It's funny because Facebook's news feed in the last couple years is unusable, filled with AI slop and clickbait. Twitter similarly requires aggressive use of block + mute to eliminate scams, clickbait, and other content I'm not interested in.
I don't know if this is due to their changes in moderation policy, or if AI has overwhelmed them, but I vastly preferred the old news feeds
A few years back it started showing me obvious political ragebait. I ignored it and then it started showing me pictures of women whose nipples were obviously showing through their clothing, which was an improvement, but still not the reason I signed up for Facebook. I've always understood it as the algorithm is looking for engagement and will try some lowest common denominator tactics to engage in it. As someone who just wanted to see the odd picture of a friend or relative, I don't have much use for Facebook these days.
My experience on all platforms is things have rapidly become slop. Quora, Facebook, Twitter, Threads. They all have a weird issue of random softcore sex stuff.
I have nothing against sex content, but I do wish we could just click a button to say turn this off, like safe search. It can't be that hard to filter out all the weird shit, so I assume it makes them money.
What's hilarious is that my business account has been suspended by Facebook's automated fraud detection no less than 4 times in the past 5 months. Every time, they send a standard automated message saying some term was violated from a list of rules that's unavailable, and then ask me to upload a "selfie" to verify my business account. A selfie, to verify... my business account where I only add or post things to do with my business. All in the name of their "crusade" to block bots and AI, which of course isn't working, but somehow people who aren't doing anything suspicious keep tripping their automated alarms.
For a company with so much money and so much sophisticated technology, it never ceases to amaze me how broken their systems are. As a software engineer it doesn't surprise me though. You start to realize that it's people and organizational problems all the way down more so than the technology.
It's a combo of AI making it easy to flood the feed with engagement-bait (that you aren't interesting in engaging in) and users who post stuff you would engage with leaving the service or simply not posting that stuff anymore.
What's frustrating about Meta, and probably other companies that run social media sites, I'm sure, is that no matter how many times I swipe away posts I don't like on Threads, which is marked as a signal to show me fewer posts like this, I still get served similar posts or posts from the same account. Blocking takes too many pokes, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. :)
Financially incentivized accounts (dare I say, creators) accelerated rage bait and view farming. It always existed before, but it’s genuinely baffling how worse every algo-feed has gotten in the last 6 years. Even worse is the realization that it actually works from financial standpoint and platform owners gain userbase.
Recently dug into some of the pages that were presenting me content on FB. In this case, woodworking stuff. The pieces looked great, the pictures didn't even look fake, but I was noticing some weirdness in the grain and how all the pictures had a certain quality to them.. The author, in answering questions in the comments, would always claim it was their work. Yet they'd be pumping out complex pieces daily.. Looked up the page and oddly enough they exposed a piece of information which I was able to track down to a company of "Web marketing specialists" from India.. Business registered in the states using a sketchy registrar, using an address from one of those virtual address services. Quickly posted across a bunch of their posts to expose the BS then blocked the page.
Then not sure why, since I'm not a gardener, but crazy looking flowers, with instructions on how to care of them, and loads of people in awe about them, almost none realizing they were just AI photos with fake instructions..
Its ridiculous... If there's a buck to be made, people will abuse it. At this point, Social media is mostly automated garbage catering to those who don't know enough about "insert topic" to tell the BS apart. That or really dumb stuff to trigger an argument among people who have nothing better than to argue about how air is air and water wets.
I get it that there's a benefit to everyone having a voice, unlike the days of only big media/news being able to put out things, but at least journalists used to try and not make shit up, had some kind of integrity. Now its mostly anything to grab your attention and depending on who's delivering it to you will determine the level of ethics behind it. Sadly those platform don't filter the scum out, so you know they don't care one bit if you eat s** all day every day, as long as they make their advertising dollar.
>It's funny because Facebook's news feed in the last couple years is unusable, filled with AI slop and clickbait.
