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?
For the same reasons that everything else is “enshittified” – It’s produced by people seeking maximum profits for minimum effort, and consumed by people who aren’t discerning enough to care.
Not really. There were plenty of random pages, but you really had to seek it out to see it. Now an overwhelming majority of non-ad posts are stuff like this (and I wouldn’t be surprised if they pay to have this stuff seen, basically making it an ad)
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.
It’s been a long, long time since facebook has been like you are describing.
It’s been ads, and old uncle facebook fox news memes for a while. Lately they’ve been filling it with AI pictures and bot farmed memes. Gotta admit the memes have gotten slightly better, or at least slightly more targeted as of late.
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.
Two years ago, I quit FB for six months. Then I checked my feed, and counted six friends’ updates and zero group posts in the first 100 items. 94% of posts were ads or “suggested” content. So, I closed FB and never went back again. Whatsap statuses is where I find my friends’ updates these days.
The answer is obviously as everyone has pointed out already is enshittification.
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification. (Cory Doctorow)
Profit = enshittification. It’s guaranteed as long as profit is a motive.
An interesting concept is the idea of a distributed social web. It was the concept me, and probably a LOT of other redditors, were looking at last year, but it seems no such thing really exists. The idea that everyone’s home computer (or mobile device nowadays) could act as the client and the server. Perhaps using a firefox addon of some sort.
Do any software devs (ok that’s like 90% of lemmy, lol) know if any existing projects are trying to do this? It does not seem like an unfeasible thing, and it wouldn’t have to grow overnight, it could possibly just be a feature in an existing addon that allows communication directly between users. No centralized servers of any sort. Distributed communication without central control. Is this possible?
The existing social media companies own the world (literally), and they can maintain this control because they can buy out competitors. You can’t buy out 5 billion people though, so if people had the tools available to host their own web; and it was as easy as installing a firefox browser addon, a true democracy could exist like the world has never seen.
I finally have some free time ahead, I’ll put together a first ‘real’ documentation that covers installation and basic use cases so that people actually can have a chance of testing it for real. I’ll swap the cringy 1990 web page for it on tenfingers.org
I did do a test install (on a virtual machine), and everything seemed to install/configure fine using the python source code and instructions in your repo, but I wasn’t able to see any connections being made in the listener log. Brain is too tired, but I tried all of the addresses/ports listed (Debian/bash/ip addr) and created port exceptions with ufw per the instructions file. Can this work with a virtual box?
You do need a link to some data as a bootstrap to node adresses, there is a test link on tenfingers.org you can try using, it downloads a small text file but also adds my live nodes address to your known addresses when you use it.
Or you can just set up two local nodes on 127.0.0.1 with two different ports, run their listeners, add data to them, extract the links and, download from the ‘other’ node to see how things hook up and so on.
The links as tenfingers.db are sqlite databases, so they are easily inspected.
The default is an enshittified feed that shows you algorithm-chosen content. To see the old version of facebook, tap the menu in the upper right corner, then select feeds, then select friends.
I’ve been going there less and less lately. They started putting ads in the notifications section as well.
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.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !technology@lemmy.world
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
For the same reasons that everything else is “enshittified” – It’s produced by people seeking maximum profits for minimum effort, and consumed by people who aren’t discerning enough to care.
I thought it has been this way for like… a decade?
Not really. There were plenty of random pages, but you really had to seek it out to see it. Now an overwhelming majority of non-ad posts are stuff like this (and I wouldn’t be surprised if they pay to have this stuff seen, basically making it an ad)
I guess I’ve been away from Facebook long before this started showing up.
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.
It’s been a long, long time since facebook has been like you are describing.
It’s been ads, and old uncle facebook fox news memes for a while. Lately they’ve been filling it with AI pictures and bot farmed memes. Gotta admit the memes have gotten slightly better, or at least slightly more targeted as of late.
Anyway, my point was, it’s been shit for a decade
Don’t use meta products if you have respect for yourself
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.
facebook keeps pushing ‘vegans are evil’ and ‘lets make milk mean raw milk again’ posts on me.
