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I've just loaded my Facebook home page. 6 'pages' (I know it's infinite scroll but you know what I mean) before I saw an actual friend's post, and it was from 2

by corobo 1y ago

I've just loaded my Facebook home page. 6 'pages' (I know it's infinite scroll but you know what I mean) before I saw an actual friend's post, and it was from 2 weeks ago. Jeez Zucky, I wonder why social is dying. Is it because there's no bloody social between the ads and random algorithm shite anymore? E: haha, the rest of the comments say likewise. Redundant comment but +1 anecdata. Also for what it's worth I've checked a few profiles and yeah friends are still posting, I'm just not seeing it. I guess I scrolled past some post about something too quickly and now Facebook thinks I don't care? Maybe the algorithm is just broken lol.

esperent 1y ago
It's because everyone moved over to using Whatsapp groups instead, for the actual social stuff, and TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube for the gratuitous lusting after other people's perfect lives stuff. It used to be that we looked at the perfect shared moments from our friends lives, but this didn't make us feel bad enough so we outsourced it to models backed by teams of experts so that we can compare ourselves to impossible highs and thusly feel only the most exquisite of lows when comparing our own real and therefore often shitty lives.
- aprilthird2021 1y ago
  This is the right answer, and it's something I believe Meta has also said publicly, that messaging apps have become the family and friends connection machine as people shifted to using mobile phones and messaging became free and able to handle multimedia.
- zpeti 1y ago
  Yes this is the key point, and I really don't think Zuckerberg is to blame for this. It's just how the market moved. Before tiktok Zuck did actually try and move facebook back to friend territory, but tiktok became such a threat to time spent online they had to shift to "engaging content" And everyone is in whatsapp groups anyway for personal content... When Elon bought twitter he bought back the "following" tab on twitter, and frankly, I used it a few times then stopped. It was just boring. Shifting through pages and pages of random content from people I follow is just too much energy. The fact is, personalised feeds do just work. We hate this, but it works. It's a bit like sugar, I know it has zero benefit in 2025 eating sugar, but I just do it, because its nice and it works, and it feels good. My brain knows its bad for me, but I just can't resist. Now you can blame restaurants and ice cream shops for this, but the fact is, if the particular ice cream shop I buy ice cream at closed, or offered less sugar alternatives, it would in fact lose market share. And of course, there are sugar free ice cream shops, but their market share will never be that big. If facebook wanted to actually stay on top, they were forced into this.
  - zelphirkalt 1y ago
    Long term will show whether it was the right decision by FB. If he now claims social media dead, then maybe already signs are showing, that the decisions were not as smart as he originally thought. Short term thinking kills many businesses.
  - alex1138 1y ago
    And that's fine except people have missed seriously important life updates because of selective post non-showing Facebook already had people up in arms when the feed was first introduced (probably because Zuckerberg seemingly doesn't believe in privacy as a concept, at all) and now they want to ruin it (especially now but it's been like this for years) by defeating the point of it? And I do blame him, anyway https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122
    - corobo 1y ago
      Missing things is another one I noticed yeah. In my case it's gigs from local places I actually follow. Why show an event that happened last Friday? They even know it's time sensitive because it's an event with a date and time attached!
  - Nursie 1y ago
    It’s not universal though - they don’t work for me, I don’t want or care about any of the “value add” in a feed. I don’t want reels, I’m not there for suggestions. Clearly I’m a minority as I’m sure they have research saying it does drive engagement for large Numbers of people, but Facebook appears to be worse for all that other stuff and as a result is failing everyone.
manbitesdog 1y ago
Facebook is now a birthday-reminder and old-connection-keeper tool loaded with empty content to feel less sad. Instagram and TikTok are also trending towards content consumption. Messaging and group chats are the only real social media now
- corobo 1y ago
  Ooh speaking of birthday reminders - if Facebook is browsing this thread looking for things to fix: bring back the birthday iCal feed! You literally had notifications via my calendar bringing me back to your site every few days/weeks to say happy birthday and maybe have a bit of a browse. Now the reminders are in my todo list and I say happy birthday via text or call instead. Path of least pain in the backside. Absolutely bizarre they ditched the birthdays and events iCal feeds.
  - barbazoo 1y ago
    Funny that you think they’d prioritize something that’d be useful, good for you.
    - corobo 1y ago
      Haha of course. I was probably just one of a mere few hundred million people using it in a way that brought me back to the algorithm so it got scrapped for underutilisation :(
    - pixl97 1y ago
      Boss: "you're only allowed to work on things that serve more ad views"
    - reverendsteveii 1y ago
      Remember when they told us that capitalism would cause people to trip over themselves to give us what we want and need because that would naturally be where most of the profit could be had? Why do you think it didn't do that in this case? The answer of course is that facebook does serve it's customers. It serves the people who can afford to buy ads, and what it serves them is you.
givemeethekeys 1y ago
Not sure when they will take it away, but for now, there is a cleaner option - go to Feeds on the left (I use it on the computer), and then Friends (as opposed to All or Groups). That gets you the latest posts from friends in reverse chronological order.
- alex1138 1y ago
  Honestly it feels like a hostage situation Like some engineer in the company begged Mark like, "Please, people are going to drop your product completely unless you give them some control" (remember Top Stories vs Most Recent?) And Mark's like "yeah, ok, cool" (it'll be removed in 2 years when said engineer quits/is fired)
- corobo 1y ago
  Oh wow I actually forgot about this. I used to have a bookmark that took me directly to the friends feed but it would seem it just redirects to the homepage now, and the navigating to the feeds fresh just loads within the page rather than via URL (at least on mobile web, m.facebook.com, not checked desktop)
tanjtanjtanj 1y ago
About couple years ago I logged onto Facebook for the first time in nearly a decade to sell something on marketplace. I took a peek at my feed and the set up was: Post from some guy I barely knew in high school talking about giving all at his job with zero comments or likes followed by Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad endlessly. I just kept scrolling and scrolling and hitting more pages of ads. I refreshed and got a different single post followed by more ads. I took a short video of the feed to show my friend who worked at Facebook at the time and he said “oh it might do that when it doesn’t know what to show you, if you use it more it will get better” I asked how it would learn what I liked when it was just showing me ads and he didn’t have a good answer. I guess nobody cares there.
- reginald78 1y ago
  And why would some one continue to use it if all it does is show ads? You have to put some cheese on a rattrap if you want the rat to stick his head in it.
yodsanklai 1y ago
I don't see a lot of friends posts, but I see some groups which are pretty active, and sometimes even useful. For instance, local hiking group, people post pictures, organize hike. I thought facebook was dead, but there's still a lot of activity.
Ajedi32 1y ago
Facebook has a Friends feed[1] which only shows posts from friends (and ads, but that's a whole other discussion). Even so, like 80% of the posts from my friends are just them re-sharing news articles or random memes; I wish there was a way to block reshares from pages or something like that. Also, personal pet peeve: Instagram has a way to turn off "suggested posts" in the feed... for 30 days, then the setting gets automatically turned back on. This is such a blatantly user hostile anti-pattern it's almost as bad as if they didn't have the setting at all. [1]: https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr
