It's the silly meta icon in WhatsApp that really gets on my nerves. Really needs to go away
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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Most socia media traffic is just bots commenting on Ai slop. And those "real" posts have their humans thinking thousands of people actually give a shit about their selfies. Completely cooked society.
And those “real” posts
Albert Einstein
So long Facebook, see you never, until one day I inexplicably need to use your platform to get updates from my kid's school.
This makes me so fucking angry.
We need a dumb browser.
This browser doesn’t work for most shit, making it the best browser available for most shit you actually need to do.
That’s a browser I can get behind.
+1 for NetSurf, I wrote the Amiga GUI for that.
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My kid refused. The school district was notified that they needed to do something else, or we would sue. They changed.
Anger is pointless without action. Either accept the situation as it is, or start regularly attending school board meetings. If you want a policy changed, speak out about it. Don't just give them vibes either, give them good reasons to change the rules and processes. Have a solution at the ready which is idiot-proof, accessible, and well-supported. Oh, and also, make sure that your clear solution is zero-cost, which is why schools fell into using Facebook and municipal groups used Twitter.
If you want to change the situation, you have to understand why it became the way it is and address the pain points that led here, as well as their pain points that both prevent moving and/or encourage moving. If Facebook suits the needs of the school and the majority of parents, stop being angry and realize that there's a value in the platform for the purpose.
I don't have any kids. But I've been in similar situations. My previous employment place used Facebook for company comms. I spoke out about it many times. I've volunteered for multiple orgs and asked them to move to Nextcloud several times and they just refused. I've even turned down volunteer opportunities because they refused to communicate over anything other than Google Chat. No one cares.
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Literally the only reason my family interacts with Facebook. It's infuriating.
I can't stand how many companies and organizations only have a presence on Facebook. When I reach out to them to ask if there is another way to stay connected I usually get a big NOPE.
It is the asking that matters. If you sound really unhappy it makes maybe a little tiny bit of pressure, but many little bits make a lot
That's what email is for.
In fact, if I unblock them, I still get emails from an elementary school in the Seattle area because 20 years ago I dated somebody with a kid that went there and I subscribed to their event email.
Yes, I tried to unsubscribe for many years.
I missed out on a lot of communication for my kids' extracurriculars because they were only on Facebook and I don't use it. It's infuriating, but less infuriating than the other platforms that a couple of the groups used to attempt to communicate schedules and requirements.
It's ridiculous that this sort of thing isn't a solved problem. Schools need to communicate with parents in an effective way, yet none of the platforms I've used work well. I've been in tech for decades and I still have trouble with their shitty UI.
OTOH you may have missed the communication even if you were on Facebook. These days your feed is just 1/3 the groups you're in and pages you've liked, 1/3 is the "recommended for you" random garbage, and 1/3 is ads. I've missed many notifications for events that interested me, they'd pop up a few days after the event actually took place.
Is there a reason an emailing group isn't a good solution?
They tried that but as spam filters got more prevalent people would miss things.
Then you have the threads where some replies to all and then everyone else replies to all telling them not to reply all.
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What mine shows me is mostly racism and xenophobia. I mean, they know I'm white. Figured they might as well just shoot their shot.
Meanwhile it's utterly terrible at the one thing it's supposed to do. I'm got a few old friends and family members on there. Not super close or anything, but the kind of people you'd be vaguely interested in seeing if they had cancer or had babies or anything. Didn't show me those events at all.
Like, what is even the point of it other than a US far-right psy-op?
Guy opens dumpster, is amazed by the amount of trash in there, writes an article about it.
Wow, really low hanging fruits here.
Idk I thought it was an interesting article. I haven't logged in since like 08, so I had no idea what it is like now.
Everyone should not know what's going on on Facebook. Or Instagram, tiktok, etc.
And some rando fucking lemmy/reddit user complains about it.
It's the cycle of life.
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YouTube ass title.
Anytime any article or video says that, what ever the subject is get by just fine.
It's like that journalist law, the one where the answer is always "no" if the headline has a question in it.
Summary: a opinion piece (with a clickbait title) about how Zuckbook is only a AI wasteland anymore.
The Facebook feed is an advanced algorithm that knows a shit ton about what to feed you to keep you engaged. It's not just the cookies from sites you visit. They track what thumbnails get you to stop scrolling. They track the way a human eye moves and how far your thumb glides across the screen.
