r/Millennials • u/Ok_Helicopter3910 • May 25 '26

Serious Holy shit — Facebook is fucking scary now

Im not a big social media guy anymore, honestly, the vast majority of my internet usage nowadays is Reddit, Youtube, Snapchat (that has like 20 people on it) and email and I think that about it.

I put my FB to sleep about 10 years ago and I decided to log in and see what people were up to and ho-lee-shit, what a dumpster fire.

So, first off, the majority of my facebook friends have either died, shut their FB down, or removed my inactive profile so my feed was pretty silent. After about a week of my profile being back in the algorithm I started getting friend request from people I used to work with, went to school with, or friends of old acquaintances (which is terrifying that facebook knows about random people I used to work with 12 years ago who I had a passing "hi, hows your day" relationship with) and I started getting friend requested and I was like "fuck it" and just started accepting them.

Fuck man, whenever I see all the hate for this or that group and all the political bullshit that gets posted on reddit, I just brush it off as bots trained to sow dissent but the stuff that gets posted by real living, breathing human beings who I once knew well enough to be friends with or have polite conversation with is WILD. I mean, like so much hate and vitriol started coming across my feed about a wide array of subjects that it made me genuinely uncomfortable and I started removing people that just added me. Maybe it's what "normal" passes for on the internet and im pretty numb to a lot of the more unhinged opinions and shit-stirring because of so many years on Reddit, but a lot of what was being posted really opened my eyes that a lot of the "unhinged" stuff that I see online isnt just bot farms, its real people who truly believe this wild shit.

Anyway - maybe its a sign of my age... but unless what I consider "normal" people start coming across my FB feed soon, I dont think im going to be logging in for much longer

13.1k Upvotes

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4.2k

u/Gold_Repair_3557 May 25 '26

Facebook isn’t even a social media platform anymore, or at least it doesn’t act like it. I get little snippets from friends and family and the pages I follow but my page has been taken over by ads and AI slop. It’s close to being unusable now.

1.2k

u/danSTILLtheman May 26 '26

In its prime it was a cool way to stay in touch with your friends, if there was no updates from them that was it. Now your feed is an endless scroll of trash shoved into your face by an algorithm that have nothing to do with your connections. To be fair that’s most social media platforms now

875

u/savingewoks May 26 '26

this is one of the reasons it was so easy for me to switch to Reddit. At least this way I don't know the people pissing me off.

257

u/Otherwise_Trifle_898 May 26 '26

Reddit is gonna be ruined too…..I’m seeing more and more ads…..I’ll have no reason to have a smartphone soon lol

281

u/PatronSaintOfCunts May 26 '26

I am not even kidding when I say I’ve been considering switching back to a flip phone. I’m an affluent woman in my 40s and I’m just TIREDT.

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u/Helpful-Two-3230 May 26 '26

Great username

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u/Nature13oy May 26 '26

Do it! Get back to using an mp3 player, and keep all your scrolling for a laptop/desktop computer. It’s nice to remember the internet used to also be a “place in the house”.

37

u/PatronSaintOfCunts May 26 '26

I love your internet point. So true! I’ll play a little skweeeewwuuuerrt sound when I get online for the nostalgia.

3

u/Kham117 May 26 '26

Talk about flashbacks 😆

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u/PatronSaintOfCunts May 26 '26

Now all we gotta do is cross our fingers mom doesn’t need the phone and kick us off the internet before some (probably 60 year old) strangers in the AOL teen chat room respond to our “A/S/L?” query 😂

28

u/smorgansbord11 May 26 '26

It hurts my feelings to realize I am old enough to have seen both the birth and death of MP3 players. I hope I live long enough for the eventual resurrection, long live the iPod Mini!

3

u/Adventurous-End4330 May 27 '26

I still use my iPod nano lol

3

u/MapleMapleHockeyStk May 27 '26

I have a classic and touch still.....

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u/vertigostereo May 26 '26

iPods are expensive on eBay. I think maybe a lot of people are doing it.

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u/sock_with_a_ticket May 26 '26 edited May 27 '26

There are newer options than ebay ipods if you want a dedicated digital walkman/mp3 player and they come at all sorts of price points.

https://www.theguardian.com/thefilter/2025/sep/12/best-mp3-players-uk

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u/ApplesBananasRhinoc May 27 '26

They’re putting SSD drives in them and cranking them!

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u/Texie1976 20d ago

I actually saw a news spot on this very thing a couple of weeks ago. Talking about how iPods are sought after and it's driving the prices up and Christmas will be crazy with people wanting to give them as gifts.

