I'm a parent in my 50's. "Peak Facebook" is years in the past for me. But it was great for a while. My spouse, friends, friends' spouses, and I were all sharing stories and pictures of our kids, travels, and experiences, such as dining experiences or hikes. There was so much joyous sharing. And it wasn't done for clicks, views, or monetization. It was just friends, sharing their experiences, encouraging each other, etc. It all just went away, starting with the husbands.
Social media is mostly about what you make of it and how you interact to find value. This is the same in Twitter, TikTok, FB, Instagram, even LinkedIn.
If you don't interact with the product, you get lowest denominator crap.
My feed isn't as bad as this one, mostly current events, tech, music, politics which are my interests. Trolls/ai/bots are everywhere, but so are people callling it out, so if anything I would guess engagement is up. To be fair, my politics seems to be around 60/40 agree/disagree with my political preference which I actually think is a massive improvement over what it used to be which was 90% agreeable to me. I enjoy engaging on pages of the opposing view.
Zuckerberg is what I might refer to as "forced" network effects. And I don't mean the natural network effects that result from people using a good and hence popular product (or network effects building on itself). Facebook replaced people's emails in their profiles with fb.com addresses, the company lied to people about privacy forever but especially with the former it's the site that actively tries to take you over. I despise Google, but Gmail wasn't like this (and supposedly Facebook would actively delete posts linking to its competition, in the early days - and maybe not so early days)
My point in this somewhat rambly post is it's always been a spammy mess and Zuck's never had an interest in making a good product. For him it's literally about domination
And PS: yeah, I know. With Chrome Google is apparently trying to dictate standards in a similarly cynical way
Facebook messenger is so annoying to use too! My extended family group chat is there, but I had to turn off notifications because Facebook realized I only engage there and started serving me stories and updates from the messenger app as notifications! Right this second opening messenger it shows a “4” in the upper right, assumably with garbage notifications about things I don’t care about “happening” on Facebook. Luckily if something important actually happens my family knows to text me, so I read the group chatter at my leisure rather than being interrupted randomly.
Anything like that faces a "cold start" problem when they don't have data about you.
I got a lot of that kind of stuff when I started a new Facebook account but once I got my friends and family on and joined some sports photography groups I am usually greeted by (1) photos of varying quality that people took of a high school basketball game, (2) something family members are doing, (3) some friends outraged about the Trump administration... With helpings of AI slop cat videos and other trash.
Meta obviously believes that those kind of images of women will get engagement and I know I get DMs that appear to be from women like that every time I get on a new platform -- usually I don't respond, or lead them out until they reveal what they are, though I am tempted to say "I am only interested in 2.5-d girls"
Instagram has those blonde women too, but I was impressed with the "cold start" experience on Instagram where my feed was filled with some really incredible videos that must have been hand selected. After a few days of engagement farming though I wound up connected to a lot of South Asians including rather modest Muslim and Hindu women who project a fashionable image without showing a lot of skin. I didn't have a lot of success connecting with people in my immediate area until I started going out as-a-fox and handing out tokens with QR codes.
What I don't understand is how FB and Insta are just full of spam (from spammers, not Meta AI) now. It used to be that FB was the absolute best at getting rid of spam and now they appear to be overcome by it?
I had a similar experience recently, where I logged in to Facebook after not using it for years and was shocked by how much garbage was there. My spouse does use Facebook somewhat regularly so I looked at her feed and it was much more reasonable.
I wonder if for those of us that haven't used Facebook in years the recommendation algorithm is essentially default. Which much like the default youtube algorithm, is completely garbage. But if we did use it (which I have no intention of doing), it would start being more reasonable.
It does make me wonder if that system is a net positive or a net negative. For me, I go, see suggested stuff which is all trash, and never want to engage with FB ever again. I stay only because of friends but only check once a week or so. Where as, if they got rid of all suggested stuff and instead it was 100% friends and family and every 5 posts, an ad. I'd engage with it far more often.