Point is, if it's all scantily clad thirst traps, thats what gets your attention. If you see one, and you stop to take a screenshot for an article you're writing about how it's all thirst traps, then every third item will be another thirst trap.
Facebook doesn't care if you want to see that content. Their goal is to keep your eyes on Facebook. If it makes you mad enough to comment, that's engagement.
I didn't read the whole article, so maybe the author addresses this, but what you see on Facebook is a funhouse reflection of your own interests.
When I was still using Instagram reels, I was always amazed how quickly the algorithm figured me out. If I hesitated for even a second on a reel, it would amend my next ones immediately. I assume the real trick is comparing it to the average time spent on a reel, everyone spends longer on a wall of text reel, but when I stop on a Linux reel for an extra second, I'm immediately in the 1% for engagement.
I read something years ago about how your phone keyboard tracks your recommended words, it knows if you're more likely to type apple or Apple, or if you type soup more than average, and any app that gets that data and compares it to the baseline has an instant, in depth profile on you.
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So long Facebook, see you never, until one day I inexplicably need to use your platform to get updates from my kid's school.
Screw any school or PTA that distributes information by Facebook. That should be outlawed.
If only there was a way to send the same communication to a group of people at once, regardless of what platform they use.
Alas, that sort of technology seems impossible. Even in Star Trek they don’t have such a thing.
I deleted Facebook maybe two years ago. One of the last things I saw was a very obviously AI generated image of six or seven soldiers that had lost the same leg and all had it replaced with a prosthetic at exactly the same point, with some caption about “let’s get some likes for our wounded warriors!” Followed by dozens of comments in support, I assume all were bots.
What I barely understand is why businesses keep fueling this ad inferno. If it’s mostly bots farming engagement, isn’t that going to limit the effectiveness of advertising? Won’t that eventually show up in their returns on the advertising’? Do they really want their business associated with scantily clad 14 year old feeds, or are they all totally blind to that.
I get part of it… social media is the internet now, for most people. So if you want reach, where else are ya gonna go? Cable? Newspapers? Local news? They killed everything else. Google’s even killing YouTube sponsors now, auto skipping sponsor segments in the app.
Are big businesses still advertising on Facebook? I'd heard that they were running ads for full-on scams, presumably because few real people are left on the platform and it's no longer attractive to most advertisers.
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I am so upset that FB killed Craigslist, that is basically the only reason I use it regularly anymore. My feed has basically been taken over by right wing influencer bots otherwise.
Craigslist still exists though. We could just... bring it back by using it again. As a bonus, it's not an app so it doesn't track you.
Oh believe me I’m trying. I will usually cross-post things I’m selling, but I don’t get anywhere near the interest I’m my 104,000 person statistical area.
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My Facebook feed looks nothing like that, nor most of the (exaggerated?) complaints in the replies.
Mine is full of content from people I know, local community groups, and pages I follow.
If I scroll long enough to run out of actual local/ subscribed content it will start feeding me other stuff, but it's usually at least somewhat relevant. If it's not I just hit the X to say not interested and usually take the opportunity to get off the damn thing for a while.
Facebook does a lot of stupid crap but these sort of lazy observations smack of some nerd pandering to the cool kids about how lame their parents are to get some acceptance or something equality as cringe.
My wife opens Facebook on my phone a lot because shes nosy. Last time I opened my phone and it was already open. I scrolled for about 2 minutes waiting to see if anything would interest me, nothing did. Eventually it came up with a real person's name and I realised I wasnt on reddit.
Took it fucking ages to do the one thing I would want it to do.
I strongly suspect that this sort of thing is done as a gradual rollout to gauge response. You may have just been lucky enough to avoid being sorted into a test group.
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I haven’t been on facebook in like 10 years, but sounds like it’s exactly as I picture it.
Finally. Facebook and X created AGI. Artificial Gooner Intelligence.
I just did the same thing - logged on to my facebook account after many years, and I'm not having the same experience at all. Old friends, neighbors, and relatives posting disappointing amounts of AI slop, some local news it suggests I follow (something about a hairdresser getting fined for refusing service), one particular former neighbor posting an endless barrage of AI-generated religious slop... and that's about it. It wasn't interesting a decade ago, and it only got less interesting since.
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