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Why is Facebook filled with so much random junk now?

I remember when you could go on Facebook and look through your feed at what your friends are saying, catch up with them, and browse posts that they have made. Now, it’s just completely random and chaotic, almost nonsensical. There’s no logical sense to my Facebook feed at all. As you can see in the image, they are showing me stuff that I’m not even following. This is not even something that I am actively a part of! It’s some random group. So what’s the point of following a group or liking a page, if they’re just going to show you random stuff anyway?

Like, wtf happened to this website?

2pt_perversion ,

It’s non just Facebook either. Every big tech social media platform has headed in this direction of showing you stuff you don’t really want to see based on maximizing profit. For-profit social media seems to mostly be doomed to this outcome because it makes more money.

friend_of_satan ,

Not only is it random, it’s nearly impossible to find something you have seen before. Awful all around.

_bcron ,

Facebook still has that but they obscured it in favor of their dumb algorithm whipping up totally random things and ads.

To get to it click the 3 lines or ‘more’, then find ‘feeds’ and select that, then choose groups or friends or whatnot, and it’ll show you those posts sorted by most recent. No way to make this default.

But the algorithm is so dumb because it takes into account how long you pause on a post and seems to weigh that higher than other things - for example if you see an ad you hate, for like a slot machine game app, and you click ‘see less ads like this’, the amount of time you spend clicking through menu options while on that ad will make the algorithm give you more ads tangentially related to slot machine apps, despite you basically saying “I hate these kind of ads”. Really dumb algorithm. Even reporting some fly-by-night obvious scam ad impersonating a brand will lead you to see only those type of scam ads. Really really dumb.

Even you pausing over the post you did in order to take a screenshot, that’ll make you see more of those types of things

Githyanki ,

I hear you saying that the only way to win is to not play the game.

bluGill ,

That isn't a win either. I have a number of distance friends that I wouldn't hear about outside of facebook. I don't live near my old high school, but it is nice to see what is going on. I wouldn't have found out about that Ed died in a motercycle accident if it wasn't for facebook, but it is nice to know. I wouldn't see all those cute back to school pictures - they would be happy to show me over lunch but we don't live close enough to have lunch together. Facebook has much usefulness for keeping connected to distant friends/family (close friends/family I will call)

_bcron ,

I think the way to win is to understand the algorithm and juke it for good stuff. I saw an ad for THC gummies a while back, free sample, so I started reading the comments, clicked through to the site, backed out, read the comments again, then clicked back in and got a free sample. I spent so much time messing around with this random ad that the next thing I knew, every ad was for free THC gummies (just pay shipping but cheaper than actually buying from Cycling Frog or wherever). Eventually it reverts back towards a mean but if you see something cool you can def trick the whole algorithm to only hand you that cool stuff

FourPacketsOfPeanuts ,

It may be what you say, the algorithm being dumb. Or it may be deliberate: you’ve shown yourself willing to categorize these annoying ads so you will be sent more so that fb can collect more data on them.

Abandoning is the only option. It’s a dopamine casino now, full of flashing lights.

Asetru ,

To get to it click the 3 lines or ‘more’, then find ‘feeds’ and select that

Oh, wow… I recently opened fb again and was just irritated that it didn’t show any posts by my friends. Turns out they weren’t inactive, fb just doesn’t show them by default. What a dumb waste of a platform… I mean, what is it good for if not that? Why would I watch an endless stream of ads and clickbait?

chakan2 ,
@chakan2@lemmy.world avatar

example if you see an ad you hate, for like a slot machine game app, and you click ‘see less ads like this

You engaged with that ad. It’s worth slightly more than if you scrolled by it.

bluGill ,

I make it a point of blocking all groups and anything shared. The only cat pictures I want to see on Facebook are your cat, so if you share a meme I'm blocking all from whoever created it. Then I have a rule after blocking 2 facebook is done for this session and so I close the window. I have cleaned up my feed a bit by doing that, but I alone am not enough data to show up - I need the rest of you to commit to only using Facebook for sharing friends and family. Block all groups, marketplace, politics, memes, just share your life with the people who know you well enough to care about your personal life. IF enough of us do that we can maybe show up in data that there are people who don't want that and so they will make an algorithm for us that shows more of our friends and less of the other garbage. I'm sure there is a lot more I'd like to see on facebook but I never do because I stop scrolling too soon - which hurts them.