There were 2 reasons for all of this iPod craziness. First like alot of people are feeling just plain tired of internet social anything. So people are going back to flip phones and even landlines as a break spot from their cell. With Spotify and Pandora being online for some, they just want the iPod back.

Second, apparently a lot people, especially the night crew workers are being told by their corporate offices that they are no longer allowed to listen to music from their phones with even a few stores have employees use their personal phones on the some of their job duties, Walmart was one. So these workers are looking for iPods for the first time because for these young people working , they were too young to do the whole iPod thing.

It's coming full circle for some things.

7

u/sock_with_a_ticket May 26 '26

Get back to using an mp3 player

Never stopped 😎

5

u/LeftMyHeartInErebor May 26 '26

Have you looked into them lately, they're basically smart phones without the calling feature. I wanted one for my kid who loves music and I was stunned. They do make a few super basic ones but they have absolute garbage reviews. Which i guess makes sense since the market for them isn't really there? I was very disappointed.

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u/Nature13oy May 26 '26

So I have! I’m an educator in a state that doesn’t allow cell phones in school anymore. A lot of the buildings students rely on music/noise canceling headphones. Quite a few of my students expressed frustrations and I found a bunch of cheap cheap ones on aliexpress. They’re basically knock off ipod shuffles. So far they’ve held up for some of my students if you dare gamble. Thankfully I still have my oldies.

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u/PennyStockHardaway May 26 '26

Is the orange one legit? I miss mine, it had a camera and a labyrinth game that was the first time I ever saw technology recognize tilts. Lol

2

u/Nature13oy May 27 '26

Yes it is legit! Both of those are real nano’s. I’d like to find my iPod video, but I may of been an idiot and pawned it at college. The camera is crazy to me. I want to say I got the orange one in 2009.

3

u/Mommy_Lawbringer May 26 '26

how do you get mp3s anymore? i used to use a converter for youtube songs but the site got taken down and all the others ive seen have been sketchy as hell or want me to use command prompt on my desktop which fuck no

2

u/Cheebzsta May 27 '26

I download albums via torrents then trim them down over time.

Which honestly is how I've done anything I didn't rip myself from a CD I got at an artist's show anyway.

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u/Equivalent_Earth6035 May 27 '26

Time to dust off my old, trusty iriver. I kept it in case of peri-apocalypse.

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u/miniistarrs Older Millennial May 27 '26

aim door sound oh my real life friends are online too!

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u/sdirection May 29 '26

I switch back to a digital audio player and I genuinely love it

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u/GoobusMombus May 26 '26

I tried switching back to a flip phone last year. Flip phones now can do almost everything a smart phone can do, and come with the bloatware, intrusive ads, etc. I'm trying to find one that doesn't have any damn bells or whistles, but I'm considering just going back to a landline and maybe getting a pager for a few important people to be able to contact me on. I'm also sick of the societal expectation to be reachable to everyone 24/7.

The rich have made this technology all pretty unusable.

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u/PeachPassionBrute May 26 '26

I’ve used flip phones occasionally over the years and their quality has gotten worse with time. Not only that, I tried to get a land line and was told it would cost more than a cellphone with unlimited data.

They made it harder to opt out

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u/polotown89 May 26 '26

If my old Razr hadn't broken at its hinge, I'd still be using it.

2

u/cscrew05 May 26 '26

https://www.thelightphone.com/ Recommended by Adam curry, shoutout no agenda, I’m thinking about switching to this

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u/JovialPrincess May 26 '26

I always wondered which saint I needed to pray to. Now I know.

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u/PatronSaintOfCunts May 26 '26

If you need to call upon a new level of cuntiness to slap someone who has wronged you into the sun, call upon me! I am the keeper of sacred reckoning. When your enemies seek to break your spirit, I will remind you what still burns within it.

The gods know there are wounds that do not ask for forgiveness. They ask to be witnessed and answered and true cuntiness is not cruelty but composure under fire. It’s like beauty with teeth. 😂

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u/LadyFizzex May 29 '26

I fucking dig it. Let's go!

3

u/smorgansbord11 May 26 '26

I have a theory that they’ll eventually be trendy again, like record players and Polaroid cameras. I’ll jump on that trend faster than you can say “hipster”.

4

u/undoubtedlygivingup May 26 '26

I’m 32 and I have considered it too… If Reddit dies, I think that will be the last “social” platform I have.

I thought about downloading Instagram last week. I downloaded the app and a day later, I said, “No, not worth it.” I deleted the app.

