Facebook - has something changed?

[hooplady]

What the heck is going on with Facebook, does anyone know? They had an outage last week but before and after their algorithm seems to have gone nuts. Several of the pages I follow are saying that their post engagement has gone way, way down - as in, one that used to easily get hundreds of comments almost immediately, now gets 5-10 and they just trickle in.

I'm also seeing way more ads, which is the worst trade-off.

Anyone noticing the same? I Googled but didn't get anything decent.

[Travis]

The ads or "suggested" pages that are just spam accounts that can't be blocked have been like this for months. I don't know what drives the short-form video section, but having never clicked on a single video the content it pushes on me is half a step away from being porn.

[Sibley]

90% of my feed is ads. FB is greedy, that's what going on.

[Log]

I just recently reactivated my Facebook to access a couple groups, and I just downloaded a chrome extension to block the feed so I’m not even tempted to look at it. I check the groups and I get the hell out of there.

[Tasse]

I suggest the extension FBP, unofficially "Facebook Purity" and officially "Fluff Buster Purity" (for trademark reasons) to make facebook usable. Along with a good adblocker like UBlock Origin, but FBP is better at catching the sponsored posts.

It tends to break facebook's infinite scroll, at least when used in "most recent" mode, but I view that as a feature.

This all requires you use fb on a browser that can install extensions, not in the app, but I also heartily recommend doing that.

[Just Joe]

I divide my browsing into multiple browsers. One for everything personal (Vivaldi), one for work (Firefox), and one for things I don't want linking to me. Then I use plugins in all three like Tass mentioned.

My FB seems similar but I'm seeing some of the hobby groups more frequently that I seldom saw in the past. Like the quieter parts of my feed are getting prioritized more. I've only seen one of those near porn videos show up which is one more than I've ever seen. And I think the young woman was involved in porn b/c things I saw in the background.

[Dollar Slice]

Since the outage it is logging me out every few hours on the app, even though I have tried everything up to and including a complete reinstall. Something isn't right for sure. A friend of mine is having the same problem but on their laptop.

Just a tip to everyone complaining about the algorithm, since I run into people who don't know this a lot - FB has feeds that let you only look at friends, pages, groups, etc. and you don't have to look at their "suggested" stuff (which are about 95% trash) at all. Go to feeds > friends (or groups, or whatever you want to see). On my laptop I have it bookmarked to go straight to the friends tab - it's literally just my friends plus some ads, which are very well tailored to me (current ads in my feed: an affordable brand of cheese, a local grocery store, Darn Tough socks on clearance, discount eyeglasses). I wouldn't be on FB at all if I was looking at the main home feed, there's so much garbage.

[hooplady]

Thanks for all the suggestions about filtering out unwanted stuff but I think I didn't explain myself correctly. I have an adblocker and never click on the ads or suggested groups that do manage to get through. I simply ignore clutter in my feed. It's the fact that the pages I do follow are noticing a sudden drop-off in traffic. These are animal rescue groups and educators, both international and local, so for them the lower visibility is becoming a crisis.

I'm an admin in a couple of groups and one of them has been getting a lot more member requests recently which is also odd. I have to think that our group is being shown in feeds more than it has been in the past.

[Sibley]

hooplady, I told you. 90% of my feed is ads. The stuff that you mention is being drowned out. I simply don't see it.

[hooplady]

hooplady, I told you. 90% of my feed is ads. The stuff that you mention is being drowned out. I simply don't see it.

Ohhhh, I'm pretty dense sometimes. Is reading the feed the way most people consume Facebook? I've become accustomed to my feed being composed mainly of updates to the pages and groups I follow. And if it isn't, I simply ignore it and go to my pre-set shortcuts

[Dollar Slice]

hooplady, I told you. 90% of my feed is ads. The stuff that you mention is being drowned out. I simply don't see it.

Ohhhh, I'm pretty dense sometimes. Is reading the feed the way most people consume Facebook?

I never look at the home feed. My other feeds (friends, favorites, pages, groups) are about 20% ads and 80% people/pages I follow. I'm not sure what everyone else is looking at. If I look at the home feed it's mostly junk mixed in with stuff that my friends posted a week ago. It's a baffling algorithm.

