It’s definitely like this. I don’t entirely mind it for myself, because it reminds me to log off before I can get into a doomscroll where I’m assailed by my family member’s awful opinions. I only use FB for marketplace/buy nothing groups, and the barrage of shitty ads/promo posts helps me log off as soon as I’ve found what I need (or have given up on finding what I need).
It’s been like that. I have some uBlock rules that clean up most of it, but the last time I got on Facebook it wasn’t behaving well so I probably need to update them.
Like many others, I keep FB around to see updates from family/older friends, etc.
What I’ve noticed is that every couple months they decide to update their feed algorithms, and my feed reserts to the garbage feed.
For ads: I’ve found that clicking the post options and REPORTING the post is the only way to filter this garbage. (I usually choose spam or “false news”, but that’s just an indicator of how the algorithm views my engagement).
For promo posts: I snooze the user for 30 days, and often the campaign doesn’t run long enough (or I filter enough to push me out of the demographic) so I don’t see these again.
Overall, it takes about 15-30 minutes every couple weeks or so, and has been generally useful to find similar methodologies across platforms
It's been a while since I've actually logged on, but I still have fbpurity installed on my browser from back in the day, I remember it doing a decent job at getting rid of the ads uBlock Origin can't tell apart from posts. I've not looked in to it still being up to date or functional, so double check, and if it's alive, give it a try.
I’m not on FB, but I have recently signed up for Instagram, similarly Meta-owned (due to the recurring problem that a lot of people in my life use it, and networking is distressingly essential these days), and just… why is so much of it ads and promos?
I did the same a while ago. I signed up for Instagram because a few friends were on it, but never use it. I signed in a few weeks ago to catch up, and it showed me three or four posts, said that I was caught up, and then just showed me ads and sponsored posts.
I am actually noting that on my desktop, I’m not getting any ads or sponsored posts, just stuff from those I follow, and other people with similar content (so many frogs and sighthounds). I doubt it’s because Instagram doesn’t force ads on the desktop site. My adblocker is just doing a very, very good job.
I can’t understand why people still use FB with that mess of ads and promos. It operates like a scammer at this point: they actively select people who interact with low quality information.
I genuinely don’t get it either. I have an account on FB for the exceedingly rare occasions when I need to contact someone who only has an FB account. I can’t imagine being on there willingly.
I was “forced” to make an account by my mom at some point, so I did. I set the profile picture to something completely random and promptly logged out. The only time I’ve logged in since then was to accept my wife’s friend request (or whatever they call them) after we’d been married for over a year, since apparently her friends were confused why we weren’t labelled as “in a relationship” or whatever.
Look, we’re married. I don’t need Facebook to tell you that. >_>
I still use FB for Buy Nothing and other local groups. The best way to avoid the insane ads is to go to Menu > Feeds then select exactly what you want to see. There’s still ads but it’s a fraction of the default main page.
Economy of scale: you either have a large enough active user base and fewer ads or a smaller active user base with more ads. Just another indication of the slow death of FB.
FYI, you can go directly to messenger.com and avoid seeing the rest of the site entirely. You can also deactivate your Facebook account and leave Messenger (mostly) functional.
Hey, that’s handy - thanks! I did have my timeline deleted for a little while, but I reactivated it recently because I needed a couple of extra friend-management features that I couldn’t quite get working purely through Messenger. Still, a dedicated Messenger site is super helpful.
I still check it very occasionally because my family and a few friends are on there. I don't know how they stand it; it's been 95+% ads for at least a year now.
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