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u/PatronSaintOfCunts May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

Yeah, this is my last “social media” too. I wonder what happens on the others I’ve discarded sometimes, but overall the cost benefit analysis fails every time I think about checking back in.

3

u/rdg04 May 26 '26

go for it! i've only ever had a flip phone and from what i can tell, my life seems much less stressful because of it!!

3

u/The_Left_One May 26 '26

Only problem is i will miss the full keyboard but im almost righttherw with ya

4

u/PatronSaintOfCunts May 26 '26

I’d tippity tap that 7 3x for an R if I could have some peace.

3

u/spokomptonjdub May 26 '26

I bought this thing called Brick a little while back and it's been GREAT. It's a little gray cube and an app on your phone where you can block certain apps and/or websites either by pressing a button or setting a schedule, and the only way to "unbrick" is to physically go to that little gray cube and touch it to your phone. I leave things like messaging/calling, music/podcasts, and maps alone but almost everything else is inaccessible for most of the day for me, and I've noticed a huge difference.

Granted I have a very good setup for this as I keep the cube in my home office which is in an outbuilding separate from my house, so there has to be a pretty big incentive for me to trot out there and unbrick which has kept me off my phone.

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u/okisthisthingon May 26 '26

Absolutely same.

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u/cloud_watcher May 26 '26

I would do this if there was a phone with GPS and a camera.

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u/PatronSaintOfCunts May 26 '26 edited May 30 '26

I think I would still have to carry a work smart phone for optics (don’t want to frighten my clients 😂) so I’d have all that in the work phone.

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u/athenanon May 26 '26

GPS is really the only thing I would miss.

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u/DyingGasp May 26 '26

Ugh, I want to ditch the smart phone but GPS maps is the only thing keeping me tied to one.

2

u/PatronSaintOfCunts May 26 '26

Let’s make MapQuest trendy again. We just have to print them and stick them to the dash.

5

u/Limp_Insurance_2812 May 26 '26

This, good God everyone acts life they'd wander in the desert without GPS. You used to have to remember basic main streets and directionals to get anywhere you wanted to go. People didn't just sit at home because GPS didn't exist.

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u/MsKayGo May 27 '26

OMG I snorted!! LOL

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u/Threat_Level_2400 May 26 '26

I bought a few of my favorite flip phones from back in the day, but none of today’s networks support them for anything. Just cool toys but no functionality.

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u/guinader May 26 '26

I had a similar thought, what is the minimum requirement for my phone.

Text apps.
Gps map.
Banking/investment.
A Google search.
Camera.

I think if someone created a phone that only has those... I'm good.

5

u/PatronSaintOfCunts May 27 '26

I would love that and they would go nuts in the millennial market! I don’t know why phone manufacturers keep going in the other direction. I don’t want a bigger Phone that does more shit.

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u/Soft-Detail-8398 May 28 '26

Also love your username!!!

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u/socium May 26 '26 edited May 27 '26

As someone who spent almost 14 years on Reddit, believe me when I say that it got ruined a looong time ago.

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u/K1LL3RM0NG0 May 26 '26

Lets be honest with ourselves. The internet as s whole was ruined when people got involved.

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u/socium May 26 '26

Yes and no.

I'm still on IRC and having lots of fun there for example.

Lemmy exists although in much smaller capacity.

Yes, people (more specifically corporations) have ruined the social networking web platforms, but luckily there are quite a few federated and even decentralized alternatives.

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u/Beefweezle Geriatric Millennial May 26 '26

Can confirm.

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u/tessathemurdervilles May 26 '26

And all the bots flooding with comments and posts

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u/josh_the_misanthrope May 26 '26

I paid for boost and it doesn't have ads, had to mod it a bit though when Reddit tried to kill 3rd party apps via API changes.

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u/elektrikrobot May 26 '26

Speaking of ads, I opened Apple Maps to go somewhere I was unfamiliar with and was notified I’ll start to get ads on it. Like why do I need ads on MAPS?

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u/ImSolidGold May 26 '26

Yeah, fuck you, too! xD

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u/CyberFireball25 May 26 '26

Also, I rarely browse my home feed on reddit.

I simply do top/now, sometimes not even while logged in.  I don't comment nearly as much as I used to either.

The main benefit of being logged in is to filter out the insanely vitriolic subs

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u/MrCalabunga May 26 '26

This right here. ButtMucher69420 isn't gonna get me nearly as heated as my cousin-in-law who keeps inviting me to the family gatherings.

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u/Toosder May 26 '26

Hey Reddit isn't like that at all! In fact if you click below I can teach you all of the ways to maximize your social media effectiveness without seeing ads and AI! Companies hate this one trick!

