Facebook and AI guff

Every time you think Facebook can’t get any worse…

I know all the cool kids deleted their accounts in 1992 or whatever, but for folk who are still on there, have you noticed a massive increase in AI generated posts in the past month or two?

It seems like every second post in my feed this week is a bot posting fake historical facts or stupid made-up landscape photos.

Feels like the dead internet theory is coming to fruition.

Yeah, it’s shite.

And they are going to use what you do post to train the AI to post more shite or something like that.

It’s horrendous

It’s 75% AI crap and endless adverts

I’m close to deleting it, but there are a few things on there that I’d actually miss

It’s the AI voiceovers on videos that are the dead giveaway, they’ve not got the tone or inflection right. No pause or emphasis where you’d expect one.

Absolute pile of shite, the problem is that everyone wants a bit of the AI action cos it sounds cool, even if they haven’t got a clue what it is.

I have facebook for local community groups/mtb group but dont post my own crap to it.

In fact I dont know anyone that does these days. Its just all adverts, same for Instagram/Twitter etc. All pointless twaddle

Someone, somewhere in the past thought it was a good idea, I think people are thankfully now moving away from it.

I do find it mildly amusing how the AI tries to tailor all the adds to me, so far it doesnt appear to get it remotely right. But if I scroll Facebook its 99% shit

Of course Snapchat is where its at now

I’ve disabled my account for this reason. Totally bored of that 75% crap too.

Once again, lots more time to do better things with!

I still have a few friends on there who post stuff I want to read/see (when the alogrithm lets me). And a few sports clubs I’m in use it as the primary means of communication. So unfortunately I can’t see me deleting my account anytime soon.

have you noticed a massive increase in AI generated posts in the past month or two?

Nope. Seems to be much the same as usual.

I’ve said this before, but the less you engage with content providers/friends/groups you are actually interested in, the more random crap FB will feed you. Luckily, I have lots of friends and groups still using FB somit still works for me.

Whilst it’s a good idea to delete your account as it’s all just brain rot.

If you read the popup/above screenshot, the following is linked under ”object”. you can submit it and facebook wont use your data for training a generative ai –https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/6359191084165019

hth

I still have a few friends on there who post stuff I want to read/see (when the alogrithm lets me). And a few sports clubs I’m in use it as the primary means of communication. So unfortunately I can’t see me deleting my account anytime soon.

Same here, but I’ve uninstalled it from my phone – now I only log in via a private browser window which is a slight faff so I probably only log in about once a week, stops me wanting to just idly check it all the time.

If you’re using PC/Mac then I recommend installing the FBPurity extension, it gets rid of 99% of the crap leaving basically just your feed – which for me I find highly useful/informative still, as I’m very selective about who I “friend” on FB (so don’t really get any posts from knob ends) but also use it for loads of hobby groups/clubs etc.

Unfortunately there’s no mobile version so you still get all the AI crap/suggested posts etc on there!

PSA, if you navigate to the ‘Feeds’ section you just get content from your groups/friends in chronological order.

Still thinking about deleting it though as even though Feeds makes it like using it in 2010 it’s still shite

They’ve been harvesting your data for years – how does AI get any more data from me than I already give them?

I rarely post, but there’s a few car related groups I’d miss for advice.

While I subscribe to Scotroute’s view that the algorithm will feed you more of whatever you consume so it’s only as bad as you make it X the algorithm BS factor, ‘dead internet theory’ is an interesting idea. I suppose it’s natural evolution, the reproduction rate of the junk displaces the interesting content since ease of content creation is inversely proportional to quality .. so for quality content wer we go back to books in the end. Or mags. Saying mags I was thinking bike info but I guess grot was the 2nd use of the internet so we’ll see a resurgence of Razzle and hedge porn too, eventually. Maybe hedge porn will be a true barometer of internet death.

That’s a thought that’s brightened my week. …I mean, the death of the social media algorithm BS more than the return of hedge porn. If I were 14 maybe that would flip.

Yea, it’s rapidly going downhill.

Every time they make it more useful, it seems to increase the amount of crap that come with it.  It’s either deliberate

Yeah, it’s shite.

And they are going to use what you do post to train the AI to post more shite or something like that.

Different issues.

One is just using your post to train language models / image generators. The other is pages generating “content” via other AI models which now makes up the bulk of the suggested posts in peoples feed.

I’m close to deleting it, but there are a few things on there that I’d actually miss

I’m the same (even after having my account compromised, losing years of memories and having to restart over a couple of years ago). I use it to keep in touch with family, some of whom live across the globe or are older and only really interact with Facebook online.

But more recently, the adverts have been really driving me mad. No I don’t want to get my car serviced by a garage 200 miles away from where I live or follow a right-wing pro-gun group from the USA because I follow a historical group about WW1.

About to dump FB as well.