- rrauenza 1y ago
  It’s odd that in the iPad version, the friends button at the bottom doesn’t take you to the same feed, but rather lists of people to add.
szundi 1y ago
[dead]
mindtricks 1y ago
I used to count how many non-friend items there were between friend posts. If I recall correctly, my max count was 20. And similarly to you, when I do see something it's from 3 days ago and feels no relevant to comment or interact with. I know so many people hate Facebook, but I used to really enjoy those small moments with friends where we could interact over small life updates and photos. Now they feed me garbage to groups I've never subscribed to based on some "guess" around my interests.
- brap 1y ago
  Fun game. I just had 7, then 3, then I gave up after 30. And those 2 friend “posts” were 1. someone sharing a page’s post, and 2. a friend posting what appears to be an automated happy birthday on someone else’s wall. I did not see any actual content from friends at all. Most stuff on FB seems to be 1. pages I don’t follow 2. ads 3. posts from groups I no longer care about 4. random people who are not my friends but somehow I still get to see their posts in my feed (not even popular posts) 5. sometimes, some uninteresting activity by an actual friend (commented on something, shared something) 6. occasionally a friend’s IG story pops up (I guess these are automatically cross-posted to FB or something)
- malexw 1y ago
  I've also done this and my record count was 120. 120 sponsored or suggested posts about things I don't care about in between the posts from people I'm actually interested in. I'll echo what others have said - if social media is dead, it's because they killed it themselves.
  - jayknight 1y ago
    I use the Social Fixer browser extension to hide suggested content and my facebook home page is almost entirely: Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' IT Humor and Memes (UNCENSORED / Sanju L Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / 90's Nostalgia Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Xzo Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Tacofficial Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / The Mother of All Nerds Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' Photoshop That / Fatih Trk Suggested: click to show/hide 'Reels' / Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / JaredHalley Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Quinn Alexander on air Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Sarah SilvermanVerified account Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / History of Music Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Minor League BaseballVerified account Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Posts which will make you come Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / How About that! Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / The Other 98% Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' Christians who enjoy good clea / Rachel Ballard Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Graeson Mcgaha Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' Ancient history / Jesse Velosa Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Cincinnati Symphony OrchestraVerified ac Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Awesome Science Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Seinfeldism Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Jimlapbap Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / TromboneTimoVerified account Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' Handbell People / Deb Grundman Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Action News 5 Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' Harry Potter Memes / PotterzWorld Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Tom Scott Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / The Student Music Organizer Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / PY6CJ - João Grisi Online Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Memes so literal they aren't even memes Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Pittsburgh Symphony OrchestraVerified ac Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' Back To The Future Real Fans!! / Lawrence Neville Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Edson Xhhak Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Raging Mustache Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Tom Papa Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' Historic Film Locations / Mark E. Phillips Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / TromboneTimoVerified account Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Thanks Chipper Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Dog Bless You Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' Christians who enjoy good clea / Catherine Lee Rodriguez
wintermutestwin 1y ago
I never load the homepage. Feeds>friends in a firefox container with FBPurity is the only way I’ll touch that abomination. I also find that I have to mute a lot of over sharers. I feel for those people because I know they are like rats pushing the social lever for some imaginary sense of connection.
jc_811 1y ago
I don't know if their newsfeed algorithm is broken, or just grasping at straws, but whenever I log in (fairly often simply for FB marketplace) my feed is full of posts and recommendations for things that don't even make sense for me. For example hiking groups that are in a random mid-size city 2,000mi from me. Or student housing groups in a random international city. I've tried to even provide feedback on them not being relevant, but they still always appear. I don't know, it really does seem that their newsfeed relevancy is fundamentally broken
- corobo 1y ago
  I thought it was being insulting for a while but I guess I did pause on it to screenshot and make a witty post but I'm constantly getting Dull Men's Club, and more recently the knockoff versions haha Facebook, I'm not into these, and I've told you so! It was just that "Suggested for you: Dull Men's Club" was funny the first time!
- Throw9444 1y ago
  I haven’t had a Facebook account in about a decade at this point, and I recall continually discussing already how useless it was without chronological sorting and recommending you random crap (and I’m not just talking about the ads).
- rcruzeiro 1y ago
  I spent over one year being served sponsored content advertising sales of firearms, cloned credit cards and drugs. Last time I logged in, I’ve noticed that I was being served content based on interests of my close friends. For example, a close friend got really into rock climbing, so I got tons of rock climbing meme accounts. I have now grown tired of all of that and, when I realised that it had been ages since I had seen someone I actually know post anything, I deactivated it all.
- sethhochberg 1y ago
  The thing that always surprised me about this when I still used FB was that they clearly had the expertise available in Meta to do it right because my Instagram ads/recommended content was almost stunningly well-tailored: events I actually wanted to buy tickets to, products that actually interested me, even down to reels from new comedians I find genuinely funny... My FB feed, by comparison, was almost exactly like yours - not just irrelevant interests, but geographically crazy irrelevant interests.
rvba 1y ago
There used to be a hidden "only friends" feed - it got removed, or is hidden even better. Also you couldnt default to it.
- FireBeyond 1y ago
  On desktop - left sidebar, Feeds > Friends (not Friends at the top level). On mobile (or at least iOS, which I have) the bottom sidebar, second left button Friends are not perfect for me but cut out 90% of the garbage.
jasondigitized 1y ago
This. My facebook feed is 10% posts from friends, and 90% ads or weird content posts.
Eric_WVGG 1y ago
I was a very early Instagram user and would even defend it over the years as "influencers" became a thing. “I don’t see it as a problem… if you don’t like those people then don’t follow them.” Nothing about my tastes have changed over the years, but I now find Instagram to be painful to look at. If social media is over, it’s because Meta made the conscious decision to kill it.
- jonathanlb 1y ago