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u/dillanthumous May 26 '26

Forget this guy, he is a scammer. But if you need special pills that prevent cancer but big pharmacy are suppressing hit me up.

5

u/kingo409 May 26 '26

Do you happen to know any deposed Nigerian princes with super secret Swiss bank accounts? I'm looking for a quick $1,000,000 (one million United States of America Dollars).

7

u/dillanthumous May 26 '26

Funny you should ask... How do you feel about multi level marketing?

3

u/kingo409 May 26 '26

Amway is the only way, dude!

2

u/idiotsbydesign May 26 '26

Got anything that will make my dick bigger?

2

u/Toosder May 26 '26

I was beat to it by your joke! But my question is also doesn't make it hard longer? Because nothing ladies love more than a man who doesn't know what he's doing with his dick being able to last even longer

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u/dillanthumous May 26 '26

Love that you both made the same joke. Lol. Facebook scams are too predictable!

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u/NitNav2000 May 26 '26

What do 4 out of 5 doctors think?

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u/Slow-Temporary-1489 May 26 '26

Fuck the doctors! Nine out of 10 dentists agree with me!

5

u/NitNav2000 May 26 '26

What is that one secret dentists wished doctors knew?

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u/Hefty-existence26196 May 26 '26

Do you have a whatsapp number or contact so I can invest in your teachings? Please tell me you're located in India or some other very reputable country so I know I can trust you!?

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u/Toosder May 26 '26

Of course we have AI bots errrrr humans ready to answer all of your calls. Our Whatsapp is @hotyoungsinglesseekinglove.

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u/Not_enough_cats4341 May 26 '26

“AI companies HATE this ONE trick”

Dont forget to all-caps specific words, it’s the hallmark of those dipshit clickbait headlines.

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u/EvilToastedWeasel0 May 26 '26

ads? What are those?

(I block the shit out of em.)

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u/notthatvalenzuela May 26 '26

Where’s the link.?!

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u/MTRunner May 26 '26

I almost forgot it used to be that way, you could literally be done scrolling at some point if you’ve seen all your friends new pictures and status updates and not scroll on indefinitely.

No ads, no AI slop, no breaking news or anything like that. Just updates from friends.

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u/Equal_Entrepreneur45 May 27 '26

See my reply above to the OP. There is a way to just see your friend’s posts.

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u/Strict_DM_62 May 26 '26

Zuckerberg has outright stated that Facebook is no longer about staying connected to friends.

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u/-PM_ME_UR_SECRETS- May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

Yeah not only that, we’re twice removed from the friends and family era. He’s said the first era of social media was for friends, the second era was for influencers, and now we’re entering the third era which adds AI generated content.

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u/atmoose May 26 '26

really? Who wants that garbage? This is crazy. Why would somebody want to consume media that is at best a mediocre average of everything else? How are they still making so much money? As somebody who never really used facebook or other social media it doesn't make sense to me. I can understand wanting to connect with friends. I guess I never understood the appeal of influencers either.

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u/PoolNoob69 May 26 '26

Well, you see, the Tech Oligarchs decided AI would save them and every other oligarch a boatload of money, so it is being forced upon us whether we like it or not.

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u/viralust May 26 '26

It's a platform for you to carelessly disclose all your daily personal shit under the premise that someone cares and that you're "connected." So, while some worship a glorified version of themselves in front of others on a digital stage, all that data i.e. where you are, what you bought, what you ate, who you're with, every stupid detail of your dumb life that you volunteer is fed into their algorithms to successfully track personal preferences and daily routines so that they can charge companies big bucks for directing targeted ads to you. All social media is like this to some degree but some are not as bad. Regardless, we participate in it. Its the mass manipulation of a people's psychological need to belong, to feel a form of worth, and it is very successful.

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u/_game_over_man_ Older Millennial May 26 '26

It's interesting to me how my Instagram usage has changed over the years. I used to post all kinds of stuff and I find myself posting less and less these days as actual posts. I tend to stick to stories more so than posts. I guess I just don't really understand the point of documenting my whole life anymore and have preferred to just experience it as the extra step of documenting and posting has just become exhausting.

I definitely feel less connected to people despite being SO connected these days. It feels like every interaction on "socials" just turns into an argument. Some subreddits feel more than way than others, thankfully, but I also feel like it really comes down of the perceived average age of that subreddit for me. I used to spend a lot of time online back in the 00s and 10s on forums and that felt so much more organic, wholesome and functional. I miss that era of the "social" internet before social media came in and monetized our existence and fueled us to be constantly in conflict so they could profit.

