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Comment by HlessClaudesman | Hacker News Reader

I recently created a new account on Facebook with the single goal of seeing what was going on in my local community.

Firstly their search /discover was pretty terrible. I am sure that local groups exist, but searching for keywords mostly turned up communities with commercial angles.

Secondly even tho I only joined groups related to a very specific European location, every 3rd post in my feed is now bizzarely a scantily clad teen from Africa. I can dismiss these posts individually, but there is no way to tell Facebook's algorithim that it placed me in the wrong bucket, they provide no way to opt out.

If they really must insert random algorithmic content, Facebook already has all the clues they need to make it relevant, based on my searches and groups that I have joined. Instead their AI tried to play 4D chess with my preferences and outsmarted itself, serving me a horrendous swamp of teenbait slop.

Facebook is dead.

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They must've hard-coded something in recently, because I've got a permanent injection of scantily clad tiktok booty into my feed as well, and my account had no changes for years. I think they're just blanket applying it to all men now.

The algorithm probably and correctly noticed that all men in general have trouble not clicking on scantly clad booty posts.

I haven't dug into it, cause I don't really care.. but I imagine that fb/meta tracks more than clicks. If I were them, I'd have js on the page that tracks your scrolling, and pays attention to the posts you 'hover' over for longer.

I bet that's just one of the ways they track behavior on their platform. So if you slow down to check out the ladies, I bet more show up, even if you don't click.

Yes, absolutely, I think most people don't click on those anymore, they just let it autoplay and pretend in their minds that they were not really watching it, just scrolling :D.

Not much by way of scantily clad anythings on my feed, but I've experienced a sudden glut of anger-bait posts, both there and in other places. Not sure if it is due to election season, or if the Algorithms On High have noticed me trying not to interact with the eternal14s any more and are trying to drag me back off that wagon. Though the theory I currently think most likely is that a number of worthwhile posters have dropped off so the arseholes-to-decent-people ratio has had yet another boost and me being shown more crap is a consequence of that.

I'm afraid you're right about the asshole-to-normal ratio and the implications of that worry me.

My feed is now swamped with trash.

My friends, now we're all a bit older, don't post as frequently as they once did. I'm also a member of a couple of hyper-local groups which don't necessarily get posts every day, and I have no interest in anything else. I'm fine with this, if nobody's posted for a while then I'll see that and move on.

Facebook is not fine with this. Apparently I must be interested in archaeology, or sexist jokes, or various displays of flesh, or cars, or sports, or following someone that's making misogynist 'jokes' or ancient aliens conspiracies or a not-very-funny comic or more flesh or... I just must be interested in something, surely? It's just a matter of time before they wave the right thing under my nose and I bite and increase my engagement?

Is that the thinking? Because now 90%+ of my feed is unwanted shite and it's hard to find the few things I do go there for. And this is driving people like me and my friends away further, leading to a downward spiral of less content for those that remain, more 'suggestions' etc.

It's also baffling - multiple bullshit 'archaeology' groups will post the same picture (often of something not related to archaeology at all) on the same day, so they're clearly run by the same entity, spinning up millions of crappy 'groups' with low-quality content. Why do they exist? Who is benefitting from this?

AI can only speed up this enshittification, but the platform is already drowning in it.

Exactly. There is so much trash in my feed it has become a tedious chore to scroll through for any real content. Very little signal, not worth the noise.

Not to mention embarrassing that a viewer of my feed would think that I am some sort of knuckle-dragging horndog.

Perhaps the internet is bifurcating into lowbrow and highbrow, and facebook has chosen a side.

Social feeds have been in a death spiral for a while, most platforms curate for likes/ engagement/ followers, which in turn deters genuine content both from a sharing and visibility POV.

Spurious recommendation algos currently have enough engagement, bots et al, that they'll keep rattling away... for now.

Your experience sounds similar to mine with YouTube, especially if I try to watch videos without logging into an account.

Thus I have more than one account to use these as topical pre-filters. And when you loose your cookies, YouTube wants a phone number to "verify" that it's "me". Luckily, as a European living near enough to French borders, I can purchase temporary SIM cards in France and "verify" things during holiday trips and don't need to use my main phone account.

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