  I would argue that social media’s positive-feedback engine contributed to its own demise. Anec-data: After being terminally online on Instagram, I decided to took a two-week break because I was noticed I was mindlessly scrolling through content that I enjoyed. After the two weeks, it was striking to note that almost all videos followed a pattern- a jarring hook in the first two seconds, a provocative question, rapid-fire cuts and a soundtrack. Most videos have to follow this proven formula, but in doing so, they'll be like all the other videos and will then have to take the next step to engage users, so videos become more aggressive and formulaic, which for me, gets in the way of the content. This is completely omitting the fact that quickly scrolling past accounts you follow will trigger Instagram to suggest clips that are more provocative in an effort to capture one's attention. Even if you're intentional about what you consume, the app is adversarial to your own intentions.
  - selfhoster 1y ago
    That's an eloquently stated view. I'm not on FB or Instagram, but everything you said somehow resonated with me as a YT user.
  - kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
    It's MBAs on the eternal quest to juice profits. If a social site ran itself lean like Craigslist they could win the entire prize without the need to manipulate content for the benefit of advertisers.
  - smcin 1y ago
    Sure, but don't mislabel that "positive-feedback engine". Engagement, attention loop, reinforcement, clicks, views, comments, likes, follows, longer average visit time, distraction engine, compulsive behavior, higher advertiser revenue, whatever, but it isn't positive and it isn't really feedback. If you had a friend who in the middle of interactions habitually pulled out a bag of cocaine and snorted some (or gambled), you wouldn't say they were giving positive feedback to the dealer (/casino). You'd say they were annoying and unable to function. What happens on Instagram if you vote dislike/ignore attention-bait clips and try to find longer-form (>10 minute) content, and use searches rather than feed?
intrasight 1y ago
Just filter everything out that's not an actual post by a friend. Filter out news, shares, ads, etc - all that nonsense.
- notwhereyouare 1y ago
  you can't. they don't give you a filter to show just friends. you have to slog through all the "recommended" posts
  - intrasight 1y ago
    I didn't say to use a filter that they provide. It's your "user agent" - have it do your bidding. I use FBP: https://www.fbpurity.com/faq.htm https://www.fbpurity.com/faq.htm
FireBeyond 1y ago
The only ways FB are tolerable to me: Desktop - left sidebar, Feeds > Friends. Mobile - Friends button on the bottom menu. Not perfect, but cuts out 90% of the garbage.
chpatrick 1y ago
I highly recommend the FB purity extension to remove all that crap: https://www.fbpurity.com/ https://www.fbpurity.com/
magicmicah85 1y ago
Zuck did announce rather recently the Friends feed is more prominent on the app. It’s always been well hidden, but I think they know people are getting sick of the mindless scrolling. https://www.theverge.com/news/637668/facebook-friends-only-feed-algorithm https://www.theverge.com/news/637668/facebook-friends-only-f...
xbmcuser 1y ago
For me social is now family, extended family, siblings, school, high school and university friend groups on whatsapp with just people sharing big news wishing birthdays etc. All the info in the groups is in silo from each group. Where you actually behave in the groups like you would in real life ie differently with different groups.
nyarlathotep_ 1y ago
Facebook has devolved to the realm of the unreal now. I signed-in a few weeks back and the whole thing was just bizarre clickbait, ads, and bizarre clickbait generated image spam. I really don't see how there's a future for this. Is this (the abandonment and subsequent mass-sloppification) an American thing? Is there a user base in other countries? It seems like a relic of a previous era.
- gre 1y ago
  On my feed I get AI-generated pictures of castles and houses in the woods. There are enough real places where we don't need to make stuff up. Makes me feel bad, actually.
  - jandrese 1y ago
    Yes. I also got fake airplanes and way too long Wikipedia summaries of random things. It seems to me that there are really only a handful of outfits that really have the Facebook algorithm over their knee. It seems like the sort of thing that content moderators should be able to combat, but Facebook has just sort of given up.
- burningChrome 1y ago
  I've been on Instagram for less than a year for a photography and now my feed regularly includes what people are now calling "rage bait". which I found are people purposefully posting things to get people to engage with their content and are rewarded when more people comment on that content. I 100% agree that I cannot see a future where people think this is healthy and can continue.
  - sebastiennight 1y ago
    > I cannot see a future where people think this is healthy and can continue. The first is not a prerequisite for the second. See: fast-food, car-optimized cities, Electron apps, microplastics, AI-controlled drone warfare, trap music, etc.
- 1y ago
carlosjobim 1y ago
Your friend feed is here: https://www.facebook.com/?filter=all&sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?filter=all&sk=h_chr
- corobo 1y ago
  Unfortunately not on mobile web, just takes me to the homepage (even if I replace the www with m to rule out a blanket redirect to mobile) I guess I could restrict my Facebooking to desktop if it still works there but then I'll visit even less haha
jedberg 1y ago
Maybe I'm in a test group, but my interface recently got a "friends only" feed. It's great.
jghn 1y ago
I pretty much never use their algorithmic feed. I've switched to going in, selecting `feeds` and then `friends`. There's usually at most a half dozen posts per day. I also belong to some groups, but I'll go to them directly when I want to see what's going on there.
Justin_K 1y ago
I’ve basically stopped using the site for all the same reasons. I think it is because their engagement by real human users is near zero. In order to keep it freshfor whoever is left, like seniors hoping for an occasional pic of their grandkids, they fill it with the garbage
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 1y ago
Is there a setting to only show content from friends? Last used FB 13 years ago.
- neogodless 1y ago
  On web site - https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 1y ago
    Can't see that - requires a login. So, there is a setting. Believe you.
- dtauzell 1y ago
  They have a friends feed which will also include some adds
bastardoperator 1y ago
Sad seeing so many people here addicted to drugs.
jandrese 1y ago
Facebook is probably the worst social media company at combating AI bot spam, although it is a tight race with Twitter/X. Even with aggressive pruning of AI generated "content" it's impossible to get ahead. No matter how many bots you block there are 10 more to take their place. I had to abandon the platform. Facebook doesn't even seem to care that their platform is being strangled with fake posts. At least Twitter/X has the excuse that Elon fired the people who were trying to combat the spam. I don't know what Facebook's excuse is.
- robertlagrant 1y ago
  YouTube has lots and lots of bot comments as well.
  - lizardking 1y ago
    Even worse, YouTube is presently being over taken with AI slop content.
    - meroes 1y ago
      Haha those "how it's made" thumbnails of a fully formed cake shaped like a car plopping out of a spigot or other nonsense.
  - gspencley 1y ago
    Not only that, but people have discovered that comments shown to you on YouTube videos are also subject to "algorithmic scoring", based on your preferences, just like video recommendations. About a year ago a video went viral where someone in a romantic relationship demonstrated that the opinions expressed in comments on videos shown to her differ radically from the opinions expressed in comments on the exact same video when viewed by her significant other using his account. My wife and I then immediately verified that this was true for us as well.
  - sebastiennight 1y ago
    The current trend is, relevant-looking top-upvoted comment followed by a thread where an innocent-looking account will ask an innocent question/request for recommendations, and get a helpful reply from multiple concerned kind "people" recommending the same resource... All AI bots from top to bottom
DrBazza 1y ago
> Jeez Zucky, I wonder why social is dying. Is it because there's no bloody social between the ads and random algorithm shite anymore? Well, there is a 'tab' (at least on mobile) that is eventually marked 'Friends' buried inside 'Feeds'. The irony is lost on Zuck I suppose, as that used to be the front 'page' and KSP of Facebook. All of my friends and family just have big whatsapp groups instead. Guess what will be the next target of randomly inserted ads?
- rootnod3 1y ago
  Pretty sure the next target IS gonna be WhatsApp. Ads inserted at random intervals into groups. Give that whole cycle enough shit iterations and we are back to mailing lists and IRC channels.