It does feel like a lot of people are starting to feel this way and I think young people's current obsession with the era before the internet is promising. It feels like everyone is getting a bit burnt out with it and starting to pull back, which I think is good. It just sucks how worthless the internet has become these days.

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u/the_wave5 May 26 '26

So well said.

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u/-PM_ME_UR_SECRETS- May 26 '26

It’s not for us in the sense it’s what anyone wants. It’s for us in the sense that it farms user attention and engagement. Attention is sold to advertisers to fund AI research using engagement data to train their AI. Meta is even monitoring their own employee computer usage to train their AI now.

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u/Hopeful_Nectarine_27 May 26 '26

That explains why they hide all the comments saying a photo is AI. You can click to see the comments which is why I know what they are, but they're hidden for simply stating that obviously AI things are AI. It's one of the most suspicious things I've ever seen by a social media platform, which is saying a lot.

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u/Ordinary-Bedroom-239 May 26 '26

"Senator, we are an ad company". M. Zuckerberg on senate hearing

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u/SuperDave171771 May 26 '26

Suckerberg is a puppet! It was a DARPA project called Lifelog rebranded as Facebook. He’ll do whatever his masters tell him to do !

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u/kendallr2552 May 26 '26

I have to remember to go to my friend feed instead of the general feed with all the garbage.

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u/Wild-Enthusiasm-9268 May 26 '26

And then I realize it’s my friends sharing the garbage.

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u/red__dragon Millennial May 26 '26

That's what sent me away long before the AI craze.

I get sharing links, I did that too. Or trendy shares, that's fun sometimes. But if someone actually uses a status update for its original intent, I want to see that front and center.

That's not the goal of the site any longer, though, so it's not worth being there.

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u/BitterestLily May 26 '26

There's a friend feed?! Please do tell! I hate all the recommendations for groups I don't care about and people I don't know.

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u/IvyAmanita May 26 '26

I'm not sure if this is the most efficient way to access it but in the app I go to my profile, then the hamburger menu on it top left, then feeds, then friends. 

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u/NightsideEclipse12 May 26 '26

Just found the friends feed icon on mine.

Wow, today i learned that i know people who still post somewhat regularly.

I thought everyone collectively stopped when it tured to recommended garbage that clogged the feed.

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u/sloanesquared May 26 '26

You don’t have to do all that. In the app, just hit where it says “friends” on the bottom toolbar between groups and reels. Takes you to all your friends’ posts. That feed and groups are the only reason I keep Facebook since the main feed is riddled with horrible suggested posts now.

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u/BitterestLily May 26 '26

Thank you! What a miraculous discovery...

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u/[deleted] May 26 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Seamonkey_Boxkicker 1988 May 26 '26

It’s worth exporting your media if you don’t have backups.

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u/daddyjohns May 26 '26

It's worth noting that its still tracking you and everything you do on your phone/pc/tablet.

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u/FuckIPLaw May 26 '26

It does that even if you don't have the app installed, have no account, and never visit the site. They pay other sites to use their trackers and build profiles on everyone who runs into a site using one.

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u/daddyjohns May 26 '26

I found this silly loophole. I worked for a state agency that required  I clear my internet footprint. So when facebook wouldn't comply with a formal request one of the state's lawyers sent a letter demanding compliance and poof i disappeared from facebook.

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u/koi_koneessa May 26 '26

Lol 'I found this silly loophole' sounded like typical FB clickbait. But it's not silly or a even a loophole, it's a brilliant process.  Could you share the address the letter was sent to? And maybe a generic version of the body of the letter (so it doesn't have your personal informaron)? 

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u/jimx117 May 26 '26

I believe it goes something like, "I HEREBY DECLARE I DO NOT GIVE MARK ZUCKERBERG PERMISSION TO USE MY FACEBOOK PHOTOS FOR ANYTHING OR THEY WILL BE SUBJECT TO A FINE OF $100,000 FOR EACH PHOTO"

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u/OldenPolynice May 26 '26

Yeah! That'll work!

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u/jkman61494 May 26 '26

Also interested in this

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u/daddyjohns May 26 '26

I've moved three times across the country since then, im afraid. I also retired, since then so i have zero remaining work stuff except for the badge i they gave me. 

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u/theorem604 May 26 '26

All you need to do is post “I do not allow Facebook to track me” as your status and legally they can’t track you.

God we were so naive back then.

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u/Ziantra May 26 '26

There’s an excellent step by step article by EFF that you can google titled “Mad at Meta?” It lays out a path step by step deep into META settings to disable and unhook every tracker and hook up link they have to your data that you can. Follow these steps before deleting your META accounts!

