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Facebook is cooked

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Re: Facebook is cooked

#721

Post by troupo »

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 don't use Facebook much, and my feed is filled with algorithmic bullshit and almost no posts from friends, family, or groups I'm a part of.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#722

Post by tetris11 »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #718

Reading through these comments, I really miss Reddit's old default homepage. Sure, you could have your own curated feed, but there was also r/all and everyone seemed to use it, so everyone saw relatively the same thing. It would sadly never work today, but it was great back then.

The Fediverse has seen a rampant increase in bot activity recently (easily squashed by sane moderators), which to me is a signal that "Reddit is Cooked" and the windup merchants have wised up to where their target audience is going

Re: Facebook is cooked

#723

Post by testing22321 »

dguest wrote: post #631
testing22321 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I spent time in 35 countries in Africa. FB is the internet.

Does FB data count against your data quota in these countries? I've been quite a few places where it's impossible to buy a sim card that doesn't give you free facebook and WhatsApp. You can't use the real internet without asking your friends to pay for it.

That was common, as was the FB lite app

Re: Facebook is cooked

#724

Post by hiddencost »

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

They fought a civil war over the labor required to produce tobacco.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#725

Post by Footprint0521 »

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.…

This is why I gave up on social media

Re: Facebook is cooked

#726

Post by quotemstr »

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

Social media cannot "threaten democracy". Democracy means that we transfer power to those who get the most votes.

There's nothing more anti-democratic than deciding that some votes don't count because the people casting them heard words you didn't like.

The kind of person to whom the concept of feed ranking threatening democracy is even a logical thought believes the role of the public is to rubber stamp policies a small group decides are best. If the public hears unapproved words, it might have unapproved thoughts, vote for unapproved parties, and set unapproved policy. Can't have that.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#727

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

willturman wrote: post #317
agentifysh wrote: post #308

One theory I have for the degradation of facebook and just internet content/discussion/comments in general in the past 25 years have been the rapid change in the cultural demographic of global internet users. late 90s to early 2000s, only highly developed economies made up most of the internet but as more emerging markets joined the ranks, they ultimately surpassed those that reached peak internet penetration much ea…

I'll name a specific highly developed country in the western hemisphere: The United States. There's no need to bend over backward trying to blame some perceived degradation in quality of discussion on international adoption of the internet. According to the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy [1] 130 million Americans — 54% of adults between the ages of 16 and 74 years old—lack proficiency in literacy, essent…

What's more, the United States has some of the highest reading test scores in the world: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/academic-performance?subj...

This entire planet is full of idiots

Re: Facebook is cooked

#729

Post by cess11 »

roryirvine wrote: post #704
throwaway27448 wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distinguishing between the economic and politics seems impossible—hence the term "political economy". Splitting the two was a bad decision.

Yeah, isn't it only a relatively recent split - mid 20th century, I think? Before that, the term "economy" was only used as a synonym for thrift or a system of management or control (and "economist" tended to mean someone who wanted to reduce spending or increase restrictions on something).

Arguably Marx is the most important historical scientist when it comes to political economy. The methodology pioneered by him has been extremely influential.

Reactionary liberalism, e.g. neoliberalism, Austrian school, that kind of thing, discards the 'mess' of interdisciplinary approaches and seek a return of a protestant worldview, riffing off of their use of the New Testament verses about "render unto Caesar". This puts them in harsh ideological conflict with the political economists and elevates their 'theology' above the work of previous scientists.

Historically some trace political economy to ibn Khaldun, but in the Occident it's Ricardo, Mill, Marx and so on that create a (to us) recognisable science out of it.

Re: Facebook is cooked

#730

Post by PopAlongKid »

overgard wrote: post #428

Every couple of months or so I log in, and it's just depressing. I basically see zero posts from friends, it's just a lot of weird content I never signed up for. The weird thing is they send me a ton of emails saying "So and so posted such and such", so presumably people still exist in my network that post things, but Facebook conspires to prevent me from seeing it once I'm actually on the site.

Similar here. I get emails almost every day that someone I know has posted something new, but if I click on the "view post" button in the email, it always opens a tab saying "we can't show you this content right now".
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