this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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Like I know this isn't a shock to anyone. But it's a super surprise to me. So since 2011 I was really busy with various educational or work stuff, and never had time to log in. When I did log in to post something random for family to see, I had that Fluffbusters extension that cuts out the extra shit that Meta adds to your feed.

So recently I was forced to use the FB app to do some IRL stuff related to Palestine. Holy shit the unfiltered site is garbage. You have to scroll through 10 or so unrelated pages to see your friends' posts. And the sheer volume of paid Israeli stuff is mind blowing, despite me trying to tell the algorithm that I don't like it. And despite me being friends with and liking shitloads of ML stuff, I keep getting Unilad level "let's save a bunch of puppies" content. Like I get why people who use traditional social media become liberals or worse, I even found myself becoming a bit more lib looking at it.

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[–] Lemmygradwontallowme@hexbear.net 44 points 4 months ago

And that's why they wanna ban Tiktok...

They don't want no competition against the hegemony...

[–] axont@hexbear.net 39 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Everything on Facebook is like a chain email from 2002. I'm also mystified by how well generic AI images do over there. The average Facebook user doesn't seem aware of what an AI generated image is or that they're possible. It's a complete brain frying website.

[–] Dessa@hexbear.net 22 points 4 months ago

Many of the commenters on those are also bots. But yeah, even people I know are not bots fall for em there

[–] WeedReference420@hexbear.net 21 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I liked that picture of Jesus cradling an extra pair of legs that were jutting out of his chest that had like 150k likes lmao

[–] axont@hexbear.net 13 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

My aunt on Facebook shares an AI Jesus several times a day. Each more horrifying than the last and yet she seems unaware of what they are. I wanna sit with her and ask if she truly believes a three handed child made a 20 foot tall Jesus out of sand. Or that a bus labeled "Shgoopl Baus" full of melty faced people all held up various incorrect versions of the American flag.

She simply doesn't see it. They look like real pictures to her

[–] Wolfman86@hexbear.net 12 points 4 months ago

I don’t think they care to be honest. Just like what the picture represents.

[–] Greenleaf@hexbear.net 31 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I have a friend who’s my age (early 40s) who just last week repeated the “cat litter boxes in school bathrooms are required now” myth. I asked where he saw that and of course it was Facebook…

[–] CriticalResist8@hexbear.net 31 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Facebook is a dinosaur. They've enabled monetization now and there's tons of pages automatically posting AI Content (with AI descriptions) hour after hour, with bot replies too. It's so bad. Definitely not the place to just talk to your IRL friends like it used to be. I also have to run ads for my job and TikTok has the best ROI, while Facebook charged me like 1$ per click lol, there's no way anybody is paying that much for a click. TikTok's was like 15 cents.

If you've seen the AI Jesus with cabin crew photos they're from facebook. I'm starting to think some AI (chatGPT) told someone that this was a winning combination to post on Facebook and that's why they started making those pictures specifically. Cause I don't know what Jesus has to do with flight attendants lol.

[–] ClimateChangeAnxiety@hexbear.net 14 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

you've seen the AI Jesus with cabin crew photos they're from facebook. I'm starting to think some AI (chatGPT) told someone that this was a winning combination to post on Facebook and that's why they started making those pictures specifically. Cause I don't know what Jesus has to do with flight attendants lol.

I assumed the AIs were looking at which of their posts do better and doing more of those, and ones with Jesus and apparently airline crews were some of the most successful early on so it just keeps repeating and getting worse

[–] Speaker@hexbear.net 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Facebook's CPC is especially hilarious because their cross-site tracking basically does not work on the most marketable mobile devices, which is why they work so hard to keep you in the app at all times.

[–] CriticalResist8@hexbear.net 4 points 4 months ago

They also refused our products catalog on our page without giving us a reason, and we can't appeal it anymore, but we can run ads on their website of course lol

[–] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 30 points 4 months ago

It's absolutely unusable. Early Facebook's niche was actually really good and cool too: a service built around developing and maintaining the sort of relatively weak IRL social connections that would usually just decay. Like, something to keep up with and stay connected to your high school friends or college roommates or friendly acquaintance you met at the gym was actually really neat. A lot of people got a ton of value over that, and I think it did genuinely improve the world in some ways early on. But that shit isn't profitable, so it couldn't last.

[–] Assian_Candor@hexbear.net 30 points 4 months ago (2 children)
[–] Cherufe@hexbear.net 27 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Like 80% of what I post here came from facebook

[–] Assian_Candor@hexbear.net 22 points 4 months ago

Braver than the troops

[–] GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net 4 points 4 months ago

Same, I frequent numerous shitposting groups and frankly it's a better source of OC than almost anywhere.

[–] TheWolfOfSouthEnd@lemmygrad.ml 17 points 4 months ago (4 children)

I’m a millennial. What should millenials use?

[–] Assian_Candor@hexbear.net 23 points 4 months ago

Hexbear dot net

[–] nothx@hexbear.net 19 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Encrypted chats or a private fediverse service with carefully correlated list of federated instances.

I really don’t understand the incessant need to have constant connectivity to a large social media platform. Keep to yourself and the group of friends you actually care about, all the extra assholes you tangentially knew from school aren’t worth pretending to keep in touch with.

