the psyops/weird narratives they end up repeating. They seem much more susceptible to "fake news" and advertising in general. I encourage pretty m…

Hey, me to, in 2013. :-) I had over 300 "friends" on facebook. I deleted them all. :-D 2010-2012 were funny times on FB though, I even was a FB app developer. Do FB apps still exists? Or a MCP apps the new FB apps now?

I don't think I've ever used a facebook app, but yeah 2010-2012 seemed like there was actually community, but I wouldn't say it was as "magical" as early myspace. I feel like 2013 was the year where toxicity began to spread its wings on the internet, and facebook was the nest.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#652

Post by me4502 »

alecco wrote: post #633
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.…

I just tried this: browse YouTube with incognito and watching 3 engineering vids only (Veritasium, Real Engineering, and Practical Engineering). The home page shorts are about 50% thirst traps. There is creepy stuff, click-bait, and American politics/news (for and against Trump). The worst one is a short "this is why ram costs $900" by "discord memes" showing a young girl with revealing clothing. Almost 1 million vie…

I feel this issue has started to slowly become worse and worse as we've been able to build better "preference profiles" based on small amounts of data. I notice it often when watching a single YouTube video in incognito mode, the sidebar is usually full of fairly racist Australian content (I am Australian). This is something I would never normally see, and not something that's likely coming from whatever video I've decided to watch in incognito. It's likely just assuming based on what's a common trend in my location.

If an algorithm knows you well, it's usually pretty okay, but until that point you're being bombarded with lowest common denominator content based on your demographic. Shorts seems to be even worse; mine is mostly science facts and comedy skits, I didn't understand the "brainrot" descriptions until I looked at a few in incognito mode.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#653

Post by m000 »

We all acknowledge the AI slop posts. The question is what fraction of the comments under the posts is also AI slop. And how long until we see AI-targetted ads, to manifest the Dead Internet Theory in its fullest.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#654

Post by nephihaha »

the_af wrote: post #480
nephihaha wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now and then it gets things right, but I find a lot of YT recs to be pretty dubious, and find it is trying to bias me in this direction or that direction. It's pretty pathetic. The search function is also useless. About the only Scottish history content I ever get rec'd is Scotland History Tours. While I like his channel, it is not the only show in town and it doesn't go very deep. When I got my last YT account I cou…

Interesting. I have a very different experience with YouTube, to the point I consider it my favorite social network thingy. My search history and subscriptions are carefully curated, and I mostly get "more of the same", with pretty good recommendations for stuff that usually interests me. Also, zero "thirsty" stuff. Logged out, YouTube is of course a complete mess.

Logged out, YouTube suggests me endless videos about MMA fighting or trash for children. I only use the YouTube app for commenting. I use Brave to avoid constant adverts.

I do notice though that YouTube is always trying to bias me in one direction or another. I have a friend whose feed is full of Trumpbait and stuff about how Putin is about to die and the Ukraine war is about to end. (Sounds fine except these videos have been saying that for four or five years.) Whatever one things about these things, the videos he gets are very propagandistic and have ridiculous AI thumbnails and titles. Usually of Putin or Trump scowling at something. He also gets suggested a lot of food videos (okay, I suppose) and often ones about Nazis and WW2 (a bit fetishistic, but to be fair he did history at university).

My non-political YouTube suggestions tend to be about popular music from decades ago. I emphasise "about". I notice the algo more rarely suggests actual music itself. I suspect this is because YT has to pay out money for music but not videos about it. I get some local history stuff (which is interesting but usually not about areas I know well). I very rarely get suggested much in the way of Scottish, Irish or Welsh content, in spite of viewing a lot of it. Never anything about what's happening with Scottish politics (always from a London perspective) or the parliament here.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#655

Post by Sparkyte »

sneak wrote: post #586
Sparkyte wrote: post #581

I don't use Facebook except for messenger. Not for me but for family. I keep getting sussy videos on my feed, I can keep blocking or saying I don't want them. They still pop up. Facebook is just full bait videos to try and get engagement. Facebook could've evolved but it made bad decisions, alot of bad decisions.

Their decisions couldn’t have been that bad, as you are still an active user.

No. I would say they got my family hooked using it. If someone could produce a facebook alternative I would be satisfied.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#656

Post by nephihaha »

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…

I have a Facebook friend similar to your mother. A solicitor (so makes a lot of money), off travelling to beautiful places much of the time.

However, there is an element of one upmanship about social media. You see pictures of nice holidays abroad, nice cars and happy families... And then you find out some of the same folk are about to divorce or go bankrupt.

The algo keeps showing me one person's feed but not others. I don't mind said person, but we are not close. Facebook tells me about birthdays, bereavements etc often two or three weeks after they happen which is no good.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#657

Post by NewsaHackO »

trymas wrote: post #645
throwaway290 wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he is replying to > 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".

Though OC also said: > Another point: I tried very hard to fix this at one point. I went through instagram and hit like on nothing but pottery and parenting videos. For about a week I had a feed that looked like my wife's -- pottery and parenting. And then it reverted. So I guess it depends how active you are? My speculation would be (that would match the article) - if facebook figures out you’re a man, but you don’t…

No, if he's been looking at material that indicates an interest in thirst trap stuff for years, then looks at pottery for a couple of weeks, the algorithm correctly identifies that he isn't really into pottery and corrects back.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#658

Post by danielheath »

mort96 wrote: post #640
blibble wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's worse, cigarettes never threatened democracy the solution is real easy, section 230 should not apply if there's an recommendation algorithm involved treat the company as a traditional publisher because they are, they're editorialising by selecting the content vs, say, the old style facebook wall (a raw feed from user's friends), which should qualify for section 230

Why change section 230? You can just make personalized algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement illegal instead, couldn't you? What advantage does it have to mess with 230, wouldn't the result be the same in practice?

230 is an obvious place to say “if you decide something is relevant to the user (based on criteria they have not explicitly expressed to you), then you are a publisher of that material and are therefore not a protected carriage service.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#659

Post by rightbyte »

dboreham wrote: post #411
whyenot wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Europ…

I'm still a FB user even though most friends and relatives have disengaged due to toxicity. But what I've noticed consistently is that any group on FB that has more than 1000 members will end up surfacing so much toxic sentiment that I have to unsubstantiated. I'm talking about innocuous fields such as the local road conditions. That one became full of rants about out of state drivers, drivers who don't understand En…

> This has led me to a theory that humans just can't behave nicely beyond some threshold group size.

I think what happens is that the risk of including a critical amount of "toxics" (lacking a better word) such that they can keep a conversation going, increases by FB group size. Without actice moderators it doesn't take much.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#660

Post by nephihaha »

Sharlin wrote: post #602
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…

My FB experience is still fine after all these years. I can't find anything in my feed that isn't either a post a) to a group I'm in, b) by a page I follow, or c) by a friend. These days, a) and b) make up the majority of posts – many of the groups have no equivalent elsewhere and are a major reason why I still use FB. Even the reels/shorts/whatever that FB suggests are mostly nice and relevant – cats, trains, music.…

I think you are very lucky. I get constant political messaging (not from one side of the room either) which is very unsubtle and biased. I get a lot of slop suggested.

I have never used Instagram and don't plan too. Twitter has always been a disaster and a mob mentality, and now it barely shows me stuff I want to look at.

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