The current leader for me for worst questions suggested by Meta's AI was on a photo someone took of some conspiracy theorist's van with the spraypainted message "THEY EAT BABIES IN DENVER". The suggested questions from their AI were:
- Baby-eating restaurants in Denver
- Denver's unique food scene
wtaf meta.
Beyond that, I simply don't see how Meta can possibly ever monetize their investment in AI. People are and will continue to be willing to pay OpenAI, Anthropic, google, microsoft. No one will pay Meta for their AI. And if their investment was only a couple million and they got some useless suggested questions out of it, whatever. But the size of their investment sure makes it look like someone thinks they'll make money off of it.
I mean... I've been a Facebook user since 2006 and I don't see much spam at all in my feed. So I guess like PaulHoule said, it's a cold start problem and the defaults are terrible.
That's the problem. Your friends and liked pages have all moved on and aren't posting anymore. The algorithm has no idea what to show you.
FWIW I don't use Facebook actively but do log in once in a while, mainly for marketplace and neighborhood groups. And a ton of my friends are still active there (might be giving away my age). The first post on my feed not from a friend is at #14, and it's a clip from a comedian, so content I don't mind. Then one at #18, which is an article posted by a local newspaper. Further down at #25 or so from the onion. Keep scrolling I see New York Times, Gothamist, Subway Takes, Cracked (that's still around?), WTA. Overall my feed is almost entirely posts from my friends from the last week or relevant news, and I see zero AI slop or other posts of the kind that are in the article.
So basically - it's all about the algorithm and your connections. A "cooked" product doesn't make a trillion dollars every quarter.
Huh. I thought perhaps it was the usual "why are all the recommendation algorithms showing me gay porn?" class of complaint, but I went and logged in and it seems that he's not wrong though the degree seems to vary. I've got a bunch of these but also a bunch of outrage bait and generic general stuff. I think if you don't use the platform you get the undifferentiated high-engagement stuff which is likely the same as those Taboola chumboxes that people have on their websites.
EDIT: Hilariously, I went there 45 minutes later and I must have interacted with something because now everything is posts about football (along with the "i want an argument with my husband" post!). I'm in the Bay Area Gooners group but that's been over a decade, so presumably what happens is they don't run recommendations until someone shows activity. Just logging and browsing the feed must have triggered it because I didn't see any football stuff last time except BAG.
I still use Groups and Marketplace but my home feed is blocked thanks to News Feed Eradicator. Check it out if you haven't heard of it. It's a browser extension that can block the home feed (and more) for a number of social sites.
>But on the other hand, I hadn't logged in in nearly a decade!
This is the cause. With a long dormant account, facebook has no real content to show you. Your friends will almost all be dormant as well, even the facebook pages and groups you were part of are likely to have fallen silent. Facebook will feed you directly from the slop firehose rather than show you a blank feed.
It's a complete mystery to me how Facebook operates. Like, they need money to keep the lights on, right? Where is the money coming from if no humans are using the platform?
Man who remembers when a big Mac was a wholesome and tasty meal option now shocked to find that, under capitalism, the wrapper is actually more nutritious than the meal itself.
This is mostly about OP, not Facebook. The reason he sees tons of AI images of AI girls is because that's the kind of content he consumes on various Meta platforms. When I login to Facebook, I see none of that. So...
I am in a couple dozen active groups across a variety of topics - guitar, tech, TV shows, history, tabletop gaming, etc. - and 99% of posts are on-topic chatter by humans.
I prefer Reddit because it's longer-form content but with communities, it's about where there's a center of gravity - a subreddit, a FB group, a Discord, a traditional forum, etc. I go where the people are. And a lot of those people are on FB for some niches.
The "FB is nothing but AI slop and ads" is a myth. I have interesting conversations with people I don't personally know (in a real life sense) on FB every day.
257 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadIf you don't interact with the product, you get lowest denominator crap.
