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Comment by archerx | Hacker News Reader

Facebook has been making itself unusable, I just want to check up on what my friends and family are up too but I just get a flood on unsolicited spam from pages I’m not interested in or want to see. Facebooks algorithm for their wall is one of the worst. Even if I X the spam posts it find other crap to spam with so I just gave up and visit FB every other week instead of daily for a quick update.

Instagram is suffering the same fate, it doesn’t show my posts to my followers, really wants to show me post that have nothing to do with my interest and I’m getting a lot of likes from bots. I noticed my friends don’t post to it as much anymore so it’s feeling like a ghost town.

I have an experiment going on, I have an art account on insta and X, every night I post the same image to both and X gives a lot more views and engagement than Instagram for the same content. Also it seems like the X algorithm is smarter than FB/instagram because it shows me similar art to what I post and keeps the correct vibe. Insta/FB show me random crap I couldn’t care less about.

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Same - the friends it churns up posts from tend to be the ones posting inflammatory political garbage. Unfollowing them doesn't always stick, I've observed. I call this the "facebook oopsie" - "oops we reset your privacy settings - again".

Facebook ads are egregiously bad. Overwhelmingly scammy: Drop-shippers pretending they are having a going-out-of-business sale, products priced double or triple where they are priced elsewhere. And of course, I've started seeing straight up malvertising campaigns which somehow made it through review. ("somehow" being - paid ads get little scrutiny)

If Facebook groups hadn't totally taken over a few communities I want to be a part of (car enthusiast groups, local fishing groups), I would probably never check it. Actually, less and less my friends and family post there, preferring other social networks, if any.

#DeleteFacebook

Tangential question what's a good group site these days?

There's things like https://www.meetup.com/ but honestly I haven't found any. The dead internet theory seems true. I block reddit, facebook, x, etc in /etc/hosts - Search top 100 websites by traffic and see what's really going on and who owns what..

I've been on the lookout for one. Wish there was a cool one. I go out and volunteer for sanity.

The issue is, the big platforms are where everybody else is. To them, the internet IS facebook, insta, X, etc..

To us, it's something more.

I know this will sound weird but I found plenty of connections thanks to my blog: by writing about things I find interesting, by encouraging people to connect via email, and by emailing people whose writing I found interesting. There’s plenty of good humanity still out there, but it requires effort and it’s hard to find.

Nice. I have a blog, but, I never expect I'll have any readers. Good to know there's good humanity out there online, I see it in the real world. Digitally it's really overshadowed by a mainstream, paywalled, everything is a service and costs money.

I'm always checking out the blogs I find on here though. I should interact more with them.

1. Can you send me your blog? If you don’t want to post it here my email is on my profile. I’m always interested in reading other people’s blogs[0]

2. I think it’s a matter of being proactive. I treat blog-to-blog interactions the same way I treat person-to-person interactions. If you want the connection to happen you have to be willing to act. Which is why I often send emails, share thoughts on what they wrote, maybe share a link to something they might find interesting based on what they write about. More often than not, people with public personal blogs want to interact with others.

[0] https://manuelmoreale.com/i-ll-read-it

I've been working on Haven[1] as an open-source self-hostable alternative to give control back to people. I actually wrote a blog post about how the move from "see what your friends/family are doing" to "just keep scrolling" was a pretty blatant bait-and-switch[2]. I think any alternative will fail in the same ways as Facebook has unless there are different incentives. I'm hoping that by making Haven open source and decentralized there won't be a path for me to make money off of it (beyond maybe hosting fees?) if it gets broader adoption.

[1]: https://havenweb.org

[2]: https://havenweb.org/2022/11/02/facebook-lie.html

I like the look of this. A nice simple blogroll. I will certainly be trying it out.

Around here, there is a very popular sports team management platform called Spond. While many parents call it a huge chore, it definitely beats the crap out if Facebook groups et al. I've seen people starting to use it more and more for any type of group that wants to organize events, communicate to members etc.

The obvious downside is that (like with other apps) everything is inside a closed ecosystem. But there is zero spam, only a few non-intrusive ads, and generally good UX all around.

I’m personally setting up a private Discourse instance to facilitate old school, friendly, online interactions. But it’s probably overkill if you just need a place to digitally hang out.

Great way to test the waters. Don't underestimate the cool and see what kind of posts and habits it could pave the way for, should it lead down some rabbit holes. Lots could be said for establishing even some crude habitations and running with it.