enaaem 1y ago
Make FB responsible for the information from automatic feeds. No need to regulate fake news and stuff. Just make them liable for offences like scams and defamation. FB defence would be that they are like a telecom company and aren't responsible what is said over the phone. But if they are pushing scammer to call you, then they should be co-liable.
ars 1y ago
> 6 'pages' ... before I saw an actual friend's post I opened mine, and the first post was from a friend, as were about 75% of the remainder of the posts. The other 25% were from Facegroup groups I joined. There were zero news stories, and zero AI stuff.
- vel0city 1y ago
  Yeah, this experience could really vary from person to person. I wonder if this person has anyone in their "friends" actually regularly posting? If nobody in their network is posting anything, there's not posts from their network to appear.
zeroonetwothree 1y ago
I just opened Facebook (for the first time in months) and 3 of the top 5 stories are from friends. Not sure why you have such a different experience.
- rootnod3 1y ago
  I tried the same a while back. I am now pretty sure it's part of the algorithm. If you stay away long enough, it reels you back in to scrolling by showing you some important updates first and before you know it, it draws you back into the abyss of AI generated content and ads and influencers. edit: s/tells/reels
Twirrim 1y ago
Likewise, Facebook has become spectacularly useless for me. I've missed important moments in friend's lives for several days because Facebook has decided that shoving random fan pages and adverts are what I actually want to see. A friend's dad died and I didn't know for 5 days. He was busy dealing with everything that comes with such a major life event, posted it to facebook assuming that would be an effective way to communicate it.
- sgregnt 1y ago
  I see posts from my friends all the time. Most of the post in my feed are from friends or groups I follow.
  - Twirrim 1y ago
    I just did a quick tally. Of the first 26 posts in my feed: * 11 friends/page/groups * 15 groups/pages that I haven't followed or interacted with. Of those, the first post was a friend, the next 5 posts were groups or pages I haven't interacted with. It also shoved reels at me 3 times, further delaying me seeing the content I actually want to see. Of those 11 posts from people I did specifically try to follow on FB, only 2 were from today (not sure if folks just haven't posted). One of the posts from a friend was from 6 days ago that has never popped up in my feed before. What's notable to me about that delay is that I saw and interacted with a more recent post of theirs this morning. So I guess they've jumped up in priority in "the algorithm", so now it finally decides to show me it. Of course, continuing in the grand tradition of "Facebook WTF", I went to scroll back up the feed to look for other signal and it's all gone. It doesn't even reliably show me my wife's feeds. (plus it does have that amazing feature where it'll give me a notification that she just posted/commented on something on facebook, and even lies about the time/date of posting until you refresh the page, while she's literally fast asleep beside me.)
01100011 1y ago
Facebook and instagram: less and less posts by real people. Reddit and other discussion sites: Controlled by "basement dwellers"(i.e. doomers w/ too much free time), trolls and, soon, AI bots. Dominated by groupthink and devoid of friendly discussion. I think the only exception is my local community page on Facebook. People do seem to be civil(real names and close physical proximity help) and it's all real content.
- huijzer 1y ago
  > Reddit and other discussion sites: Controlled by "basement dwellers"(i.e. doomers w/ too much free time), trolls and, soon, AI bots. Dominated by groupthink and devoid of friendly discussion. I sometimes have the feeling that most HN commenters are also unemployed or in academia and most non-commenting readers are employed.
  - 01100011 1y ago
    Fundamental problem with moderation sites like reddit and HN: discussion is controlled by those with the time to moderate. These are also the least likely people you want controlling the discussion. If only there was a reputation based site where, idk, people with more accomplishments got more weight... Twitter is, in a way, like that. I can follow, say, John Carmack, and get things he says or has reposted and ignore content from people I don't care about. I think that's why I still find myself there. It's a high signal-to-noise site where I can still participate(and actually have discussions with high achievers and ignore basement dwellers. Vs say reddit where I'm constantly dragged down into debates with the basement dwellers).
    - huijzer 1y ago
      > If only there was a reputation based site where, idk, people with more accomplishments got more weight... Very good point. I personally find Reddit or HN fairer since it doesn’t depend so much on reputation (actually: popularity). But you are right there is a benefit to weighing certain people more. I sometimes wonder whether people like Dijkstra or Feynman would have bubbled up on Twitter too. I guess so. Both were pretty outspoken so the algorithm would pick up on that like people would pick up on Feyman lectures or Dijkstra letters. They had some virality about them.
nimbius 1y ago
correction: my Social Media site Is Over.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
tinyhouse 1y ago
I actually find Facebook's feed much better than LinkedIn's for example. Meta seems to be pretty good at showing me posts from groups I often visit and even the "random" stuff is pretty relevant (although mostly a waste of time reels). LinkedIn "random" stuff is always the same stupid content that for some reason has 1000+ likes. Twitter is not much better, the push stupid videos, but at least they have the "following" feed that is much more relevant and I usually don't even bother with the "for you" feed.
caymanjim 1y ago
This is the primary reason that I'm closer than I've ever been to deleting my Facebook account. I stopped using it in any meaningful way over a decade ago. I think I've posted about six times in the past decade. But I did still check at least a few times a week to see what my friends posted. Now I can scroll for 15 minutes and see only a tiny handful of friend posts, with about six ads and garbage meme posts (not shared by friends, just pure noise injected by Facebook) for each real friend post. I think the ratio is probably even worse than that. The other day something popped up in the Facebook Android app advertising a new feature to "just see your friends' posts" and when I clicked on that, it really did only show me friend posts and a couple actual ads. I can't find it in the app anymore, though. It's what should be the default view. It's the only thing I will ever care about. I'm willing to accept a reasonable amount of advertisement as a necessary evil to support the service. What I can't understand is why I'm seeing an endless stream of garbage memes from random accounts that I do not follow and couldn't care less about. Stop "suggesting" things to me. I don't want to "Follow" these morons. I never intentionally interact with any of them, yet I'm flooded with them. There's little chance of me making it to the end of this year without deleting Facebook entirely. It does nothing to keep me connected to friends anymore, because it hides 99% of their posts unless I view their profiles one at a time, and the few things it does put in my feed are lost in the noise.
lizardking 1y ago
The moment they started broadcasting any comment I made on any news story to everybody in my network was when it stopped being useful for me. It's one thing for it to be discoverable if people looked, it's another thing to feature every thought I have prominently in the feed of every person I'm connected to. This was probably a decade ago, and I haven't used it much since then.
- xuhu 1y ago
  That creeps me out, and probably everyone who realizes it. But, and it's not a tongue in cheek question, why not try to use it to your advantage ?
  - sunnybeetroot 1y ago
    There are people who live for every ounce of attention, us introverted tech folk probably aren’t the majority of users.
spacechild1 1y ago
The FB feed has been completely useless for a few years now. I stopped posting a while ago because it didn't really make sense anymore. Meta sucking up to the MAGA crowd broke the last straw for me and I've finally deactivated my account.
neogodless 1y ago
FWIW this is the only way I use Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr (That plus having FBP installed.) Still feels like my friends never post any more, except for like 1% of them?