My point in this somewhat rambly post is it's always been a spammy mess and Zuck's never had an interest in making a good product. For him it's literally about domination
And PS: yeah, I know. With Chrome Google is apparently trying to dictate standards in a similarly cynical way
I got a lot of that kind of stuff when I started a new Facebook account but once I got my friends and family on and joined some sports photography groups I am usually greeted by (1) photos of varying quality that people took of a high school basketball game, (2) something family members are doing, (3) some friends outraged about the Trump administration... With helpings of AI slop cat videos and other trash.
Meta obviously believes that those kind of images of women will get engagement and I know I get DMs that appear to be from women like that every time I get on a new platform -- usually I don't respond, or lead them out until they reveal what they are, though I am tempted to say "I am only interested in 2.5-d girls"
Instagram has those blonde women too, but I was impressed with the "cold start" experience on Instagram where my feed was filled with some really incredible videos that must have been hand selected. After a few days of engagement farming though I wound up connected to a lot of South Asians including rather modest Muslim and Hindu women who project a fashionable image without showing a lot of skin. I didn't have a lot of success connecting with people in my immediate area until I started going out as-a-fox and handing out tokens with QR codes.
Do we need a way to audit usage stats in addition to financial numbers?
I wonder if for those of us that haven't used Facebook in years the recommendation algorithm is essentially default. Which much like the default youtube algorithm, is completely garbage. But if we did use it (which I have no intention of doing), it would start being more reasonable.
- Baby-eating restaurants in Denver
- Denver's unique food scene
wtaf meta.
Beyond that, I simply don't see how Meta can possibly ever monetize their investment in AI. People are and will continue to be willing to pay OpenAI, Anthropic, google, microsoft. No one will pay Meta for their AI. And if their investment was only a couple million and they got some useless suggested questions out of it, whatever. But the size of their investment sure makes it look like someone thinks they'll make money off of it.
That's the problem. Your friends and liked pages have all moved on and aren't posting anymore. The algorithm has no idea what to show you.
FWIW I don't use Facebook actively but do log in once in a while, mainly for marketplace and neighborhood groups. And a ton of my friends are still active there (might be giving away my age). The first post on my feed not from a friend is at #14, and it's a clip from a comedian, so content I don't mind. Then one at #18, which is an article posted by a local newspaper. Further down at #25 or so from the onion. Keep scrolling I see New York Times, Gothamist, Subway Takes, Cracked (that's still around?), WTA. Overall my feed is almost entirely posts from my friends from the last week or relevant news, and I see zero AI slop or other posts of the kind that are in the article.
So basically - it's all about the algorithm and your connections. A "cooked" product doesn't make a trillion dollars every quarter.
EDIT: Hilariously, I went there 45 minutes later and I must have interacted with something because now everything is posts about football (along with the "i want an argument with my husband" post!). I'm in the Bay Area Gooners group but that's been over a decade, so presumably what happens is they don't run recommendations until someone shows activity. Just logging and browsing the feed must have triggered it because I didn't see any football stuff last time except BAG.
Just searched this and was not what expected
This is the cause. With a long dormant account, facebook has no real content to show you. Your friends will almost all be dormant as well, even the facebook pages and groups you were part of are likely to have fallen silent. Facebook will feed you directly from the slop firehose rather than show you a blank feed.
This is mostly about OP, not Facebook. The reason he sees tons of AI images of AI girls is because that's the kind of content he consumes on various Meta platforms. When I login to Facebook, I see none of that. So...
I am in a couple dozen active groups across a variety of topics - guitar, tech, TV shows, history, tabletop gaming, etc. - and 99% of posts are on-topic chatter by humans.
I prefer Reddit because it's longer-form content but with communities, it's about where there's a center of gravity - a subreddit, a FB group, a Discord, a traditional forum, etc. I go where the people are. And a lot of those people are on FB for some niches.
The "FB is nothing but AI slop and ads" is a myth. I have interesting conversations with people I don't personally know (in a real life sense) on FB every day.