[Sibley]

I probably should be using the specific feeds rather than the home feed. However, those are harder to get to than the home feed, and I also don't really want to be scrolling FB, regardless of what's on it. The mix of groups that I follow has a lot of crap that I don't want to see, but I also don't want to leave the local groups so I'm stuck. My friends aren't posting much, if at all. My family either doesn't post, a few are dead now, and the rest are unfollowed for very good reasons. Everything else is cartoon pages.

[Just Joe]

hooplady, I told you. 90% of my feed is ads. The stuff that you mention is being drowned out. I simply don't see it.

FB Purity plugin, sounds like your Facebook is unusable without it. 

[Sibley]

hooplady, I told you. 90% of my feed is ads. The stuff that you mention is being drowned out. I simply don't see it.

FB Purity plugin, sounds like your Facebook is unusable without it.

"The mix of groups that I follow has a lot of crap that I don't want to see, but I also don't want to leave the local groups so I'm stuck."

Wouldn't help. Unless you can convince all the idiots to not be idiots, but if so, please share because there's a lot of that.

[Tasse]

FBP actually has specific options to hide "meme images," selfies, or even "happy couple photos." You can also filter out posts containing specific words you choose (I filter the word "sponsored" but you could easily do this to avoid political posts, for example.)

It's not perfect but it's the next best thing to convincing idiots not to be idiots.

Well, maybe the third best, with the first option being to quit FB entirely. ;)

[Just Joe]

hooplady, I told you. 90% of my feed is ads. The stuff that you mention is being drowned out. I simply don't see it.

FB Purity plugin, sounds like your Facebook is unusable without it.

"The mix of groups that I follow has a lot of crap that I don't want to see, but I also don't want to leave the local groups so I'm stuck."

Wouldn't help. Unless you can convince all the idiots to not be idiots, but if so, please share because there's a lot of that.

I'm deleting a group every week or so. The FB groups relating to my technical hobbies really don't offer the kind of depth of discussion I find in forums like this one. 

[BlueMR2]

What the heck is going on with Facebook, does anyone know? They had an outage last week but before and after their algorithm seems to have gone nuts. Several of the pages I follow are saying that their post engagement has gone way, way down - as in, one that used to easily get hundreds of comments almost immediately, now gets 5-10 and they just trickle in.

I'm also seeing way more ads, which is the worst trade-off.

I'm not seeing any more ads, but I see the same posts over and over again with much less new.

[rosarugosa]

I installed FB Purity based on this thread, and it has made a remarkable difference for the better! No more ads or posts from suggested groups that I am not following. Thanks!

[ChpBstrd]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

[getsorted]

Professional Facebooker here. Yep, and we're all going nuts! There seem to have been some significant changes to the algorithm, because we're getting way less engagement on our "old reliable" post types than usual.

Edited to add: But this isn't the first time this has happened. I'm surprised we don't have some kind of lingo for it at this point, tbh.

[eyesonthehorizon]

Professional Facebooker here. Yep, and we're all going nuts! There seem to have been some significant changes to the algorithm, because we're getting way less engagement on our "old reliable" post types than usual.

Edited to add: But this isn't the first time this has happened. I'm surprised we don't have some kind of lingo for it at this point, tbh.

Given how often it happens on YouTube, interrupting creator livelihoods, we started calling it the algo-shuffle.

I’m so glad I’m not a professional Facebooker. That would drive me to FIRE. Not sure how you hold onto sanity.

[getsorted]

Professional Facebooker here. Yep, and we're all going nuts! There seem to have been some significant changes to the algorithm, because we're getting way less engagement on our "old reliable" post types than usual.

Edited to add: But this isn't the first time this has happened. I'm surprised we don't have some kind of lingo for it at this point, tbh.

Given how often it happens on YouTube, interrupting creator livelihoods, we started calling it the algo-shuffle.

I’m so glad I’m not a professional Facebooker. That would drive me to FIRE. Not sure how you hold onto sanity.

I should clarify. Content creation is one part of my marketing job, for which I am paid an hourly wage with benefits. I don't derive my personal living directly from Facebook revenue, thank god. And my company isn't super dependent on Facebook engagement as part of its business model. We have a lot of content across a lot of platforms.