by corobo 1y ago

esperent 1y ago

It's because everyone moved over to using Whatsapp groups instead, for the actual social stuff, and TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube for the gratuitous lusting after other people's perfect lives stuff. It used to be that we looked at the perfect shared moments from our friends lives, but this didn't make us feel bad enough so we outsourced it to models backed by teams of experts so that we can compare ourselves to impossible highs and thusly feel only the most exquisite of lows when comparing our own real and therefore often shitty lives.

aprilthird2021 1y ago
This is the right answer, and it's something I believe Meta has also said publicly, that messaging apps have become the family and friends connection machine as people shifted to using mobile phones and messaging became free and able to handle multimedia.
zpeti 1y ago
Yes this is the key point, and I really don't think Zuckerberg is to blame for this. It's just how the market moved. Before tiktok Zuck did actually try and move facebook back to friend territory, but tiktok became such a threat to time spent online they had to shift to "engaging content" And everyone is in whatsapp groups anyway for personal content... When Elon bought twitter he bought back the "following" tab on twitter, and frankly, I used it a few times then stopped. It was just boring. Shifting through pages and pages of random content from people I follow is just too much energy. The fact is, personalised feeds do just work. We hate this, but it works. It's a bit like sugar, I know it has zero benefit in 2025 eating sugar, but I just do it, because its nice and it works, and it feels good. My brain knows its bad for me, but I just can't resist. Now you can blame restaurants and ice cream shops for this, but the fact is, if the particular ice cream shop I buy ice cream at closed, or offered less sugar alternatives, it would in fact lose market share. And of course, there are sugar free ice cream shops, but their market share will never be that big. If facebook wanted to actually stay on top, they were forced into this.
- zelphirkalt 1y ago
  Long term will show whether it was the right decision by FB. If he now claims social media dead, then maybe already signs are showing, that the decisions were not as smart as he originally thought. Short term thinking kills many businesses.
- alex1138 1y ago
  And that's fine except people have missed seriously important life updates because of selective post non-showing Facebook already had people up in arms when the feed was first introduced (probably because Zuckerberg seemingly doesn't believe in privacy as a concept, at all) and now they want to ruin it (especially now but it's been like this for years) by defeating the point of it? And I do blame him, anyway https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122
  - corobo 1y ago
    Missing things is another one I noticed yeah. In my case it's gigs from local places I actually follow. Why show an event that happened last Friday? They even know it's time sensitive because it's an event with a date and time attached!
- Nursie 1y ago
  It’s not universal though - they don’t work for me, I don’t want or care about any of the “value add” in a feed. I don’t want reels, I’m not there for suggestions. Clearly I’m a minority as I’m sure they have research saying it does drive engagement for large Numbers of people, but Facebook appears to be worse for all that other stuff and as a result is failing everyone.

manbitesdog 1y ago

Facebook is now a birthday-reminder and old-connection-keeper tool loaded with empty content to feel less sad. Instagram and TikTok are also trending towards content consumption. Messaging and group chats are the only real social media now

corobo 1y ago
Ooh speaking of birthday reminders - if Facebook is browsing this thread looking for things to fix: bring back the birthday iCal feed! You literally had notifications via my calendar bringing me back to your site every few days/weeks to say happy birthday and maybe have a bit of a browse. Now the reminders are in my todo list and I say happy birthday via text or call instead. Path of least pain in the backside. Absolutely bizarre they ditched the birthdays and events iCal feeds.
- barbazoo 1y ago
  Funny that you think they’d prioritize something that’d be useful, good for you.
  - corobo 1y ago
    Haha of course. I was probably just one of a mere few hundred million people using it in a way that brought me back to the algorithm so it got scrapped for underutilisation :(
  - pixl97 1y ago
    Boss: "you're only allowed to work on things that serve more ad views"
  - reverendsteveii 1y ago
    Remember when they told us that capitalism would cause people to trip over themselves to give us what we want and need because that would naturally be where most of the profit could be had? Why do you think it didn't do that in this case? The answer of course is that facebook does serve it's customers. It serves the people who can afford to buy ads, and what it serves them is you.

givemeethekeys 1y ago

Not sure when they will take it away, but for now, there is a cleaner option - go to Feeds on the left (I use it on the computer), and then Friends (as opposed to All or Groups). That gets you the latest posts from friends in reverse chronological order.

alex1138 1y ago
Honestly it feels like a hostage situation Like some engineer in the company begged Mark like, "Please, people are going to drop your product completely unless you give them some control" (remember Top Stories vs Most Recent?) And Mark's like "yeah, ok, cool" (it'll be removed in 2 years when said engineer quits/is fired)
corobo 1y ago
Oh wow I actually forgot about this. I used to have a bookmark that took me directly to the friends feed but it would seem it just redirects to the homepage now, and the navigating to the feeds fresh just loads within the page rather than via URL (at least on mobile web, m.facebook.com, not checked desktop)

tanjtanjtanj 1y ago

About couple years ago I logged onto Facebook for the first time in nearly a decade to sell something on marketplace. I took a peek at my feed and the set up was: Post from some guy I barely knew in high school talking about giving all at his job with zero comments or likes followed by Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad endlessly. I just kept scrolling and scrolling and hitting more pages of ads. I refreshed and got a different single post followed by more ads. I took a short video of the feed to show my friend who worked at Facebook at the time and he said “oh it might do that when it doesn’t know what to show you, if you use it more it will get better” I asked how it would learn what I liked when it was just showing me ads and he didn’t have a good answer. I guess nobody cares there.

reginald78 1y ago
And why would some one continue to use it if all it does is show ads? You have to put some cheese on a rattrap if you want the rat to stick his head in it.

yodsanklai 1y ago

I don't see a lot of friends posts, but I see some groups which are pretty active, and sometimes even useful. For instance, local hiking group, people post pictures, organize hike. I thought facebook was dead, but there's still a lot of activity.