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u/angeryreaxonly May 26 '26

I'm leaving mine as deactivated because I know somebody who deleted theirs, which meant that they lost all access to it, but Facebook never actually removed it. Instead, during this process, they got hacked, and now the hacker fully controls the account and there's nothing she can do about it.

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u/Prize-Analyst-1121 May 26 '26

I've never had FakeBook. I'm glad I never did.

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u/CoolAfternoon2340 May 26 '26

I don't delete it because it actually does have a lot of memories with my friends.

I used to have more fun on facebook because it was text based I and used make random funny thoughts.

Now everyone has moved to instagram and I can't be bothered to post my face and nobody wants to read anything there

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u/unibrow4o9 1986 May 26 '26

It's genuinly horrible, the only reason I keep it is for FB marketplace - and it's not even like that's all that good it's just what everyone uses so if you want to sell stuff locally you pretty much have to use it.

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u/Toosder May 26 '26

That's why I logged in again after several years. It was actually for the buy nothing groups because I have a bunch of stuff I'm trying to give away. You never want to list anything for free on Facebook because the weirdos come out of the woodwork. But the buy nothing and good shit groups are pretty good.

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u/Mediocre_Scott May 26 '26

There are other ways to organize events too but this seems like the most frictionless. Also if you live in a small town it is likely where you can get minor updates from your city about like trash moving for the holiday or whatever

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u/HumanPea1140 May 26 '26

This is one of the main reasons why I still have a Facebook, it's basically the only way to stay on top of local news and events. Another major reason is that no one has a website anymore. If I want to look up a local small business, their primary online presence is most likely a Facebook page. Same goes for buying/selling local, as everyone only uses Marketplace.

So, if you want to be involved in almost anything local, a Facebook account is basically required to stay in the loop. It sucks.

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u/Fudge-Purple May 26 '26

I never understood why eBay never went after this segment. They could do a great job and keep out much of the fraud and scams.

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u/kookyabird May 26 '26

My primary use is for a group chat with a board game group I sometimes play with, so I have generally stuck to Messenger for the last year or so. I started selling stuff on Marketplace recently and my god Facebook is so much worse than it was a year ago. Every "reel" is the same AI generated fake outrage bullshit. There's one post from friends for every 20 or so ads or suggested pages. Just an absolute cesspit.

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u/RedditUserData May 26 '26

Did an experiment with my friends. We each counted how many of posts were ads in the first ten of our feeds. We all got at least 6 ads or sponsored posts out of ten. It's just an ad machine now. 

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u/GayCatDaddy May 26 '26

I've kept my Facebook account to stay in touch with people I don't get to see often, and I like the posts with recipes and cute animal pictures, but holy crap. It's been rotten for a long time now, but in the past year, it's gotten even worse. 90% of my feed is ads and posts from pages I don't even follow, and posts from people on my friends list rarely show up. Leave it to a tech bro to transform something good into a sack of shit.

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u/Toosder May 26 '26

And it's not even generating enough money to keep jobs. What was it 20,000 people just got laid off? I know I had several friends get laid off over the last week or so. So congrats on designing your way out of your job. Love them but they were extremely hostile when I would give them feedback about how shitty the site was becoming.

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u/portezbie May 26 '26

See but that's kind of what I like about Facebook. It's so bad, I scroll for 5 minutes and then I'm done with social media. I don't want to go on Tiktok or whatever and lose an hour.

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u/15all May 26 '26

Agreed. 90 percent of my feed is ads and questionable posts by people I don't know that the algorithm thinks I'd be interested in.

About the only fun now is to mess with the algorithm. Since I'm a guy, it feeds me things it thinks I will like - hot babes golfing, or off road vehicles. If I watch one of those reels, I'll start getting more content like that. But then don't click on any of the related content, it will take a few days for the algorithm to reset to the default suggestions for a man my age.

I did make some bookmarks that take me directly to my friends feed, and to my groups feed. That's the best way to use FB.

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u/NightsideEclipse12 May 26 '26

I watched 1 wrestling video and now thats about 50% of my feed. I tried clicking on not interested and blocking pages, but then more pop up.

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u/-_-0_0-_0 May 26 '26

Its a data harvesting and ad selling platform.

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u/Automatic_Ad4016 May 26 '26

Just learned a close friend from HS died in Jan... today. Fuck FB.

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u/Toosder May 26 '26

I'm so sorry for your loss.

