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Facebook is cooked

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Re: Facebook is cooked

#671

Post by guerrilla »

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.…

> 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.

Bullshit. This happens because you engaged. I never engaged with it in the slightest and it disappeared. I mostly just get snakes and local stuff now.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#672

Post by Sharlin »

nephihaha wrote: post #660
Sharlin wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wonder if the politics issue is just much worse in certain parts of the world. Nobody bothers to spend money trying to influence the population of a small Nordic country.

As an experiment, I disabled Ghostery and uBlock, and the feed became about 33% ads, which is rather annoying, but the ads were mostly fine. There was one obvious AI slop image advertising a dating site, and one cryptobro ad, but otherwise they were fairly reasonable, relatively speaking.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#673

Post by flir »

duskdozer wrote: post #626
fatherwavelet wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst to me is the way people dehumanize other people who don't agree with them. The other side politically doesn't just have different views, they are barely human knuckle draggers. Basically neanderthals, so who cares if they go extinct.

"don't agree with them" is carrying a lot of weight here, isn't it?

It's a month-old account.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#674

Post by Sxubas »

guerrilla wrote: post #671
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.…

> 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. Bullshit. This happens because you engaged. I never engaged with it in the slightest and it disappeared. I mostly just get snakes and local stuff now.

I can second this. The app basically shows more of what is proven to keep you in the app. It's kinda revealing to be frank: instead of getting mad with it just do some introspection.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#675

Post by pityJuke »

NewsaHackO wrote: post #661
mrweasel wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thought I've had is that it has to do with your level of engangement. If like me you doesn't really use social media for more than a few minutes a day (in my case I count Snapchat and YouTube Shorts, because that's what I have), then you start seeing some a lot of boobs. It seems like the algorithm panics, because you don't engange with anything much, or because your interests shifts to often and it can't deal wi…

The issue is that they are very smart/subversive; they definitely track the amount of time you spend looking at certain pictures vs. others. So while you may be careful not to directly engage with certain material, if they noticed that you pause a little more at certain pics than others, and there is a pattern in the common topic in the pictures that you pause at, they use that information to create your interest pro…

This is it - you’ve got to be deliberate in scrolling immediately past anything remotely thirst-trappy, otherwise the algorithm hyperfixates. And then overstay your welcome at the type of content you want to see.

In my experience, it has worked (my discover page is an amalgamation of classic Simpsons, Dropout.tv, and Whose Line Is It Anyway?, while my Reels feed is unhinged in the right way.) But also I’ve stopped using it because my brain was melting.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#676

Post by goalieca »

ahallock wrote: post #486

This is just clickbait. Yeah there is brain rot on there, and what he was presented with is questionable, but he hadn't used it in 8 years. If he started using it, he would see more of what he's interested in. It's not a mind reader.

Facebook 1.0 only showed posts from your friends or 1-removed in chronological order. It was great!

Re: Facebook is cooked

#677

Post by flir »

michaelt wrote: post #628
scotty79 wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm not interested" and "Don't show posts from this person" is the dowvote button for the algorithm. If you use those functions liberally your feed gets pretty clean and aligned.

Except here on HN, other people take care of the downvoting for me. I only have to reach for the downvote button a few times a year. Whereas on Facebook style algorithmic feeds, you have to "use those functions liberally" and the result is only "pretty" clean.

I used to belong to a FB nostalgia group that was being relentlessly farmed by Indonesian accounts. The group members (and even the admins) weren't sophisticated enough to spot what was happening. They were absolutely engaging with the spam. They love AI colorizations too.

I don't trust "facebook users" as a group to provide a signal I consider useful.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#678

Post by mrweasel »

j-bos wrote: post #664
mrweasel wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thought I've had is that it has to do with your level of engangement. If like me you doesn't really use social media for more than a few minutes a day (in my case I count Snapchat and YouTube Shorts, because that's what I have), then you start seeing some a lot of boobs. It seems like the algorithm panics, because you don't engange with anything much, or because your interests shifts to often and it can't deal wi…

> The more you engange with fitness content, even if it's training programs or how to correctly do certain exercises, platforms like YouTube will start flinging misogynistic content at you and it's incredibly hard to remove. That explains why out of no where I got reccomendations for some gender conflict greentext channel, I had just that week been looking for lifting techniques.

Yes, I get those as well. Happens everything I've been looking a lifting videos for a day or two. Give it a bit more time and you'll get videos of right wing women explaining why modern women can't get dates.

It is fairly concerning and there's not real good way of telling YouTube that you're not interested. The dislike button does little and blocking the channel is also pretty ineffective as there are a myriad of channels with the similar content which you'll just be served instead.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#679

Post by carefulfungi »

blibble wrote: post #454
javascriptfan69 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely think we will look back at the algorithmic content feed as being on par with leaded gasoline or cigarettes in terms of societal harm. Maybe worse since it is engineered to be as addictive as possible down to an individual level. Then again maybe I'm being too optimistic that it will be fixed before it destroys us.

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

> cigarettes never threatened democracy

Off topic, but I bet a book on tobacco cultivation/history would be fascinating. Tobacco cultivation relied on the slave labor of millions and the global tobacco market influenced Jefferson and other American revolutionaries (who were seeing their wealth threatened). I've also read that Spain treated sharing seeds as punishable by death? The rare contrast that makes Monsanto look enlightened!

Re: Facebook is cooked

#680

Post by carefulfungi »

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?

The solution must be a social one: we must culturally shun algorithmic social media, scold its proponents, and help the addicted.

We aren't going to be able to turn off the AI content spigot or write laws that control media format and content and withstand (in the US) 1st amendment review. But we can change the cultural perception.

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