This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I haven't really looked at Facebook in a long time but also haven't deleted my account because I do use Facebook marketplace sometimes.
I just logged in and looked. I actually saw no AI generated content except the few examples that were posted by people I know. I'm sure other's experiences are different, but the algorithm isn't feeding me slop for some reason.
I deleted Facebook maybe two years ago. One of the last things I saw was a very obviously AI generated image of six or seven soldiers that had lost the same leg and all had it replaced with a prosthetic at exactly the same point, with some caption about “let’s get some likes for our wounded warriors!” Followed by dozens of comments in support, I assume all were bots.
So long Facebook, see you never, until one day I inexplicably need to use your platform to get updates from my kid's school.
This makes me so fucking angry.
That's what email is for.
In fact, if I unblock them, I still get emails from an elementary school in the Seattle area because 20 years ago I dated somebody with a kid that went there and I subscribed to their event email.
Yes, I tried to unsubscribe for many years.
My kid refused. The school district was notified that they needed to do something else, or we would sue. They changed.
I missed out on a lot of communication for my kids' extracurriculars because they were only on Facebook and I don't use it. It's infuriating, but less infuriating than the other platforms that a couple of the groups used to attempt to communicate schedules and requirements.
It's ridiculous that this sort of thing isn't a solved problem. Schools need to communicate with parents in an effective way, yet none of the platforms I've used work well. I've been in tech for decades and I still have trouble with their shitty UI.
I can't stand how many companies and organizations only have a presence on Facebook. When I reach out to them to ask if there is another way to stay connected I usually get a big NOPE.
It is the asking that matters. If you sound really unhappy it makes maybe a little tiny bit of pressure, but many little bits make a lot
Anger is pointless without action. Either accept the situation as it is, or start regularly attending school board meetings. If you want a policy changed, speak out about it. Don't just give them vibes either, give them good reasons to change the rules and processes. Have a solution at the ready which is idiot-proof, accessible, and well-supported. Oh, and also, make sure that your clear solution is zero-cost, which is why schools fell into using Facebook and municipal groups used Twitter.
If you want to change the situation, you have to understand why it became the way it is and address the pain points that led here, as well as their pain points that both prevent moving and/or encourage moving. If Facebook suits the needs of the school and the majority of parents, stop being angry and realize that there's a value in the platform for the purpose.
I don't have any kids. But I've been in similar situations. My previous employment place used Facebook for company comms. I spoke out about it many times. I've volunteered for multiple orgs and asked them to move to Nextcloud several times and they just refused. I've even turned down volunteer opportunities because they refused to communicate over anything other than Google Chat. No one cares.
I get your frustration. Why don't they care? Have you asked people directly what benefits they get from Facebook and why they won't move?
I expect you'll get the following, based on my experience:
Exposure - Most people can access Facebook regularly.
External Accessibility - Facebook can be accessed on multiple devices, by people who are not tech-conscious.
Reliability - Facebook outages are rare enough to be newsworthy, so no matter what conditions the school or the org is in, it will stay up and be exposed and accessible.
Internal Accessibility - Everyone in the org, even the people who aren't regularly involved in marketing or community comms, knows how to post to Facebook.
Cost - Facebook's non-monetary costs are subtle and mostly apply to private users. To any organization with a tight budget, Facebook and Twitter are godsends, because they don't need to have a P&L line that can be scrutinized and audited. I'm sure you understand as a volunteer how important it can be to dodge the accountants while getting messaging out.
Of course there's also experience, knowledge, and negative inertia built up over time. Until you can cover all 5 of those points at least, you don't have a viable option. Nextcloud is neat, but who will administer it without pay? Facebook runs the platform without being visibly paid by the school or the org. Facebook has widgets prebuilt to integrate with the website (that the org also outsources administration of). Nextcloud doesn't natively have that. Facebook is hosted on a massive network of data centers, Nextcloud would have to be run on one mistakenly undiscarded computer acting as a server in the basement. And it would have to be that way because the org doesn't have the budget approval for AWS or added hosting. And yes, everything will always come back to that cost issue. Until you can beat that, you have nothing.
Why don't they care?
Because the status quo works for them. Anything else is a you problem.
This answer applies to a broad swath of topics.
I mean, yes. But I was trying to get at why it works and what would be needed to change the status quo. Tbh if Facebook or Twitter could be prosecuted for their role in harm to children or sex trafficking, schools would very quickly be ready for change.
what would be needed to change the status quo.
One of the following:
I’ve recently accepted that the vast majority of people who use technology daily will never question or understand how it works, but will act as if it is indispensable, omniscient, and impenetrable.
In other words, it's a god
If I ask or tell them anything at all, they just get annoyed because they don't care.
We need a dumb browser.
This browser doesn’t work for most shit, making it the best browser available for most shit you actually need to do.
That’s a browser I can get behind.
Literally the only reason my family interacts with Facebook. It's infuriating.
What I barely understand is why businesses keep fueling this ad inferno. If it’s mostly bots farming engagement, isn’t that going to limit the effectiveness of advertising? Won’t that eventually show up in their returns on the advertising’? Do they really want their business associated with scantily clad 14 year old feeds, or are they all totally blind to that.
I get part of it… social media is the internet now, for most people. So if you want reach, where else are ya gonna go? Cable? Newspapers? Local news? They killed everything else. Google’s even killing YouTube sponsors now, auto skipping sponsor segments in the app.