It's brutal. (i know this is my own fault for arguing with once probably) I constantly get recommend stuff about flat earth, portals around the world. It's like this weird toxic mix of new age cult with maga.
More generally to all media ... What happens when flat earthers start using AI to generate videos with "proof" the earth is flat, or fake videos of robots inside a vaccine?
For some reason twitter thinks I want to read/watch star wars talking heads talk about how great star wars is and it's obviously the greatest it's ever been. Tbh I don't care about star wars but no amount of blocking or muting seems to end the amount of star wars content that Twitter thrusts in my face.
The feed is normally manipulated by information suppression concerning undesirable posts concerning their commercial interests (partners and advertisers) normally anyway, I don't see where the regret comes from by having to suppress posts concerning requests from government officials and agencies.
Truth is, once a platform becomes that large, everyone and their peers jockeys to control their image upon it, whether it is an official request to de-prioritize posts, or even a comment brigade or mass reporting, this is the result of a platform becoming far too influential and massive to be effective for commoners, and far too vulnerable to money and influence to be an open and free community.
We all have the perfect inverse of deregulation and absence of moderation with Twitter, and we all know how bad that's going, while the management still tries to transition the mess back into a "pay for play" platform.
There is simply no way to manage platforms that large once they become popular pulpits... We need to return to an ecosystem of smaller community forums and apps based around individual topics that can maybe be aggregated in part or whole to news sites perhaps. And no, Mastodon and Reddit are not what I'm talking about either.... It would have to be something entirely different, more effective, more innovative, without ads & ad buying, with a better system of managing credibility and merit than paying for verification, and far less corrupt-able to work well.
After being fed up with political ragebait I deleted my facebook account, and created a new one where I have no friends, and make no posts, and only "friends of friends" (i.e. nobody) can friend request me. I have a fake name, and a blank image for an avatar.
There is no feed, but I can still join discussion groups related to my interests, and use the marketplace to buy and sell. Overall, it is a pretty good experience and I actually enjoy using facebook again.
I use https://www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr on desktop. It's only posts from my friends in chronological order (plus ads). What I've noticed is my friends don't post nearly as much anymore. My suspicion is that is why the algorithm promotes groups and click/rage-bait now. I would guess actual normal friends of ours stopped posting so much because their feeds became so intolerable in the first place.
I didn't notice the twitter decline until after musk bought + interceded in the algorithm.
It used to feel much more curated/tailored to my more esoteric interests, but now I get ai slop, race baiting, "breaking news" which is some fake right wing news account, etc. etc.
The annoying feature of Facebook and LinkedIn is that every month or so they will suddenly wake up and clog up my feed with Suggested Posts. I actually prefer seeing Sponsored Posts versus the Suggested Posts because the quality of the Sponsored Posts is way higher than the AI generated Suggested Posts. Like I'd literally rather just see target full-blown ads versus engagement clickbait.
I actually have pretty good luck with YouTube Shorts and Reels suggesting content - perhaps because I religiously curate by blocking/disliking when possible.
Perhaps we need an adversarial AI Bot for social media that will curate people's feeds on their behalf.
I wonder if this is coming up just before the election because of the Harris campaign’s suggested policy of capital gains tax on unrealised gains for people who have over $100m in assets? I think this is a great idea personally given what these people are doing to avoid paying tax including taking out loans against their own share portfolios. Worth thinking about what people are willing to do to not pay billions of dollars worth of taxes.
When the platforms starting censoring during the pandemic and last election cycle I remember saying they better get it right 100% of the time because the moment they get it wrong their credibility is shot. Hear we are.
Censorship, beyond what’s required by law, is doomed to fail.
The thing I'm getting out of this Zuckerberg letter is that we've basically learned nothing. It's a nakedly partisan letter designed to signal to Republicans that he's not taking sides. Which I guess is fine, but I'm thinking about Paul Graham's recent tweet about the next round of social networks being designed to be built in to combat trolling, and it makes me think.