Ajedi32 1y ago

Facebook has a Friends feed[1] which only shows posts from friends (and ads, but that's a whole other discussion). Even so, like 80% of the posts from my friends are just them re-sharing news articles or random memes; I wish there was a way to block reshares from pages or something like that. Also, personal pet peeve: Instagram has a way to turn off "suggested posts" in the feed... for 30 days, then the setting gets automatically turned back on. This is such a blatantly user hostile anti-pattern it's almost as bad as if they didn't have the setting at all. [1]: https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr

rrauenza 1y ago
It’s odd that in the iPad version, the friends button at the bottom doesn’t take you to the same feed, but rather lists of people to add.

szundi 1y ago

[dead]

mindtricks 1y ago

I used to count how many non-friend items there were between friend posts. If I recall correctly, my max count was 20. And similarly to you, when I do see something it's from 3 days ago and feels no relevant to comment or interact with. I know so many people hate Facebook, but I used to really enjoy those small moments with friends where we could interact over small life updates and photos. Now they feed me garbage to groups I've never subscribed to based on some "guess" around my interests.

brap 1y ago
Fun game. I just had 7, then 3, then I gave up after 30. And those 2 friend “posts” were 1. someone sharing a page’s post, and 2. a friend posting what appears to be an automated happy birthday on someone else’s wall. I did not see any actual content from friends at all. Most stuff on FB seems to be 1. pages I don’t follow 2. ads 3. posts from groups I no longer care about 4. random people who are not my friends but somehow I still get to see their posts in my feed (not even popular posts) 5. sometimes, some uninteresting activity by an actual friend (commented on something, shared something) 6. occasionally a friend’s IG story pops up (I guess these are automatically cross-posted to FB or something)
malexw 1y ago
I've also done this and my record count was 120. 120 sponsored or suggested posts about things I don't care about in between the posts from people I'm actually interested in. I'll echo what others have said - if social media is dead, it's because they killed it themselves.
- jayknight 1y ago
  I use the Social Fixer browser extension to hide suggested content and my facebook home page is almost entirely: Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' IT Humor and Memes (UNCENSORED / Sanju L Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / 90's Nostalgia Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Xzo Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Tacofficial Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / The Mother of All Nerds Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' Photoshop That / Fatih Trk Suggested: click to show/hide 'Reels' / Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / JaredHalley Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Quinn Alexander on air Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Sarah SilvermanVerified account Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / History of Music Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Minor League BaseballVerified account Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Posts which will make you come Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / How About that! Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / The Other 98% Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' Christians who enjoy good clea / Rachel Ballard Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Graeson Mcgaha Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' Ancient history / Jesse Velosa Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Cincinnati Symphony OrchestraVerified ac Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Awesome Science Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Seinfeldism Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Jimlapbap Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / TromboneTimoVerified account Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' Handbell People / Deb Grundman Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Action News 5 Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' Harry Potter Memes / PotterzWorld Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Tom Scott Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / The Student Music Organizer Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / PY6CJ - João Grisi Online Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Memes so literal they aren't even memes Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Pittsburgh Symphony OrchestraVerified ac Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' Back To The Future Real Fans!! / Lawrence Neville Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Edson Xhhak Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Raging Mustache Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Tom Papa Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' Historic Film Locations / Mark E. Phillips Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / TromboneTimoVerified account Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Thanks Chipper Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' / Dog Bless You Suggested: click to show/hide '${1}' Christians who enjoy good clea / Catherine Lee Rodriguez

wintermutestwin 1y ago

I never load the homepage. Feeds>friends in a firefox container with FBPurity is the only way I’ll touch that abomination. I also find that I have to mute a lot of over sharers. I feel for those people because I know they are like rats pushing the social lever for some imaginary sense of connection.

jc_811 1y ago

I don't know if their newsfeed algorithm is broken, or just grasping at straws, but whenever I log in (fairly often simply for FB marketplace) my feed is full of posts and recommendations for things that don't even make sense for me. For example hiking groups that are in a random mid-size city 2,000mi from me. Or student housing groups in a random international city. I've tried to even provide feedback on them not being relevant, but they still always appear. I don't know, it really does seem that their newsfeed relevancy is fundamentally broken

corobo 1y ago
I thought it was being insulting for a while but I guess I did pause on it to screenshot and make a witty post but I'm constantly getting Dull Men's Club, and more recently the knockoff versions haha Facebook, I'm not into these, and I've told you so! It was just that "Suggested for you: Dull Men's Club" was funny the first time!
Throw9444 1y ago
I haven’t had a Facebook account in about a decade at this point, and I recall continually discussing already how useless it was without chronological sorting and recommending you random crap (and I’m not just talking about the ads).
rcruzeiro 1y ago
I spent over one year being served sponsored content advertising sales of firearms, cloned credit cards and drugs. Last time I logged in, I’ve noticed that I was being served content based on interests of my close friends. For example, a close friend got really into rock climbing, so I got tons of rock climbing meme accounts. I have now grown tired of all of that and, when I realised that it had been ages since I had seen someone I actually know post anything, I deactivated it all.
sethhochberg 1y ago
The thing that always surprised me about this when I still used FB was that they clearly had the expertise available in Meta to do it right because my Instagram ads/recommended content was almost stunningly well-tailored: events I actually wanted to buy tickets to, products that actually interested me, even down to reels from new comedians I find genuinely funny... My FB feed, by comparison, was almost exactly like yours - not just irrelevant interests, but geographically crazy irrelevant interests.

rvba 1y ago

There used to be a hidden "only friends" feed - it got removed, or is hidden even better. Also you couldnt default to it.

FireBeyond 1y ago
On desktop - left sidebar, Feeds > Friends (not Friends at the top level). On mobile (or at least iOS, which I have) the bottom sidebar, second left button Friends are not perfect for me but cut out 90% of the garbage.

jasondigitized 1y ago

This. My facebook feed is 10% posts from friends, and 90% ads or weird content posts.

Eric_WVGG 1y ago

I was a very early Instagram user and would even defend it over the years as "influencers" became a thing. “I don’t see it as a problem… if you don’t like those people then don’t follow them.” Nothing about my tastes have changed over the years, but I now find Instagram to be painful to look at. If social media is over, it’s because Meta made the conscious decision to kill it.

jonathanlb 1y ago
I would argue that social media’s positive-feedback engine contributed to its own demise. Anec-data: After being terminally online on Instagram, I decided to took a two-week break because I was noticed I was mindlessly scrolling through content that I enjoyed. After the two weeks, it was striking to note that almost all videos followed a pattern- a jarring hook in the first two seconds, a provocative question, rapid-fire cuts and a soundtrack. Most videos have to follow this proven formula, but in doing so, they'll be like all the other videos and will then have to take the next step to engage users, so videos become more aggressive and formulaic, which for me, gets in the way of the content. This is completely omitting the fact that quickly scrolling past accounts you follow will trigger Instagram to suggest clips that are more provocative in an effort to capture one's attention. Even if you're intentional about what you consume, the app is adversarial to your own intentions.
- selfhoster 1y ago
  That's an eloquently stated view. I'm not on FB or Instagram, but everything you said somehow resonated with me as a YT user.
- kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
  It's MBAs on the eternal quest to juice profits. If a social site ran itself lean like Craigslist they could win the entire prize without the need to manipulate content for the benefit of advertisers.
- smcin 1y ago
  Sure, but don't mislabel that "positive-feedback engine". Engagement, attention loop, reinforcement, clicks, views, comments, likes, follows, longer average visit time, distraction engine, compulsive behavior, higher advertiser revenue, whatever, but it isn't positive and it isn't really feedback. If you had a friend who in the middle of interactions habitually pulled out a bag of cocaine and snorted some (or gambled), you wouldn't say they were giving positive feedback to the dealer (/casino). You'd say they were annoying and unable to function. What happens on Instagram if you vote dislike/ignore attention-bait clips and try to find longer-form (>10 minute) content, and use searches rather than feed?