Discourse is amazing. Some of the best (and worst) tiny communities on the internet are running it.

I've been working on Weavus (https://weavus.app/, see my top-level comment in this post) as an alternative to facebook mostly for events, but you can also create private groups where you can chat, share photos and todo lists, split expenses, and more to come. It's just a mobile app for now, and definitely not facebook-grade as a product, but we find it useful already!

Discord has been rapidly overtaking this role.

Until they give in and introduce ads, it's just too convenient to run small groups/communities in it, instead of anything else.

I don't know about scam ads, but I've been seeing badly targeted ones, for example a bunch for a lawyer who specialises in helping Americans who live in the UK to renounce their US citizenships.

I'm not an American, I don't live in the UK, and I'm working towards gaining a second citizenship rather than removing one.

Also for example, an ad from a government of a country I don't live in about them banning a breed of dog I've never heard of. I don't own any breed of dog, definitely now whatever that was.

VPN active, by chance?

There isn't supposed to be, but you have reminded me that I'm noticing signs of the iCloud Private Relay running even though that's supposed to be a paid feature and I'm on a free account.

Every time I report scam advertisements Facebook responds that they do not violate their TOS. I rarely spend any time on Facebook as a result. Big waste of time. I have moved all my friends and family interactions to text messages and WhatsApp.

Made a post down below. I scroll for like two minutes before seeing anything local in my town. I only use it to volunteer at places in my town, and it literally showed over 100+ suggested/Follow/sponsored things, the addon I used collapses it all.

Dead internet theory. AI generated stuff. Busted algorithms, and attention-soul sucking 'pull me in' psychological warfare ad induced stuff. We need to reclaim our sanity from doom scroll/infinite scrolling.

I have it in my /etc/hosts file to be blocked unless I'm at a computer that requires me to log in.

I don’t know what is going on at Meta but they are killing their cash cow.

I don’t mind the Youtube algorithm, it used to be better but it’s still good enough. I don’t use Youtube with an account so I have gotten good at “training” it and getting it to show stuff I’m actually interested in. The X algorithm is not bad either, if I post art related stuff it will only show me art related stuff.

I removed the finger-printing from my browser with degoogle: https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle - Alternatives to google/other big platforms. Firefox addons at the top.

I scream this and my love for Linux from the rooftops, hoping other people show the love for the internet and things like I do and don't put up with the exploitation. It's _OUR_ psychyes and their psychological manipulation, and our future generations they're going after.

And you can check your fingerprints with: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ that has a adtrack company that openly shows how it fingerprints you, with WebGL, canvas'ing, timestamps.

I have the random timestamp addon, random user-agents, canvas blocker, exfil data, Ublock origin. The 0.0.0.0 day 'Port Scanner' -> https://github.com/garywill/LAN-port-scan-forbidder

Yeah, they can use JS to ping stuff on our LANs to fingerprint too.

It's an internet hellscape out there.

Most people don't care. I do.

> I removed the finger-printing from my browser

Out of curiosity, does it successfully block https://fingerprint.com/?

> The X algorithm is not bad either, if I post art related stuff it will only show me art related stuff.

Highly disagree. I'm down to one hyperspecific account that follows hundreds of people, and my "for you" page might as well be someone else's. Literally nothing there matches the purpose of the account.

I'm also convinced that clicking "not interested" doesn't do anything because every time I click it, I can just refresh the tab and see the exact same tweet all over again.

A “dislike button” that really worked on social media would overturn their business completely.

Likewise I am convinced the "not interested" option does nothing, now I just straight block those pages/people when it shows up - the algorithm will send me another of nearly the same content but I keep blocking them and now a lot of that content is gone from my timeline, but FB is really convinced I want to see non-stop steam/model train and WWII content.

The account I’m using doesn’t follow anybody and the feed it gets is all art picture posts, I think not following people keeps the feed pure of outside influence. Also I rarely like posts, only really beautiful images so that probably has an influence as well. I really like what this account shows me but it is a special and narrow case.

The Facebook news feed has always focused on random nonsense, ever since they first introduced algorithmic ranking. I think one of the main things going on is that they've decided - probably correctly - that Instagram is a better fit for what people want social media to be going forwards.

Well they ruined Instagram too, no one posts anymore, post reach has been crippled and it really wants to show you crap you don’t care about. Now they want you to use threads with pictures. And in like you just reinvented Instagram but worst, what’s the point?