This time there was valid concern about issues like the lab leak theory being censored on social media, I predict in the next crisis, social media will be useless adjacent for almost everything.
In Pavel's interview with Tucker Carlson, he mentions how he (VK) met with Zuckerberg, and he told them new features they were planning. And Zuck nicked them all.
Zuck is on a major PR campaign drive, I would not trust a word he says.
Always, as a good hedger Zuck, anticipating regime change in the White House by November, is minimizing the potential fallout of his treacherous behavior. Hold him accountable.
But he has no regrets pouring gasoline on the bonfire of Brexit, I guess? He's only concerned when there is a real danger of someone going after his wealth. It will be interesting to watch the business community of the US unite against the Democrats. Interesting times.
Bet he'll do it again. "This time it's different." Assuming the man has any principles at all, he already demonstrated his willingness to violate them. He'll do it again.
From a practical standpoint, I feel this issue is largely moot with the emergence of AI bots. Will the government have the time to chase them all? And will Facebook have the ability to censor them all?
Hard to understand why Zuck would come out with this now? This is like a bazooka shot at Democrats ... to give Gym Jordan this information to twist and distort. Never mind that the "censored" data turned out to be from Russian operative sources ... yes, never mind that.
This seems bigger than just business, or the House Judiciary Committee. Is this about Israel and fear of what a Harris admin would do (or stop doing)? Either way, there is definitely underhanded intent in this "admission" from ole'Zuck IMO.
Skip the political mumbo-jumbo and go straight to page 27 to 29 of this investigation report. Internal emails show FB employees unhappy to onboard to a private takedown request portal, where Government employees would post tickets on "disinformation" that FB & other tech companies would then be obligated to police. Further, the report suggests that CISA & its proxies didn't have a legal mandate to compel FB, Twitter, and other companies to censor content, so the CISA resorted to "suggesting" they would get the FBI involved.
The entire doc has an obvious political slant, but I think it partially explains why the Stanford Internet Observatory and other proxies self-dismantled before litigation commenced.
Zuckerberg should learn to plead the 5th when asked about political intervention questions.
He keeps apologizing, thinking it will gain him respect, but the general public only sees this as a grand admission of guilt (ostensibly for some crime they didn't know of until now, and still don't know any details about).
Many other CEOs get asked similar questions, and they refuse to engage in the discussion; the result is no news coverage.
- some people cannot think abstractly about speech, because it is skewed because of actions of Elon Musk, or Zuckerberg, or other individuals
- it is certain that governments want to control the narrative, and it is not always done in our interests
- sometime actions are done to help us, but [disinformation enters the room]
- Everything at CEO level is "political"
- centralization of social media and forums allowed for this behavior. It would be impossible to "control" the Internet with federated Internet
- various powers fight over the Internet (governments, China, Russia, corporations, billionaires etc.). This is why it difficult to tell what is the truth, everyone tries to shift our perception
- YouTube removed thumbs down not to protect small creators. Moderation on social media is also not to protect ordinary people, but to retain clean image, or to keep investors happy
- sometimes when social media removes post is censorship. Sometimes it is not, but both scenarios occur
- some people that complain about free speech might be influenced by foreign powers
- some people that say moderation is required want just more control over social media for their own benefit, agenda
- I do not know if there is a clean, ethical way to "run the social media"
[+] [-] object-a|1 year ago|reply
I don't know if this is due to their changes in moderation policy, or if AI has overwhelmed them, but I vastly preferred the old news feeds
[+] [-] silverquiet|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] diob|1 year ago|reply
I have nothing against sex content, but I do wish we could just click a button to say turn this off, like safe search. It can't be that hard to filter out all the weird shit, so I assume it makes them money.
[+] [-] Denzel|1 year ago|reply
For a company with so much money and so much sophisticated technology, it never ceases to amaze me how broken their systems are. As a software engineer it doesn't surprise me though. You start to realize that it's people and organizational problems all the way down more so than the technology.