intrasight 1y ago

Just filter everything out that's not an actual post by a friend. Filter out news, shares, ads, etc - all that nonsense.

notwhereyouare 1y ago
you can't. they don't give you a filter to show just friends. you have to slog through all the "recommended" posts
- intrasight 1y ago
  I didn't say to use a filter that they provide. It's your "user agent" - have it do your bidding. I use FBP: https://www.fbpurity.com/faq.htm https://www.fbpurity.com/faq.htm

FireBeyond 1y ago

The only ways FB are tolerable to me: Desktop - left sidebar, Feeds > Friends. Mobile - Friends button on the bottom menu. Not perfect, but cuts out 90% of the garbage.

chpatrick 1y ago

I highly recommend the FB purity extension to remove all that crap: https://www.fbpurity.com/ https://www.fbpurity.com/

magicmicah85 1y ago

Zuck did announce rather recently the Friends feed is more prominent on the app. It’s always been well hidden, but I think they know people are getting sick of the mindless scrolling. https://www.theverge.com/news/637668/facebook-friends-only-feed-algorithm https://www.theverge.com/news/637668/facebook-friends-only-f...

xbmcuser 1y ago

For me social is now family, extended family, siblings, school, high school and university friend groups on whatsapp with just people sharing big news wishing birthdays etc. All the info in the groups is in silo from each group. Where you actually behave in the groups like you would in real life ie differently with different groups.

nyarlathotep_ 1y ago

Facebook has devolved to the realm of the unreal now. I signed-in a few weeks back and the whole thing was just bizarre clickbait, ads, and bizarre clickbait generated image spam. I really don't see how there's a future for this. Is this (the abandonment and subsequent mass-sloppification) an American thing? Is there a user base in other countries? It seems like a relic of a previous era.

gre 1y ago
On my feed I get AI-generated pictures of castles and houses in the woods. There are enough real places where we don't need to make stuff up. Makes me feel bad, actually.
- jandrese 1y ago
  Yes. I also got fake airplanes and way too long Wikipedia summaries of random things. It seems to me that there are really only a handful of outfits that really have the Facebook algorithm over their knee. It seems like the sort of thing that content moderators should be able to combat, but Facebook has just sort of given up.
burningChrome 1y ago
I've been on Instagram for less than a year for a photography and now my feed regularly includes what people are now calling "rage bait". which I found are people purposefully posting things to get people to engage with their content and are rewarded when more people comment on that content. I 100% agree that I cannot see a future where people think this is healthy and can continue.
- sebastiennight 1y ago
  > I cannot see a future where people think this is healthy and can continue. The first is not a prerequisite for the second. See: fast-food, car-optimized cities, Electron apps, microplastics, AI-controlled drone warfare, trap music, etc.
1y ago

carlosjobim 1y ago

Your friend feed is here: https://www.facebook.com/?filter=all&sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?filter=all&sk=h_chr

corobo 1y ago
Unfortunately not on mobile web, just takes me to the homepage (even if I replace the www with m to rule out a blanket redirect to mobile) I guess I could restrict my Facebooking to desktop if it still works there but then I'll visit even less haha

jedberg 1y ago

Maybe I'm in a test group, but my interface recently got a "friends only" feed. It's great.

jghn 1y ago

I pretty much never use their algorithmic feed. I've switched to going in, selecting `feeds` and then `friends`. There's usually at most a half dozen posts per day. I also belong to some groups, but I'll go to them directly when I want to see what's going on there.

Justin_K 1y ago

I’ve basically stopped using the site for all the same reasons. I think it is because their engagement by real human users is near zero. In order to keep it freshfor whoever is left, like seniors hoping for an occasional pic of their grandkids, they fill it with the garbage

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 1y ago

Is there a setting to only show content from friends? Last used FB 13 years ago.

neogodless 1y ago
On web site - https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 1y ago
  Can't see that - requires a login. So, there is a setting. Believe you.
dtauzell 1y ago
They have a friends feed which will also include some adds

bastardoperator 1y ago

Sad seeing so many people here addicted to drugs.

jandrese 1y ago

Facebook is probably the worst social media company at combating AI bot spam, although it is a tight race with Twitter/X. Even with aggressive pruning of AI generated "content" it's impossible to get ahead. No matter how many bots you block there are 10 more to take their place. I had to abandon the platform. Facebook doesn't even seem to care that their platform is being strangled with fake posts. At least Twitter/X has the excuse that Elon fired the people who were trying to combat the spam. I don't know what Facebook's excuse is.

robertlagrant 1y ago
YouTube has lots and lots of bot comments as well.
- lizardking 1y ago
  Even worse, YouTube is presently being over taken with AI slop content.
  - meroes 1y ago
    Haha those "how it's made" thumbnails of a fully formed cake shaped like a car plopping out of a spigot or other nonsense.
- gspencley 1y ago
  Not only that, but people have discovered that comments shown to you on YouTube videos are also subject to "algorithmic scoring", based on your preferences, just like video recommendations. About a year ago a video went viral where someone in a romantic relationship demonstrated that the opinions expressed in comments on videos shown to her differ radically from the opinions expressed in comments on the exact same video when viewed by her significant other using his account. My wife and I then immediately verified that this was true for us as well.
- sebastiennight 1y ago
  The current trend is, relevant-looking top-upvoted comment followed by a thread where an innocent-looking account will ask an innocent question/request for recommendations, and get a helpful reply from multiple concerned kind "people" recommending the same resource... All AI bots from top to bottom

DrBazza 1y ago

> Jeez Zucky, I wonder why social is dying. Is it because there's no bloody social between the ads and random algorithm shite anymore? Well, there is a 'tab' (at least on mobile) that is eventually marked 'Friends' buried inside 'Feeds'. The irony is lost on Zuck I suppose, as that used to be the front 'page' and KSP of Facebook. All of my friends and family just have big whatsapp groups instead. Guess what will be the next target of randomly inserted ads?

rootnod3 1y ago
Pretty sure the next target IS gonna be WhatsApp. Ads inserted at random intervals into groups. Give that whole cycle enough shit iterations and we are back to mailing lists and IRC channels.

enaaem 1y ago

Make FB responsible for the information from automatic feeds. No need to regulate fake news and stuff. Just make them liable for offences like scams and defamation. FB defence would be that they are like a telecom company and aren't responsible what is said over the phone. But if they are pushing scammer to call you, then they should be co-liable.