Ilandar ,

It is unbelievably awful, isn’t it? The worst bit is knowing that many of our older relatives use that shit for hours a day. This is the same generation that mocked millennials when we were using it 10 - 15 years ago but has since gotten themselves hooked on a far, far worse version. What a depressing thought.

cdf12345 ,

And they don’t even realize that original Facebook experience that was useful for keeping friends closer when physically apart has slowly gone by the wayside.

I remember when Facebook changed everyone’s feeds from chronological to whatever they were calling their algorithm at the time. The use experience completely went to shit. Things friends posted would sometimes never show up, and you’d have to manually change your settings back to chronological sorting every few days or it would default back to their “smart feed”.

Now it’s just people reposting things they’re into or reposting echo chamber links to stuff they agree with no real target.

Pretty depressing how we’ve lost twitter and Facebook to this crap.

Poayjay ,

As much as everyone loves to shit on Facebook, it was an incredible service. When I was in the military I was able to keep up with my old friends and their lives. When I got out I was able to simply keep in touch with my old military buddies. Now it’s just dead. I’m genuinely sad that this has happened :(

Magister ,
@Magister@lemmy.world avatar

Well, less and less people post stuff like their vacation pic or food pic etc. Then more and more companies pay to be in your feed, so now your feed is only non-sense stuff like yours, or mine, it does not make sense, I often see posts from stuff not in my country or sometimes not in my language.

I only use FB for Marketplace (really big here), and for some FB hobby groups that replace good old forums. I never publish anything, and only one of my friend still post pictures of their journey, that’s it.

In Canada it is way worst, because every sources deemed news media cannot post/share articles, imagine in the USA if your feed had no news like cnn, abc, nbc, cbs, npr, nyt, etc. but in your feed you see all the alternatives news (read: far-right, conspiracy, pro-russian, pro-musk, anti-ev, etc).

This is our reality in Canada, our facebook feed looks like twitter, full of hate and fake news. I always block them, but there are certainly thousands and thousands of bots posting those kind of thing.

FB is dead.

badelf ,

It’s because you’re still supporting them. That crap you see puts money in Zucker’s pocket. Delete your account and it will stop.

jqubed ,
@jqubed@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve been assuming that their user engagement is down. Fifteen years ago when I was fresh out of university I had several hundred friends and could spend hours every day going through posts from dozens of different people. Now it feels like I can spend ten or fifteen minutes to see everything and mostly it’s from the same half-dozen people, and I’ve realized most of them are people I don’t really know as well and frankly am not as interested in seeing. At first I thought it was because they were the most prolific posters and I’d inadvertently trained the algorithm to show me more from them by interacting with them the most.

But over the past year I’ve noticed if I actually click on someone else’s profile, maybe having seen their name on a memory or just randomly think of an old friend, most of them only make a few posts a year or haven’t posted anything at all in years. Their accounts still exist, but they’re not using them.

If your feed was only this, a few posts a day from a few people, you’d have no reason to be on Facebook much. So they fill it in with junk from other places that will hopefully engage you. If it doesn’t they’ll try other posts. Whatever it takes to keep you browsing longer.

Stern ,
@Stern@lemmy.world avatar

I use an extension called FB Purity and the amount of bullshit it filters out is insane.

Usernameblankface ,
@Usernameblankface@lemmy.world avatar

They figured out that this kind of feed makes the most money from the most users. They don’t care if you like it, they care what the majority of users will stick around for. The longer total scrolling time they can get from their user base, the more ads they can cram in there. Ads make money.

Algorithm leads to more scroll time per person leads to more ads per user leads to more income

So, because money

floofloof ,

I suspect it’s not an optimization to make every post you see interesting. For one thing, we tend to find intermittent rewards more fascinating and addictive than reliable ones. For another, if you have to scroll further you’ll see more ads. But if you make it too boring people won’t scroll at all. So the algorithm probably tries to make it just interesting enough to keep people scrolling, but no more.

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