> Not only are they at mercy of FB, but there are a lot of insane people on FB.

A fair number - not all - I am convinced are foreign trolls, or bots. There's something which just feels a bit different from a normal partisan, and the kinds of folks who invade every regional (town, county, etc.) group and post nonstop partisan dreck. Their profiles are off in some way, and the hours they are posting are all over the map.

FB does have the "big tent" thing going on, where they wanted to become the tool for every possible organizing principle. So you do get some of the legitimately most wacky people on the internet as well.

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duskwuff 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Is it possible that these are real people who are unwell? I can imagine a situation where users who spend a lot of time (like, to an obsessive degree) viewing and commenting on regional content start getting recommendations for more similar posts, regardless of whether it's local to them not. If there's enough users like this - and I'm sure there are - Facebook might even start treating them as a demographic, effectively creating a sort of self-organizing trolling group.

	▲	RajT88 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I'm sure some are like you describe. But what I keep seeing is stuff like this: An account which seems like it was a normal account for like 10 years. Maybe it leans a bit in the direction of the content it is currently posting. But, it was mostly dormant for a few years. Then, it started posting a high volume of partisan content. It otherwise seems to be a real person, just it one day started posting hardcore partisan materials all over the regional groups (usually multiple). It's fishy. Another one: An account which superficially seems to be a real account, except that it's got a generic enough name you can't pin down which person with that name it might be. Nothing about their profile identifies them as anyone in particular. They may have a lot of friends, but they don't appear to be people who know them IRL - just randos. Their profile feed is a mix of normal stuff and partisan stuff. What they post to groups is 100% hardcore partisan stuff. Their profile is very light on photos of themself, and always kind of low quality. There's never a photo of a place you can pin down to a real location. These don't tend to be accounts that have been around more than a year or three. Again, it's fishy. Like I mentioned, in both cases, you'll see the accounts posting at odd hours for where they supposedly live. They could be real people, or sophisticated trolling operations. TBH, the reason I lean more towards the latter is because Facebook is so goddamned lax about any kind of enforcement. Do I think someone could set up a bunch of fake profiles and operate them for years, all from the same Chinese or Russian IP address with locations all in the US, and Facebook would never ban them despite the accounts getting flagged? Yes, that is extremely easy to believe. If it drives engagement (and troll accounts do!), it's likely to be allowed to continue. I'd be the happiest man on the internet for a split second if someone who works for Meta tromps on in here with a burner account and tells me I'm being an idiot, that they're fighting hard against troll armies and bots, that it's just a super hard problem because the troll/bot networks are so sophisticated. Hasn't happened yet.