ars 1y ago

> 6 'pages' ... before I saw an actual friend's post I opened mine, and the first post was from a friend, as were about 75% of the remainder of the posts. The other 25% were from Facegroup groups I joined. There were zero news stories, and zero AI stuff.

vel0city 1y ago
Yeah, this experience could really vary from person to person. I wonder if this person has anyone in their "friends" actually regularly posting? If nobody in their network is posting anything, there's not posts from their network to appear.

zeroonetwothree 1y ago

I just opened Facebook (for the first time in months) and 3 of the top 5 stories are from friends. Not sure why you have such a different experience.

rootnod3 1y ago
I tried the same a while back. I am now pretty sure it's part of the algorithm. If you stay away long enough, it reels you back in to scrolling by showing you some important updates first and before you know it, it draws you back into the abyss of AI generated content and ads and influencers. edit: s/tells/reels

Twirrim 1y ago

Likewise, Facebook has become spectacularly useless for me. I've missed important moments in friend's lives for several days because Facebook has decided that shoving random fan pages and adverts are what I actually want to see. A friend's dad died and I didn't know for 5 days. He was busy dealing with everything that comes with such a major life event, posted it to facebook assuming that would be an effective way to communicate it.

sgregnt 1y ago
I see posts from my friends all the time. Most of the post in my feed are from friends or groups I follow.
- Twirrim 1y ago
  I just did a quick tally. Of the first 26 posts in my feed: * 11 friends/page/groups * 15 groups/pages that I haven't followed or interacted with. Of those, the first post was a friend, the next 5 posts were groups or pages I haven't interacted with. It also shoved reels at me 3 times, further delaying me seeing the content I actually want to see. Of those 11 posts from people I did specifically try to follow on FB, only 2 were from today (not sure if folks just haven't posted). One of the posts from a friend was from 6 days ago that has never popped up in my feed before. What's notable to me about that delay is that I saw and interacted with a more recent post of theirs this morning. So I guess they've jumped up in priority in "the algorithm", so now it finally decides to show me it. Of course, continuing in the grand tradition of "Facebook WTF", I went to scroll back up the feed to look for other signal and it's all gone. It doesn't even reliably show me my wife's feeds. (plus it does have that amazing feature where it'll give me a notification that she just posted/commented on something on facebook, and even lies about the time/date of posting until you refresh the page, while she's literally fast asleep beside me.)

01100011 1y ago

Facebook and instagram: less and less posts by real people. Reddit and other discussion sites: Controlled by "basement dwellers"(i.e. doomers w/ too much free time), trolls and, soon, AI bots. Dominated by groupthink and devoid of friendly discussion. I think the only exception is my local community page on Facebook. People do seem to be civil(real names and close physical proximity help) and it's all real content.

huijzer 1y ago
> Reddit and other discussion sites: Controlled by "basement dwellers"(i.e. doomers w/ too much free time), trolls and, soon, AI bots. Dominated by groupthink and devoid of friendly discussion. I sometimes have the feeling that most HN commenters are also unemployed or in academia and most non-commenting readers are employed.
- 01100011 1y ago
  Fundamental problem with moderation sites like reddit and HN: discussion is controlled by those with the time to moderate. These are also the least likely people you want controlling the discussion. If only there was a reputation based site where, idk, people with more accomplishments got more weight... Twitter is, in a way, like that. I can follow, say, John Carmack, and get things he says or has reposted and ignore content from people I don't care about. I think that's why I still find myself there. It's a high signal-to-noise site where I can still participate(and actually have discussions with high achievers and ignore basement dwellers. Vs say reddit where I'm constantly dragged down into debates with the basement dwellers).
  - huijzer 1y ago
    > If only there was a reputation based site where, idk, people with more accomplishments got more weight... Very good point. I personally find Reddit or HN fairer since it doesn’t depend so much on reputation (actually: popularity). But you are right there is a benefit to weighing certain people more. I sometimes wonder whether people like Dijkstra or Feynman would have bubbled up on Twitter too. I guess so. Both were pretty outspoken so the algorithm would pick up on that like people would pick up on Feyman lectures or Dijkstra letters. They had some virality about them.

nimbius 1y ago

correction: my Social Media site Is Over.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

tinyhouse 1y ago

I actually find Facebook's feed much better than LinkedIn's for example. Meta seems to be pretty good at showing me posts from groups I often visit and even the "random" stuff is pretty relevant (although mostly a waste of time reels). LinkedIn "random" stuff is always the same stupid content that for some reason has 1000+ likes. Twitter is not much better, the push stupid videos, but at least they have the "following" feed that is much more relevant and I usually don't even bother with the "for you" feed.

caymanjim 1y ago

This is the primary reason that I'm closer than I've ever been to deleting my Facebook account. I stopped using it in any meaningful way over a decade ago. I think I've posted about six times in the past decade. But I did still check at least a few times a week to see what my friends posted. Now I can scroll for 15 minutes and see only a tiny handful of friend posts, with about six ads and garbage meme posts (not shared by friends, just pure noise injected by Facebook) for each real friend post. I think the ratio is probably even worse than that. The other day something popped up in the Facebook Android app advertising a new feature to "just see your friends' posts" and when I clicked on that, it really did only show me friend posts and a couple actual ads. I can't find it in the app anymore, though. It's what should be the default view. It's the only thing I will ever care about. I'm willing to accept a reasonable amount of advertisement as a necessary evil to support the service. What I can't understand is why I'm seeing an endless stream of garbage memes from random accounts that I do not follow and couldn't care less about. Stop "suggesting" things to me. I don't want to "Follow" these morons. I never intentionally interact with any of them, yet I'm flooded with them. There's little chance of me making it to the end of this year without deleting Facebook entirely. It does nothing to keep me connected to friends anymore, because it hides 99% of their posts unless I view their profiles one at a time, and the few things it does put in my feed are lost in the noise.

lizardking 1y ago

The moment they started broadcasting any comment I made on any news story to everybody in my network was when it stopped being useful for me. It's one thing for it to be discoverable if people looked, it's another thing to feature every thought I have prominently in the feed of every person I'm connected to. This was probably a decade ago, and I haven't used it much since then.

xuhu 1y ago
That creeps me out, and probably everyone who realizes it. But, and it's not a tongue in cheek question, why not try to use it to your advantage ?
- sunnybeetroot 1y ago
  There are people who live for every ounce of attention, us introverted tech folk probably aren’t the majority of users.

spacechild1 1y ago

The FB feed has been completely useless for a few years now. I stopped posting a while ago because it didn't really make sense anymore. Meta sucking up to the MAGA crowd broke the last straw for me and I've finally deactivated my account.

neogodless 1y ago

FWIW this is the only way I use Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr (That plus having FBP installed.) Still feels like my friends never post any more, except for like 1% of them?