[–] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 19 points 4 months ago (1 children)

preach.

also, I like passively cultivating an air of mystery around myself. "whatever happened to [my name]? does he still watch a lot of TV?"

they can assume, but they'll never know for sure.

[–] nothx@hexbear.net 10 points 4 months ago

Yes! Being an enigma is very fun, no one expects me to say I don’t use any mainstream social media.

[–] someone@hexbear.net 14 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Unironically, Tiktok. If you're careful to make extensive use of the like button you can train the algorithm to be scary-accurate in just a few active hours of using it. And there's a lot of socialist and anticolonialist content on there.

[–] Greenleaf@hexbear.net 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Suggestions on where to start?

[–] Xx_Aru_xX@hexbear.net 23 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Don't get me started on the reels, half the stuff there falls under SA

[–] BeamBrain@hexbear.net 19 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] TheWolfOfSouthEnd@lemmygrad.ml 18 points 4 months ago (1 children)

They aren’t wrong. I’ve haven’t seen anything personally, but I’ve seen enough comments that both Facebook and Insta reels are full of CP material.

[–] Voidance@hexbear.net 18 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I get this too and I think it’s because when you don’t use it regularly the algorithm just goes insane. I get just constant weird videos and pages that I’ve never interacted with, my ‘feed’ is unusable

[–] stigsbandit34z@hexbear.net 6 points 4 months ago

Sounds like a godawful algorithm. lol no wonder they want to ban tik tok so bad

[–] nothx@hexbear.net 18 points 4 months ago

All of the social media platforms are really bad. It’s all right wing propaganda and mass shooter apologia.

[–] Skeleton_Erisma@hexbear.net 18 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I closed my Facebook account many moons ago as part of an old job's requirement that we couldn't use social media.

I recently got harangued into reopening one because the museum I volunteer at needs someone to manage their Facebook group

I hate it, lots...

[–] Rojo27@hexbear.net 17 points 4 months ago

I recently cut down on my time on facebook when I got logged out of it and didn't bother resetting my password. But even when I was using it it was such a fucking cesspool. I had made an effort to block out content from pages I didn't like, but I would still get a ton of right wing posts.

[–] Beaver@hexbear.net 14 points 4 months ago

The algo for the front page feed got cranked up to Maximum Monetization, and it's just a bizarre hodgepodge of content nowadays. There was actually a sort of golden age many years ago when a lot of my friends and family posted pictures and updates about their lives, and so scrolling my feed was a way to keep up with them.

I still use Facebook a lot for scheduling local public events, as I've found there's a reasonable level of discoverability for local stuff. The groups feature works okay for small groups, but that's getting swallowed by discord. Social media is a shitshow.

[–] stigsbandit34z@hexbear.net 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I just recently logged in after like 5 years probably and I’m getting all kinds of unsettling AI shit I didn’t even follow. Did my account get hacked?

[–] CyberSyndicalist@hexbear.net 9 points 4 months ago

Marketers buy accounts and pages with largish followings and then repurpose them to push garbage. They often delete the old content and change the name etc so it's unrecognizable as to what it was when you followed it originally.

[–] Dessa@hexbear.net 12 points 4 months ago

It's dogshit. I only use it for checking in on my favorite food truck these days

[–] homhom9000@hexbear.net 12 points 4 months ago

I haven't been on in years but checked recently to see if anyone was speaking on the genocide, of course they weren't, and 90% of my feed was things I "may" be interested in and 10% updates from friends and family. I only keep an account for messenger.

/gen this part isn't a bit

NSFWThe things I "may" be interested in were AI images of asian women with big titties in military uniforms???? I don't know what info Facebook collected on me while I was gone( and I turned off most tracking that I could) but they were far off. Why just casually throw porn on the timeline too? Trash site

[–] Cummunism@hexbear.net 10 points 4 months ago

for a while i would go on, and the first thing i saw was some suggested page to follow, which was fuckin dumb. but somehow that stopped for me.

[–] CthulhusIntern@hexbear.net 9 points 4 months ago

I mainly use Facebook for one particular hobby, most of my friends are from that hobby, most of my content there is from that hobby. So autistic hyperfixations saved me!

[–] BasementParty@hexbear.net 7 points 4 months ago
[–] beef_curds@hexbear.net 6 points 4 months ago

I moved towns a while back, and it feels like everyone in this town is still on facebook, and organizing stuff via facebook. It's odd to return to a platform I hadn't been on in like a decade.

Am I imagining this? Is social media use real regional within the US, where one town is on insta, another is on facebook, and another is on twitter?

[–] GrumpigPoopBalls@hexbear.net 4 points 4 months ago

I think a lot of it depends on where you live and how often you use it, since moving somewhere where 99% of community information/news/events is shared on facebook my feed has gotten dramatically more relevant than it has been pretty much any time in the last 10 years when I barely ever logged in. It's still mostly brainwormed boomers but at least its my friendly neighborhood brainwormed boomers...

[–] FourteenEyes@hexbear.net 3 points 4 months ago

I go there exclusively for memes and furry pinups now

Also cute interspecies relationship drawings