[+] [-] dfxm12|1 year ago|reply
What's frustrating about Meta, and probably other companies that run social media sites, I'm sure, is that no matter how many times I swipe away posts I don't like on Threads, which is marked as a signal to show me fewer posts like this, I still get served similar posts or posts from the same account. Blocking takes too many pokes, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. :)
[+] [-] kredd|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nostromo|1 year ago|reply
The content that's filling the void is just filler, be it AI, clickbait, memes, etc.
[+] [-] didip|1 year ago|reply
But service owner cannot aggressively cut down on spams and baits because it will mess with the engagement metrics.
[+] [-] atum47|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] peteyPete|1 year ago|reply
Recently dug into some of the pages that were presenting me content on FB. In this case, woodworking stuff. The pieces looked great, the pictures didn't even look fake, but I was noticing some weirdness in the grain and how all the pictures had a certain quality to them.. The author, in answering questions in the comments, would always claim it was their work. Yet they'd be pumping out complex pieces daily.. Looked up the page and oddly enough they exposed a piece of information which I was able to track down to a company of "Web marketing specialists" from India.. Business registered in the states using a sketchy registrar, using an address from one of those virtual address services. Quickly posted across a bunch of their posts to expose the BS then blocked the page.
Then not sure why, since I'm not a gardener, but crazy looking flowers, with instructions on how to care of them, and loads of people in awe about them, almost none realizing they were just AI photos with fake instructions..
Its ridiculous... If there's a buck to be made, people will abuse it. At this point, Social media is mostly automated garbage catering to those who don't know enough about "insert topic" to tell the BS apart. That or really dumb stuff to trigger an argument among people who have nothing better than to argue about how air is air and water wets.
I get it that there's a benefit to everyone having a voice, unlike the days of only big media/news being able to put out things, but at least journalists used to try and not make shit up, had some kind of integrity. Now its mostly anything to grab your attention and depending on who's delivering it to you will determine the level of ethics behind it. Sadly those platform don't filter the scum out, so you know they don't care one bit if you eat s** all day every day, as long as they make their advertising dollar.
[+] [-] lawlessone|1 year ago|reply
It's brutal. (i know this is my own fault for arguing with once probably) I constantly get recommend stuff about flat earth, portals around the world. It's like this weird toxic mix of new age cult with maga.
More generally to all media ... What happens when flat earthers start using AI to generate videos with "proof" the earth is flat, or fake videos of robots inside a vaccine?
[+] [-] o24ro2u34o|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mnky9800n|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] winternett|1 year ago|reply
Truth is, once a platform becomes that large, everyone and their peers jockeys to control their image upon it, whether it is an official request to de-prioritize posts, or even a comment brigade or mass reporting, this is the result of a platform becoming far too influential and massive to be effective for commoners, and far too vulnerable to money and influence to be an open and free community.
We all have the perfect inverse of deregulation and absence of moderation with Twitter, and we all know how bad that's going, while the management still tries to transition the mess back into a "pay for play" platform.
There is simply no way to manage platforms that large once they become popular pulpits... We need to return to an ecosystem of smaller community forums and apps based around individual topics that can maybe be aggregated in part or whole to news sites perhaps. And no, Mastodon and Reddit are not what I'm talking about either.... It would have to be something entirely different, more effective, more innovative, without ads & ad buying, with a better system of managing credibility and merit than paying for verification, and far less corrupt-able to work well.
[+] [-] UniverseHacker|1 year ago|reply
There is no feed, but I can still join discussion groups related to my interests, and use the marketplace to buy and sell. Overall, it is a pretty good experience and I actually enjoy using facebook again.
[+] [-] Tagbert|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mzs|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] MSFT_Edging|1 year ago|reply
It's so funny scrolling down facebook now where every 20th black box is a post I sorta wanted to see.