> I just want to check up on what my friends and family are up to

Literally just call them. You don't even have to ask for permission. Cold call them. If they don't want to talk now, they won't answer. That's fine. Call again another time.

In the last year I have just started cold calling my friends and family. It's been great.

For a long time my main use of Facebook was to check what events my friends were attending, and to check which events had which people going.

At some point Facebook crippled those features. Maybe for good reasons (I guess the possibility of stalking might be one). But in any case, I use Facebook much less now.

The success of this seems highly dependent on the nature of your social circle. I would probably be less inclined to be friends with someone who was randomly calling me for awkward chats about what I'm up to.

I think GP’s approach is optimized towards a smaller but closer-knit group of friends. Facebook does the opposite: it makes you feel like you have hundreds or thousands of friends when in reality you may not communicate with any of them at all. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a close-knit group of friends, or a few close friends, and communicate Facebook-style. But Facebook points you a different way.

I mean, if you’re friend with someone it shouldn’t be “awkward chats”. It should just be a chat with a friend that wants to know if you’re doing great and knowing what you’re up to.

the problem is that reaching this level of friendship is difficult. it depends on both people to be open and the ability and willingness to show they care, but also on opportunity. in my experience this is usually connected to some difficult situation that allows one or both to engage. for example of the few close friends that i have, one invited me to a private blog where he detailed his personal challenges over the decades. his level of trust made it easy for me to return that trust, and when i needed help/advice it was easy to turn to him. another i met a few months ago, and he likewise went out of his way to help out in a challenging situation. if he ever asks me for help, no doubt i will return the favor. and if either ask how i am doing, i have no doubt it is genuine. but then, if anyone else would send such a message i would approach it with the same assumption. there was another friend that i met many years ago, where i had the feeling that we could become close friends, but we lost touch. but writing this comment motivated me to reach out. let's see what happens.

what would make chats awkward is if the topics never go beyond smalltalk. if every so often a message exchange is like: hi, how are you? how are the kids? i am fine, kids are doing well. how about you? likewise thanks. and the conversation keeps remaining at that level, then i start wondering, why are we even talking. there has got to be more.

First, I think it's great that you have a couple of relationships that are at that level which is definitely not a given.

Second, I love that you decided to reach out to that old friend because relationships come and go and it's never to late to pick up an old friendship.

As for your final point, if the idea is to call someone in order to replace the classic facebook passive stalking I think it's fine if the conversation never goes too deep. It's a way to show you care and sometimes it's all that matters. Maybe in doing that, when it's time to have deeper conversations, they'll remember that you called them and showed interest. And that's something they can't see if you just scroll their facebook page.

And I'm saying you generically, not talking about you specifically.

But I do get what you're saying, if every time you talk to someone you have shallow chats, after a while you might start wondering what's the point.

If you find a friend reaching out once in a while to be awkward, then I’m guessing you probably don’t want to be friends with that person. Or, maybe you have a bar for “friend” that involves more regular contact so it doesn’t feel random.

I love that we’re going full circle. Social media is so terrible we’re getting back to just call people on the phone. I hope the next thing to come back are pen pals. Proper old school with envelopes and paper pen pals. It’s gonna be great!

Sending encrypted messages with that cursive algorithm

No need to do that. My handwriting is plenty terrible without cursive ahah

Most people really never left the calling people part. Tech just made it easier for them.

I've known people who have gone from on the phone all the time people to using skype to those in discord voice chats. Largely because of the costs of calling internationally as well, can't leave that out!

Although I will say, some of these platforms could learn a thing or two from the voicemail system!

You’re absolutely right although I do think there is a subtle but fundamental difference between old school phone calls (especially if done on a landline) and modern voice chats.

Now it’s a lot easier to do a voice call and also do something else since you’re probably sitting in front of your computer. And you can stay there for hours chatting about literally nothing.

Phone calls, had to be a lot more intentional. Firstly because of the cost but also because it was harder to do something else while on the phone.

And I kinda miss that.

I have a FB account with no friends and a pseudonym that I just use for being able to check the pages of local businesses (it’s usually the only way to see hours because nobody has normal websites anymore)

The garbage that they serve up on my feed is astounding. When they don’t have any info from “friends” to populate it, it looks exactly like a collection of chumbox ads

At this point I think it’s less of an algorithm and more of a random number generator that picks out spam to show to people.

I feel like most companies would have a discussion about “what’s the new user experience? How do we make a cold start enticing so people want to give us more time and data?”

