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’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.

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

I thought it has been this way for like… a decade?

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.

More things clicked means more good. Here’s some slop you may like. Click it.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

You know what sucks about Facebook? The fact that it took the reigns from Craigslist and you can’t buy local used stuff without having a Facebook account. I hate hate hate that. I want to sell my used shit without a Facebook account. It’s all fucking tire kickers anyway.

Aw, I remember Facebook.