[+] [-] martin82|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jd3|1 year ago|reply
It used to feel much more curated/tailored to my more esoteric interests, but now I get ai slop, race baiting, "breaking news" which is some fake right wing news account, etc. etc.
[+] [-] rasz|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] seoulmetro|1 year ago|reply
Why does this come up so much? Yes... Google, Facebook, Instagram, they're all hamstringing their experience to spite you. They benefit and you lose.
[+] [-] PeterStuer|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] somethoughts|1 year ago|reply
I actually have pretty good luck with YouTube Shorts and Reels suggesting content - perhaps because I religiously curate by blocking/disliking when possible.
Perhaps we need an adversarial AI Bot for social media that will curate people's feeds on their behalf.
[+] [-] pupppet|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] alexander2002|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] teekert|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] EchoReflection|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] grishka|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] halyconWays|1 year ago|reply
I suppose there were warning signs, like every previous Internet technology eventually being used for advertising.
[+] [-] andy_ppp|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] chasd00|1 year ago|reply
Censorship, beyond what’s required by law, is doomed to fail.
[+] [-] techostritch|1 year ago|reply
This time there was valid concern about issues like the lab leak theory being censored on social media, I predict in the next crisis, social media will be useless adjacent for almost everything.
[+] [-] consp|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Malidir|1 year ago|reply
Zuck is on a major PR campaign drive, I would not trust a word he says.
[+] [-] hnax|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|1 year ago|reply
I don't know what he thinks he is selling folks on, but it's mostly spam and garbage...
[+] [-] sidcool|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] surfingdino|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] KingMob|1 year ago|reply
Meta just banned all accounts of the Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as NYU's People’s Solidarity Coalition.
[+] [-] nappingbat|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] lupusreal|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] beej71|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 50208|1 year ago|reply
This seems bigger than just business, or the House Judiciary Committee. Is this about Israel and fear of what a Harris admin would do (or stop doing)? Either way, there is definitely underhanded intent in this "admission" from ole'Zuck IMO.
[+] [-] insane_dreamer|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] chambers|1 year ago|reply
https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-j...
Skip the political mumbo-jumbo and go straight to page 27 to 29 of this investigation report. Internal emails show FB employees unhappy to onboard to a private takedown request portal, where Government employees would post tickets on "disinformation" that FB & other tech companies would then be obligated to police. Further, the report suggests that CISA & its proxies didn't have a legal mandate to compel FB, Twitter, and other companies to censor content, so the CISA resorted to "suggesting" they would get the FBI involved.
The entire doc has an obvious political slant, but I think it partially explains why the Stanford Internet Observatory and other proxies self-dismantled before litigation commenced.
[+] [-] notfed|1 year ago|reply
He keeps apologizing, thinking it will gain him respect, but the general public only sees this as a grand admission of guilt (ostensibly for some crime they didn't know of until now, and still don't know any details about).
Many other CEOs get asked similar questions, and they refuse to engage in the discussion; the result is no news coverage.
[+] [-] renegat0x0|1 year ago|reply
- it is certain that governments want to control the narrative, and it is not always done in our interests
- sometime actions are done to help us, but [disinformation enters the room]
- Everything at CEO level is "political"
- centralization of social media and forums allowed for this behavior. It would be impossible to "control" the Internet with federated Internet
- various powers fight over the Internet (governments, China, Russia, corporations, billionaires etc.). This is why it difficult to tell what is the truth, everyone tries to shift our perception
- YouTube removed thumbs down not to protect small creators. Moderation on social media is also not to protect ordinary people, but to retain clean image, or to keep investors happy
- sometimes when social media removes post is censorship. Sometimes it is not, but both scenarios occur
- some people that complain about free speech might be influenced by foreign powers
- some people that say moderation is required want just more control over social media for their own benefit, agenda
- I do not know if there is a clean, ethical way to "run the social media"
[+] [-] mandeepj|1 year ago|reply
https://www.wsj.com/articles/india-threatens-jail-for-facebo...