One way or the other, Facebook now seems to be a pipeline for spreading propaganda: for ad clicks (marketing), ideological reasons, or worse.
It’s social utility seems to have dwindled to almost zero, while its negative effects are worse than ever.
Unless you live entirely in their Messenger app, which I do. The timeline is full of contraganda, spam, and things like `Tell me your favorite color without saying it` bullshit
I'd argue that the only meaningful benefit (to me at least) of Facebook is as a contact list and finder. I would delete my Facebook instantly if I felt fairly confident that I wouldn't lose out on any outreach from less-than-weekly acquaintances.
Took me about 2 weeks of hitting hide from content farms to train the algo to steer me away from that junk.
I wonder why they’ve never done that…
Unlike spam, the content farm spreads organically.
That's not true. It's actually the most effective grassroots-politics tool out there, for "regular people". Everyone has an account already, so signing up to this or that group takes seconds and you can get down to the business of actually organising.
I saw it recently in my neighbourhood: local authority wanted to push a stupid change in road layout, a couple of guys set up a FB group, and in less than a month it had hundreds of members - the road change was protested so vigorously that it had to be scrapped, something rare around this town.
Am I annoyed by this state of things? Heck yeah, I hate FB, but realistically, it's often a force for good for "normal people".
Facebook's overt business model is to be a platform for advertising (not just via overt ads, but also through paid reach of what looks like organic content). “Advertising” is just another word for “propaganda”.
So, you've noticed that Facebook “now seems to be” exactly what Facebook overtly is.
Facebook appears to be nothing but clickbaity ads, which if I'm lucky, is trying to get me to buy something I don't need. If I'm unlucky, it's ideological poison for hire fueling culture wars or foreign agents meddling in elections.
I basically never use Facebook now, except if a friend asks me to post something, but whenever I do, and scroll through the timeline, I always end up depressed. Oh and yes, bombarded with all the weird stuff discussed in this thread.