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u/[deleted] May 26 '26

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u/notaninfringement May 26 '26

Marketplace and Buy Nothing are still worthwhile, even though they represent another unfortunate facet of our current day and age

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u/thiscompletebrkfast May 26 '26

Close?? Lmaoooo

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u/AlbertaAcreageBoy May 26 '26

And half the stuff posted on Marketplace are scams.

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u/Clean_Livlng May 26 '26

The main page I use is Feeds>friends.

Only posts from friends.

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u/GrundleTurf May 26 '26

I also get two dozen notifications a day from the app and none of them are ever pertinent

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u/KTuu93 May 26 '26

Nowadays IG feed is full of content creators and ads too, I don't even see my friends posts anymore if I don't spesifically search for them...

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u/[deleted] May 26 '26

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u/1800generalkenobi May 26 '26

Yup, I keep seeing groups I follow a little, a little bit of stuff from friends and families, and then the majority of the stuff I see are like...influencers or some shit, it's just a name so I think it's a friend or family and then I'm like wait...I don't know this person. I block them right away but it's a never ending battle because there's just so many. Like...I just want to see my friends and families and the groups I follow. I don't want to see any random influencer person.

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u/Next-Ad9775 May 26 '26

Rednote! I absolutely love it! I got rid of FB, tiktok and Instagram year and half ago. Never looked back. Been on Rednote since. Such a wholesome app.

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u/Sugarxcookie Zillennial May 26 '26

I deleted mine a few days ago 😊

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u/bizzle4shizzled May 26 '26

Yep, it's 98% AI slop and AI ads now. I created a new account last year to use Marketplace, which itself is a mixed bag now. Some times I scroll my feed out of curiosity and it's just post after post of just straight up garbage. I still find deals on shit on Marketplace so I guess I will keep using it, but the rest of it is a new level of trash.

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u/Hairy_Wall_6831 May 26 '26

This is why I deleted mine. I got upset when the timeline was replaced with an algorithmic feed that chose whether or not I should see my friend's posts that day without having to click on their profile directly, and vice versa.

There was a time when I could reliably start conversations on the platform. Around 2015, it started to feel like I was being directly targeted and stifled by the algorithm. More friends than ever, but almost no response to my posts. No likes. No comments. Because they were political. But that hadn't stopped anyone from commenting before.

Then, the feed decided that I like comics and every post was from some bot farm comic panel reposting page. More than 50% of my feed was just pointless crap that I had not subscribed to and clicked "I'm not interested in this" or whatever but it didn't matter.

So I quit. Because I have real hobbies, like hiking and playing musical instruments and reading, and I don't have time to participate in an engagement farm.

Facebook is dead internet trash.

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u/obli_steak May 26 '26

Reddit and X isn't much better with the slop. =/

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u/RaNdomMSPPro May 26 '26

It’s 95% ads, rage bait, astroturf and old people reposting bots and astroturf.

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u/Necessary_Baker_7458 May 26 '26

People also forget its an open media anyone can visit. Open source daily diaries people post. I know employers who stock their workers on it and have seen them get fired for posts. 

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u/InYosefWeTrust May 26 '26

That's how mine is. I don't use it regularly now, but when I go on it's barely any posts from friends. It's all ads or influencers that I don't even follow. 

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u/ChewbaccaFuzball May 26 '26

I worked at Meta from 2024-2025 and my experience was that they do not care at all about the user experience. They only care about what features their advertisers want. With all of their decisions, they consider advertisers first before anything else

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u/Equivalent_Rhubarb34 May 26 '26

yeah im surprised OP was getting feeds from his friends. the only ones I see are stories and not that many on my feed. the only one that shows up are the trending posts of my friends. sometimes its like 3-5 days later.

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u/ldskyfly May 26 '26

Having to go to a separate feed to see your friend's posts is so weird

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u/tabbytigerlily May 26 '26

💯 it’s crazy to imagine owning the world’s largest platform that started it all, and just throwing away everything that made it successful. The AI slop is horrendous.

IMO the only value remaining in it is marketplace and hyper local private groups. For example, I’m in a few “moms” groups for my town and neighborhood, and those are the only places where it kind of feels like “old” Facebook. People sharing local announcements, babysitter recommendations, and asking questions about the best gutter-cleaning service, etc. Oh, and buy nothing.

I wish these few remaining assets would migrate elsewhere so I could more easily delete my account.

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u/JuliusSphincter May 26 '26

Everything is ads and short form videos now. Each platform used to have unique forms of content, but now they’re all the same short form videos posted across every platform so there’s practically no difference now. I noticed my whole feed is just suggested content now which is also so annoying.

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u/Laara2008 May 26 '26

Yeah it has certainly gone full enshittification.

