No joke, I use Facebook every year or so to access the marketplace and at the time my feed was roughly half rage-bait, and the other half being what I can only describe as AI-generated almost-pornography. Both had thousands of what looked like genuinely real interactions per post, mostly from developing country users.
I'm loathe to defend Facebook but most people's experience is not yours. The algorithm pushes content you're most likely to engage with, in your case it has nothing to go on so probably pushes whatever causes the most reaction in general.
> I'm loathe to defend Facebook but most people's experience is not yours. The algorithm pushes content you're most likely to engage with, in your case it has nothing to go on so probably pushes whatever causes the most reaction in general.
It think that's a contradiction: if your latter statement is correct, his experience is a peek at "most people's experience."
No, I don't think so. If Facebook has a dataset to work from, as it does with most people, it'll tailor your experience according to that. If it doesn't it has to just use everything.
No matter what you follow if FB thinks you are a man it's going to feed you those foreign near-porn shorts.
I'm not sure if it is just what escapes across national boundaries or if social media in other countries is just way more horny, but every time I see a post where the text has been auto-translated from a different language it is thirst trap content. This is true across multiple social media platforms. It's especially prevalent on X for example, especially as they seem to be trying to showcase their Grok translations or something.
> No matter what you follow if FB thinks you are a man it's going to feed you those foreign near-porn shorts.
Definitely not, FB knows I'm a man and I don't have anything remotely pornographic in my feed with any regularity because I don't interact with it when it does.
I've gotten the main feed under control, but the Reels have a mind of their own. It doesn't help that the reels don't have the "not interested" or even a thumbs down. The best you can do is a "hide reel" which seems to impart very little weight on the algorithm.
Then the algorithm is very broken for me. I post extremely benign and even somewhat boring things for my friends and family, scroll through the Marketplace scams occasionally, literally never watch Reels, and still--to this day--Facebook thinks I want to watch videos of teenage girls in loose-fitting bikinis jumping on trampolines.
My conclusion is not that the algorithm shows you things it THINKS you will engage with, but rather things they WANT you to engage with because it makes them money somehow.
Just trying to imagine any other business run this way. Imagine asking a doctor for a recommendation and they give you heroin since everyone seems to really dig it.
It's really amazing how different people's experiences with Facebook are. I have been on Facebook since it started (I was at one of the original schools, I was in that famous first million users).
My feed is entirely photos of friends' kids, invitations to local events (things I actually attend), folk-dancing groups I'm involved with, and the like. I have literally never, not once, not ever, seen any rage-bait or political content (other than that directly written by friends - not reposted) in my feed.
Same, i don't see any problem with my facebook feed, it's all just friends and family postings and local events and some local news posts and things like that.
No political content or anything I would consider rage bait.
Huh, I wonder if there's a flag on the first million users (or some proxy for "Zuck's cohort") from the worst of the slop shoveling. It would sure save him some pointed remarks.