The Facebook experience when you have no connections is so horrid that I’m guessing they don’t put much thought into new users anymore. They already have everyone

In fact, Facebook is so sure they already have everyone that new users are often flagged as suspicious and banned by their automated tools without even doing anything. No other site could afford to do that.

Worse than that. I have a Facebook account that is at least 16 years old (yes, from the very first years of Facebook's existence) that I log in a few times a year when I have to use Facebook to do something. I don't post or read anybody's post -- a few years ago I unfollowed everybody (but still remain connected), just like what this article says. I might have actually used this tool but I am not sure. Guess what, my 2-factor auth enabled account got disabled for absolutely no reason. Same login location, same browser. I had to do a stupid video verification to reenable the account, something I refused to do for opening an Instagram account.

Same here for X. Extreme left/right propaganda and rage bait only interrupted by porn and crypto scams

Try find the Feeds section, from there you can select Friends.

On iPhone it’s in More -> Feeds. They really work to hide it.

The main caveat is it only shows a few days worth of activity. But it’s still better than the main feed.

I used to do this but it would keep reverting me back to the spam feed so I just gave up on FB.

Whoa, I never noticed that, thanks! Given how bad yet time sucking the default wall became, I hope this will make me reduce my time in there.

Your mistake is assuming Facebook's algorithm isn't written to be exactly like you explained.

"The algorithm is poor" is not a thing anymore, algorithms are easy to get right and even easier to break on purpose for their own benefit.

No large corporation actually serves their algorithm for you any more. That's why TikTok got so popular, their algorithm actually worked for you for a long time.

Individually visiting profiles seems to change the feed a little.

One guess is if social media engagement isn't as high as desired, users are increasingly presented with alternatives to take them in different directions until they're more engaged, or at such a deficit of dopamine they will be ready to jump to the next thing, maybe like a tik tok?

Today, if a social media network made and kept it about people and not algorithms calculating the topically desired outcome of one company, maybe there would be a different usage.

People have historically learned how to tune out certain forms of media when or if they became too focused on topics not aligned to them, including advertising. Newspapers, Radio, TV..

Hyper personalization may be an option, but if the result of it is distance and not supporting authentications in real life and not digitally, the brain is wired for one for the former a lot longer than the latter. An example of this is how much more.. vivid spending time in person with someone was after not being around people as much during the pandemic.

> a flood on unsolicited spam from pages I’m not interested in or want to see

Dunno what kind of weird experiment they were conducting last December but once I start scrolling, I was getting AI generated images of really poor quality accompanied by comments from bot profiles among normal stuff, obviously out of chronological order from my friend's list.

Not that I'm visiting that page that often - on contrary; every few months to see if those who don't have anything beside messenger want something.

Indeed and WTH is Zuckerberg thinking as I saw him say stuffing our feeds with posts from not our friends & family is the way forward.

It's annoying as I'm constantly clicking the X. I'm on Facebook to follow family & friends and groups I joined not other groups I didn't!

Clicking the X is useless. I just stopped going on Facebook.

Apparently Facebook just added an "Unseen Friends Updates" feature to try to combat this:

https://www.threads.net/@theahmedghanem/post/C_A6XLJNOaJ

Isn't this a variation on a theme? A lot of current unrest revolves around people feeling ignored and unrepresented because of the global aspirations of tech and government.

If content is driven at you by algorithm it's not your feed, it's their feed.

Do you advertise the Twitter account? That is, do you pay for the blue checkmark? Just curious

No blue check mark and I don’t pay for twitter and I don’t advertise it, not even my friends and family know about it.

When I go there it just seems like a ghost town. I actually undid all my “likes” of various groups and companies etc and it quietened down dramatically. Not that many people are posting there and mostly I just have a few relative/friends groups going and that’s about it, and what it’s good for. I wish I could get them to move to signal or even WhatsApp and nothing but crickets.

> I have an experiment going on, I have an art account on insta and X, every night I post the same image to both and X gives a lot more views and engagement than Instagram for the same content. Also it seems like the X algorithm is smarter than FB/instagram because it shows me similar art to what I post and keeps the correct vibe. Insta/FB show me random crap I couldn’t care less about.

You post the same image? And then you're happy you get more engagement from x?

I don't get your experiment... You want lots of engagement when you post boring content repeatedly?

Same image on both sites, not same image over and over.

i don't even understand how they came up with that interpretation. English is weird, but not that weird.

"each night, i choose one image, and upload it to both x and insta" i guess would be less ambiguous?

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