Are big businesses still advertising on Facebook? I'd heard that they were running ads for full-on scams, presumably because few real people are left on the platform and it's no longer attractive to most advertisers.
The businesses that advertise on Facebook are mostly scams from what I have seen. For them the ads work, and they have no reputation to lose.
So long Facebook, see you never, until one day I inexplicably need to use your platform to get updates from my kid's school.
Screw any school or PTA that distributes information by Facebook. That should be outlawed.
If only there was a way to send the same communication to a group of people at once, regardless of what platform they use.
Alas, that sort of technology seems impossible. Even in Star Trek they don’t have such a thing.
The Facebook feed is an advanced algorithm that knows a shit ton about what to feed you to keep you engaged. It's not just the cookies from sites you visit. They track what thumbnails get you to stop scrolling. They track the way a human eye moves and how far your thumb glides across the screen.
Point is, if it's all scantily clad thirst traps, thats what gets your attention. If you see one, and you stop to take a screenshot for an article you're writing about how it's all thirst traps, then every third item will be another thirst trap.
Facebook doesn't care if you want to see that content. Their goal is to keep your eyes on Facebook. If it makes you mad enough to comment, that's engagement.
I didn't read the whole article, so maybe the author addresses this, but what you see on Facebook is a funhouse reflection of your own interests.
When I was still using Instagram reels, I was always amazed how quickly the algorithm figured me out. If I hesitated for even a second on a reel, it would amend my next ones immediately. I assume the real trick is comparing it to the average time spent on a reel, everyone spends longer on a wall of text reel, but when I stop on a Linux reel for an extra second, I'm immediately in the 1% for engagement.
I read something years ago about how your phone keyboard tracks your recommended words, it knows if you're more likely to type apple or Apple, or if you type soup more than average, and any app that gets that data and compares it to the baseline has an instant, in depth profile on you.
This is exactly why using something like FUTO Keyboard is essential, nowadays.
I'll have to try that. Can you comment at all on the quality of the autocorrect and ability to learn your vocabulary? I don't want to connect my keyboard to a server farm but I certainly do want it to learn to help me type more efficiently on this tiny keyboard.
Well, if you enable the model fine-tuning, it should be fine. I do not commit a lot of mistakes, and I usually correct manually, though.
This is why I love the idea of Cromite and other “antifingerprinting” efforts, not simply blocking but spoofing and plausibly randomizing as many metrics as they can.
I wish there was some way to distribute that to the masses. Like maybe a crazy hardware zero day, and it’s only used to stealth load anti fingerprinting on as many devices as it can.
They hadn’t used Facebook in years, so this is the default algorithm state — rage bait and bate-bait.
Exactly, if I look at my facebook feed, besides posts from people and groups I actually follow, the "suggested" posts are all stuff that matches my interests. gaming, music, movies.
Also, this is not that far from Instagram. And even with real women Insta always felt slimy to me.
And… weird. I don’t get the appeal.
I just did the same thing - logged on to my facebook account after many years, and I'm not having the same experience at all. Old friends, neighbors, and relatives posting disappointing amounts of AI slop, some local news it suggests I follow (something about a hairdresser getting fined for refusing service), one particular former neighbor posting an endless barrage of AI-generated religious slop... and that's about it. It wasn't interesting a decade ago, and it only got less interesting since.
I am so upset that FB killed Craigslist, that is basically the only reason I use it regularly anymore. My feed has basically been taken over by right wing influencer bots otherwise.
I tried logging in to use the Marketplace to sell some shit. For whatever reason I couldn't access it. My account is verified, location is set, and some marketplace settings pages said my account is in good standing. Sent a request to support weeks ago and heard nothing.
So I just throw shit away now. Like I WANT to use your platform, but you're not letting me. Bye.
You can find a buy nothing group. I don’t use Facebook but that’s what family members do.
What's weird is that facebook only fills my feed with slop when I open in on my phone.
On my desktop browser, my feed only contains things I have subscribed to.
I logged out from my phone. It's just unusable.
Hm.
I just logged into my fb account and got zero shit like that. Just posts from a distant cousin, a few local people I follow and my local news.
I make it a point to hide/block all the extraneous shit that the feed offers - and have sone so for years - so maybe that's the difference?
Weird.
There are addons for Firefox and other browsers too to clean out all the unwanted junk on Facebook. When I go on Facebook now it shows almost exclusively stuff that people I know have posted and groups that I follow. SocialFocus is one of them. Try it, it makes a huge difference.
there was chrome (and firefox probably?) extension that went through your all fb liked pages and unsubscribed from them so that when it's done timeline is gone entirely. fb went after its dev, removed that extension and banned him forever because it kept people off fb https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-bans-unfollow-everything-developer-delete-news-feed-2021-10 doing this all manually still worked back then, not sure about today
Facebook's letter took him by surprise, he said, adding that Unfollow Everything had only 2,500 weekly active users and 10,000 downloads.
"It was definitely growing, but it wasn't huge," he said.
"Apart from that I just very much saw it as something that improves the Facebook experience for Facebook users," he added, saying he got "amazing feedback" from people saying they "were using Facebook in a way that was much healthier for them."
slightly healthier relationship with attention devouring parasite in your pocket? not on zucc's watch, ALL contents of your skull are to be sourced from and licensed to meta platforms inc exclusively