Just… stop. let me enjoy my friends and groups
Two years ago, I quit FB for six months. Then I checked my feed, and counted six friends’ updates and zero group posts in the first 100 items. 94% of posts were ads or “suggested” content. So, I closed FB and never went back again. Whatsap statuses is where I find my friends’ updates these days.
Go to the sidebar on the left. Click on ‘See More.’ Click ‘feeds’ here:
There will be much less random junk.
Stupid, I know, but it does work.
this button actually makes it look like shit
Really? For me it only shows friends and groups I’m actually in.
yeah all my groups and friends are shit
Well that’s a different issue.
not in my opinion
The answer is obviously as everyone has pointed out already is enshittification.
Profit = enshittification. It’s guaranteed as long as profit is a motive.
An interesting concept is the idea of a distributed social web. It was the concept me, and probably a LOT of other redditors, were looking at last year, but it seems no such thing really exists. The idea that everyone’s home computer (or mobile device nowadays) could act as the client and the server. Perhaps using a firefox addon of some sort.
Do any software devs (ok that’s like 90% of lemmy, lol) know if any existing projects are trying to do this? It does not seem like an unfeasible thing, and it wouldn’t have to grow overnight, it could possibly just be a feature in an existing addon that allows communication directly between users. No centralized servers of any sort. Distributed communication without central control. Is this possible?
The existing social media companies own the world (literally), and they can maintain this control because they can buy out competitors. You can’t buy out 5 billion people though, so if people had the tools available to host their own web; and it was as easy as installing a firefox browser addon, a true democracy could exist like the world has never seen.
I do know of a project that does what you are looking for, decentralized (100%), FOSS, easy to set up, encrypted…
I built a very basic chat program on top of it quite easily, a “FB clone” is not far away IMO.
So what’s the project? It’s my Tenfingers protocol & implementation (http://tenfingers.org) and it’s just waiting for adoption!
I’m in the process of making the documentation and installation guide, but you can check it out right now.
I’d love showcasing it somewhere, getting feedback, help out with problems etc.
sounds interesting, is the source code on somewhere like codeberg or GitHub?
How does it work?
You can download the python code, or frozen executables for Linux and Windows on http://tenfingers.org
Or the whole project, which I admit is kind of messy, on codeberg: https://codeberg.org/Valmond/Tenfingers
I posted a more detailed description just below in this theead, please do say if you don’t find it or if you have any kind of questions!
Very cool. 100% over my technical knowledge level but I’ll take a look at the code and give it a whirl when I get a chance.
I think it would be awesome if it worked. Power to the people! ;)
Hey thank you!
I finally have some free time ahead, I’ll put together a first ‘real’ documentation that covers installation and basic use cases so that people actually can have a chance of testing it for real. I’ll swap the cringy 1990 web page for it on tenfingers.org
Do tell if you try it out 👍🏻
Valmond
I did do a test install (on a virtual machine), and everything seemed to install/configure fine using the python source code and instructions in your repo, but I wasn’t able to see any connections being made in the listener log. Brain is too tired, but I tried all of the addresses/ports listed (Debian/bash/ip addr) and created port exceptions with ufw per the instructions file. Can this work with a virtual box?
Nice!
You do need a link to some data as a bootstrap to node adresses, there is a test link on tenfingers.org you can try using, it downloads a small text file but also adds my live nodes address to your known addresses when you use it.
Or you can just set up two local nodes on 127.0.0.1 with two different ports, run their listeners, add data to them, extract the links and, download from the ‘other’ node to see how things hook up and so on.
The links as tenfingers.db are sqlite databases, so they are easily inspected.
…ActivityPub?
Shareholders are demanding more time spent in app in average and this is what they pushed: if there’s not enough content, dilute it with some shit
Aw, I remember Facebook.
The default is an enshittified feed that shows you algorithm-chosen content. To see the old version of facebook, tap the menu in the upper right corner, then select feeds, then select friends.
I’ve been going there less and less lately. They started putting ads in the notifications section as well.
deleted by creator
You engaged with that ad. It’s worth slightly more than if you scrolled by it.
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.
More things clicked means more good. Here’s some slop you may like. Click it.