[eyesonthehorizon]

@getsorted - I recall you mentioning, I just couldn’t even witness more than an hour a week of that site without losing it. Every time I have to log on to check someone’s message it’s like taking a rickety bridge over the Pit of Despair.

[rocketpj]

The word is 'enshittification' and it appears to be happening with quite a few of the online 'services' right now.

[jinga nation]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

Cory Doctorow coined that word, and explained it here: https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
Facebook is in that article.

Also, worth subscribing to his daily newsletter (it's free). Lot to ponder while you read; lots of things going to shit, in every industry. Enshittification is pervasive and contagious in corporations.

[tj]

Holy crap - FBP is a game changer. Is there a way to install this plug-in on an Android phone?

[rosarugosa]

Holy crap - FBP is a game changer. Is there a way to install this plug-in on an Android phone?

I agree that FBP is amazing, but I looked into it and there is no option for smart phones and no plans to develop anything.  Too bad.

[tj]

Holy crap - FBP is a game changer. Is there a way to install this plug-in on an Android phone?

I agree that FBP is amazing, but I looked into it and there is no option for smart phones and no plans to develop anything.  Too bad.

Maybe best to just uninstall from phone. :D

[ChpBstrd]

Holy crap - FBP is a game changer. Is there a way to install this plug-in on an Android phone?

I agree that FBP is amazing, but I looked into it and there is no option for smart phones and no plans to develop anything.  Too bad.

Maybe best to just uninstall from phone. :D

But the phone is required for 2FA.

[tj]

Holy crap - FBP is a game changer. Is there a way to install this plug-in on an Android phone?

I agree that FBP is amazing, but I looked into it and there is no option for smart phones and no plans to develop anything.  Too bad.

Maybe best to just uninstall from phone. :D

But the phone is required for 2FA.

How frequently does Facebook request a 2FA? Can you not install it on phone as needed for that?

I guess one could turn off all facebook notifications and don't use it on phone except when required. That would require some serious self control for most people, I'd imagine.

[Tasse]

Maybe best to just uninstall from phone. :D

But the phone is required for 2FA.

I haven't had the facebook app in probably 10 years. There are other 2FA methods.

[tj]

I also like that the "Messenger" is a completely different app than the Facebook app, so people can still message you on your phone, but you wont be tempted by mindless scrolling.

[Tasse]

RIP Messenger Lite, which inter-operated with facebook messenger but didn't have most of the bloatware. It was designed for international users with less powerful phones and/or slower internet. They killed it off a year or two ago.

[tj]

RIP Messenger Lite, which inter-operated with facebook messenger but didn't have most of the bloatware. It was designed for international users with less powerful phones and/or slower internet. They killed it off a year or two ago.

What bloat is on Messenger?

[Tasse]

RIP Messenger Lite, which inter-operated with facebook messenger but didn't have most of the bloatware. It was designed for international users with less powerful phones and/or slower internet. They killed it off a year or two ago.

What bloat is on Messenger?

The integrated stories, the animated stickers, the display of every friend who's online, the new "Meta AI"...

I'm seeing some people online complain about ads, but I don't think I've ever seen one myself. Not sure if that's because of our network-wide adblocker or something else. It would probably be an instant dealbreaker for me.

Messenger Lite was about half the size of Messenger.

[Loren Ver]

Hmm, I've never had facebook ask my to 2FA myself.  I don't think it knows I have a smartphone.  Granted having a smartphone is a relatively new things for me and I'm not on facebook often.  If it ever does start requiring it, DH will be out of luck.  He uses FB a lot, but has no smartphone.  We both must have that option turned off, or it knows our computers and since we never log in from anywhere else, it never asks.

LV

[GuitarStv]

I don't have a cell phone but do have a facebook account.  I think.  Just a sec.




Yep, it's still there.  It's been a couple years since I logged in.  :P

[rosarugosa]

I don't think FB requires 2FA, but it's a really, really good idea to have it. Someone took over my account a couple of years ago, and since FB has no customer service, it was quite an ordeal to regain control of my account.  I set up the 2FA after that experience in hopes of avoiding a repeat.

[Tasse]

I'm certain there are 2FA options that don't require having the app.