In spring, 2018, Mark Zuckerberg invited more than a dozen professors and academics to a series of dinners at his home to discuss how Facebook could better keep its platforms safe from election disinformation, violent content, child sexual abuse material, and hate speech. Alongside these secret meetings, Facebook was regularly making pronouncements that it was spending hundreds of millions of dollars and hiring thousands of human content moderators to make its platforms safer. After Facebook was widely blamed for the rise of “fake news” that supposedly helped Trump win the 2016 election, Facebook repeatedly brought in reporters to examine its election “war room” and explained what it was doing to police its platform, which famously included a new “Oversight Board,” a sort of Supreme Court for hard Facebook decisions.
Several years later, Facebook has been overrun by AI-generated spam and outright scams. Many of the “people” engaging with this content are bots who themselves spam the platform. Porn and nonconsensual imagery is easy to find on Facebook and Instagram. We have reported endlessly on the proliferation of paid advertisements for drugs, stolen credit cards, hacked accounts, and ads for electricians and roofers who appear to be soliciting potential customers with sex work. Its own verified influencers have their bodies regularly stolen by “AI influencers” in the service of promoting OnlyFans pages also full of stolen content.
Meta now at best inconsistently responds to our questions about these problems, and has declined repeated requests for on-the-record interviews for this and other investigations. Several of the professors who used to consult directly or indirectly with the company say they have not engaged with Meta in years. Some of the people I spoke to said that they are unsure whether their previous contacts still work at the company or, if they do, what they are doing there. Others have switched their academic focus after years of feeling ignored or harassed by right-wing activists who have accused them of being people who just want to censor the internet.
Facebook never tried in the first place. They just put up a facade that they’ve let fall down.
They found out how it could be stopped so they could bypass those measures. Come on, people! It’s like you’ve never personally dealt with selfish manipulative assholes.
Secret thief: How could we work together to catch the thief?
Police: We’ll install a camera at the front door.
Thief: Great idea!
Thief robs the place going through a window
Facebook has always been first and foremost an advertising platform, and they went where the money is. Some of that’s the automated algorithms, some of that is deliberate corporate informationeering.
I offer some thoughts on the decline and fall of the internet here, and I think it’s germane to this discussion: https://michaelhjenkins.substack.com/p/visions-of-a-post-apocalyptic-internet?r=26iex9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
Man, journalists out here lately just murdering Betteridge .
Good, though. It doesn’t need to be a given.
I’m no facebook fanboy by any measure. I miss Forums, but everyone moved to FB groups. (at least 90% of the people/content). I am on FB, I manage my FB feed. I unfollow/unfriend “crackheads” as someone else called them. I only follow people that mainly post their own content, not forward shit, or post news etc.
I was mainly there to share public “stuff” with my remote family (both parents were 300-600 miles from us) and we had a young child (both parents first grandchild).
I now mainly use FB for groups of my interest, because that’s where the people are. I also sell stuff on FB market place, because craigslist is a ghost town.
Between managing my feed/friends, using ‘social fixer’ browser extension and Pihole I rarely see ads on there. Certainly not on my PC. The the App can sneak in some, but I hide/report any ad I see.
It works for me. I don’t live on there by any means but go there for interest groups.
I am still on Facebook because it’s the only way I can stay in touch of relatives, including my ASD brother who has decided I communicate with him either through that or Quora. This is how I have survived it:
- Heavily curate your friends list and mute anyone you don’t want to see after only a handful of unpleasant posts.
- Only join groups that don’t get overtly political unless you don’t wish to participate and just want to lurk.
- Just don’t argue with people on your friends list and don’t engage in arguments that people try to engage you in.
- Tell Facebook that you don’t want to see any ad you find personally repugnant. You’ll still see ads, but they will be less awful.
How do you deal with the constant spam of “suggested for you” in your feed? Like you, I have a few reasons I stay on Facebook, but man it’s gotten to be such garbage that when I open it up it’s ad, suggested for you, ad, suggested for you, ad, ad. It’s frustrating because all I want to do is see what some friends are up to or check/post to the buy nothing group around me, and I have to deal with like 5 “best comic funny of the day! 😂😂😂” Posts within the first 10.
Can you block those parts of the page using uBlock Origin? I just right click and ‘block element’.
I again report it if I have no interest in that sort of thing. At this point, the ‘suggested’ stuff is usually just a group with a meme that I can either ignore or enjoy and then just not join the group.
But of course there are still exceptions.
My method is not perfect, but it saves me a ton of grief and annoyance.
You’re a better man than I because those things drive me fucking nuts.
Use Ublock Origin my friend.
I use it. Facebook gets around it by making ads regular posts.
Ew.
I agree. Believe me, I am not trying to defend the indefensible. If it weren’t for the reason I said above, I would never use Facebook.
I feel like I need Facebook. I used to belong to dozens of forums between RC cars, aquarium stuff, and robotic stuff. All but one has shuttered, and Facebook Groups are my only option to connect with people for my hobbies, especially locals. Even state clubs used to have their own forums.
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Don’t spam the same thing in multiple communities like this, it’s poor etiquette and it will get you bans sooner rather than later. Thanks and have a nice day.
Late 2023, Facebook added a feature where you can create multiple identities at ease, attached to your primary login, thus breaking the real name requirement. As a group admin it’s changed the game, as people can easily join the group multiple times then brigade etc.