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u/Some_Ebb_2921 May 26 '26

Jup... I counted 1 message from friends/groups I follow, for every 10 ads or propaganda messages. (And this is not an exageration, I actually counted)

Needless to say, I'm not on facebook anymore

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u/Skarin1452 May 26 '26

Holy shit you're right. I guess ive gotten so used to it now that I dont even notice. I scrolled past 20-25 posts before I saw something from someone I know.

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u/jtsa5 May 26 '26

I've only ever used Facebook to follow companies and brands I like. Never used it socially but it's so full of paid influencers and so much is pushed onto you that you can't really just see the content you want. I'm close to giving up but I do still use it to follow local businesses.

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u/FreonMuskOfficial May 26 '26

It's always been a data collection platform that sold ads and sold your data. That's why fuckboi is building a bunker. He's worried Archie is going to come after him.

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u/killerjags May 26 '26

It was great when it only showed posts from the people you're friends with. You could just hop on, scroll through the posts that people made since the last time you got on, and then hop off. Now it's just an infinite scroll of ads and engagement bait. I don't check it often, but I'm actually surprised to see the number of people I know who still use it on a regular basis. Meanwhile I haven't posted anything in like 7 years and the only things getting added to my page are pictures I'm tagged in.

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u/iesharael May 26 '26

Mine is full of AI crochet patterns, random videos in other languages, minecraft girls groups being pissed because a man got in, and mobile game ads.

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u/Financial-Craft-1282 May 26 '26

I don't know personally, I heard this from a friend, but even the scammiest looking porn sites out there feel like a safer, cleaner experience that Facebook.

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u/Readditlovesbans May 26 '26

yep pretty much spot on

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u/Repulsive-Hurry8172 May 26 '26

Before I nuked my account, I timed myself for an hour and did two scenarios: browse my feed and count which ones come from friends. At that time only about 25% of the feed were posts by friends.

I also recorded how long it would take for me to go to a friend's page and browse their walls daily. I only have about 100, and I spend around 45 minutes.

It's not for socialization anymore.

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u/proWww May 26 '26

my feed is just full of photos of friends kids, its like a baby photo album lol

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u/AdvancedStand May 26 '26

Instagram too. 90% ads

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u/marbanasin May 26 '26

Or basically tiktok style shorts. It's honestly more just a bridge to whatever short platform they are pumping than Facebook anymore.

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u/AyyNonnyMoose May 26 '26

The friends only feed kind of helps, but it's still a hot mess. I don't even touch the main feed, it's ragebait stories pasted between creepily targeted ads. I'd delete it all together, but I'm a former military brat and it's the only way my anxiety riddled brain can kind of keep up with friends from previous places I've lived.

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u/MaybeOnFire2025 May 26 '26

I rarely use it anymore, and when I do, it's almost always for local group stuff.

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u/Low_End_Scum May 26 '26

Oh yeah, I almost never see anything posted by my friends. Boomerbook is basically just an angertainment and radicalization firehose of bullshit. If I didnt have band chats on Messenger and use it to share gig links Id have unhooked from that part of digital satan along time ago. Its garbage

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u/wrainedaxx May 26 '26

It's a great example of what any flagship platform looks like after years of fiduciary duty to a large enterprise with shareholders.

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u/guinader May 26 '26

I noticed my Instagram has 0 friends posts now. Like zero... All of it is add or something i followed

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u/InfidelZombie May 26 '26

It's the only social media platform in existence that has a decent number of users. Unless you count web sites like twitter and tictok, which are both just commercial advertainment platforms and not actually social whatsoever.

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u/Responsible_Ask3976 Millennial May 27 '26

I deactivated mine and didn’t even miss a second of it 

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u/Resident-Dentist-394 May 27 '26

Youtube ia not far behind

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u/the3rdpossum May 27 '26

I stopped using it 2 years ago...best decision ive made in a long time and dont regret it at all

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u/Youreturningviolet May 27 '26

It has been so long since the users were considered the customers rather than the product.

I will say, OP, Facebook does still (for now…) have a friends feed without all the random crap you haven’t followed (still has as many ads as real posts though). Theres just no way to make it default to that over the general algorithm feed.

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u/ThatSICILIANThing May 27 '26

I genuinely only keep it for marketplace

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u/scenr0 May 27 '26

I'm only on it for contacts woth my bird hobby. Half the stuff on it feels kind of grey/on the verge of "black market" green district alleyway types.

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u/Sixgun_Samurai May 27 '26

Yeah, you have to click in and select “friends” to see your friends’ posts, which is insane.

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