Ok I am going to click on FB for the first time in a month or so. Here we go, not expecting much.

I have two notifications, one is about a birthday today, one is about someone I don't know asking me to like an AirBnB page. Let's go to the feed.

1. Sales thing from some group

2. A Boomer looking "reel" of a classic car (I don't like classic cars and nothing I have done suggests I do)

3. People You May Know (I've seen these same suggestions over the last several years, still don't know any of them and still don't want to connect)

4. Friend post, death in the family

5-9. Also friend posts

10. That exact same Boomer reel again

11-15. Friend posts or people I follow

16. "Memes Daily," which I don't follow so must be an ad

17-20. Friend posts and a group post from a group I follow

Overall, this really isn't bad, surprisingly. At one point, which is when I stopped checking it for months at a time, it was literally post after post after post from people I don't follow of the most garbage AI generated slop, like the sloppiest you can imagine. For example, the AI generated ones with the wounded soldier and a birthday cake with some message like "it's my birthday and no one came" level of slop, or an AI generated lady with an AI generated picture saying something like "this is my first painting but no one liked it," each with tens of thousands of likes and Boomers commenting things like "It's ok I am giving you a like happy birthday," just maddeningly ad infinitum and nausea-inducing.

So, maybe they fixed the above. Still, I can live without Facebook so am not planning on going back.

Or they only show a few friends' posts if you haven't opened Facebook for a while. This makes it appear more social and organic than you last remember, and for good reasons: if you come back, Facebook hopes they can develop your habit over time; also, it makes curious people like you less worried about this addicting app. But then, once they know you're finally coming back regularly, they can turn up the dopamine level gradually, and make social posts harder to find. You'll doomscroll to find them, and they know it.

Every dealer probably knows better than to let people overdose on their first sniff. Especially if they're relapsing.

This is quite an interesting post. I would guess that facebook does actually show you friend content if that's what you engage with. After all their single metric of success is ads viewed on the platform, which is the same as time spent.

So theoretically, everyone here complaining about not seeing friend content should probably try and train the algorithm to show more of it.

Or to be an asshole about it - if you see generic clickbait content on facebook, its your fault. You engage with it...