The community (wherever) is handy and custom interest groups/forums are useful.

Don’t you Insta and about to dump the YouTube baggy app.

Blue sky is nothing special.

… Now what’s that book I was reading and using that sketchbook.

It seems like every second post in my feed this week is a bot posting fake historical facts or stupid made-up landscape photos.

Do you mean you’re getting AI content from random accounts or the people who you’re connected to / follow are posting AI content?

I have facebook for local community groups/mtb group but dont post my own crap to it.

In fact I dont know anyone that does these days. Its just all adverts, same for Instagram/Twitter etc. All pointless twaddle

If the people your connected to don’t post anything …. then Facebook  (or instagram or twitter)  hss nothing other than adverts and random nonsense to actually offer you.

The other is pages generating “content” via other AI models which now makes up the bulk of the suggested posts in peoples feed.

Once of our own members was asking about using AI to do just that – couldn’t be bothered to write about the products he sell so was looking to use AI to write posts that his customers could then not bother to read.

I think theres the consent issue in terms of your output / images / content being used to train AI – but I think really there should be consent issue articulated about consuming AI. It feels to me like AI content mechanisms need to somehow digitally watermark their output so that the source is identifiable – not necessarily visibly – but users should have the ability to filter and flag AI content just so you know what something is (or isn’t)

Newsguard are making some interesting efforts in trying to encourage News sites to identify AI content

Broadly speaking – if the people you know  don’t do anything, or don’t have anything interesting to say or show about what the do, then social networks can only offer you dross. It would have been some other form of lazy dross before AI was a way of making more dross even more lazily. The feed has to contain something, how soon you hit mostly dross depends on how few people you’re connect to and how  little / rarely  they post anything.

Facebook no longer works in any useful way.  I keep my account for work purposes but if I look at the ROI it  isn’t worth it any more. FB is really dead

It’s a little scary how short the life of this stuff is these days. If it can grow to over the GDP of a small nation in less that a generation then it can equally die in the same timescale.  It makes you realise just how good gates and jobs were to keep it going so long (anyone else remember Borland?)

If the people your connected to don’t post anything …. then Facebook  (or instagram or twitter)  hss nothing other than adverts and random nonsense to actually offer you.

I was thinking about the earlier today (on account of this thread) and realised that I don’t want to be part of the problem, so I’m going to start posting as much crap as I can on Facebook.

I still use Fb to keep in touch with friends and what little family I have left, I can’t say I’ve noticed any AI crap, but then I spend so little time there anyway, and I pay little to no attention to anything other than posts by people I know.

I have recently binned the FB app from my phone – I have since discovered I don’t spend half as much time on there & my mental health has improved as I have stopped trolling people who have different opinions from me.

Broadly speaking – if the people you know  don’t do anything, or don’t have anything interesting to say or show about what the do, then social networks can only offer you dross. It would have been some other form of lazy dross before AI was a way of making more dross even more lazily. The feed has to contain something, how soon you hit mostly dross depends on how few people you’re connect to and how  little / rarely  they post anything.

Back in the old days when facebook was a social network you simply opened it up once in a while, caught up on the ten or so posts since the least time, “poked” the girl you’d been flirting with in the union bar the night before back, then logged off again (on a PC, because this was a time when not even al feature phones featured sufficient pixels to run snake!) .

The filler, reels, or compulsion to follow thousands of accounts that post daily is all the same to Zuckerberg, because they make money keeping you in the app longer.  The last thing he want’s is you to just use it to see what friends and family are up to.

The last thing he want’s is you to just use it to see what friends and family are up to.

Not ‘just’ using it for family and friends but your not being denied that – because theres plenty of the visual chewing gum all over the internet and plenty of sites that offer pretty much only that. People continue to use FB becuase of that social connection function. So people you actually know/follow will be pushed towards the top of the feed and although theres bits of filler between you won’t see screeds of junk unless FB has run out of anything relevant to offer you. If you’re someone who’d keep scrolling through that junk then FB is happy with that but nobody’s  making you do that.

The AI generated photos that boomers seem to fall for, about how Great Britain was seem to have become more frequent. I usually block them but they still creep in.

The other extremely annoying thing about Facebook these days is that it decides the order of how things appear in your feed or in groups.

Yes you can rearrange to chronological order, but it always appears to default back to random. So you might see something you are interested in, but a soon as you swipe or move it disappears to be replaced by some sh!te

On a slight tangent, is there a way of blocking the AI generated guff that comes up when I Google for something?

It’s really annoying and quite often utterly wrong. It seems to fill half the screen, you can scroll through it but I’d rather it just wasn’t there

Thumbs up for FBPurity. I’ve used it for years – I had no idea how bad and unusable Facebook is without it. No ads, you can pick and choose what you want to see, and what not to see. And it’s free (but please send him a few quid anyway. No, I’m not affiliated.)