Facebook is (literal) garbage
For the past 3 weeks, I've been running a little experiment on my Facebook feed. (Yes, I know, Facebook/Meta is terrible, but I have to be on there for work, so...)
Anyway, once or twice I day, I would go onto my FB feed and write down every single thing I saw for the first 60 posts in my feed. I didn't engage with any of the content in any way, I didn't like any posts or comment on anything so as to not influence the algorithm.
Then, I categorized all the posts into two categories: Stuff I Want to See (friends, pages I follow, groups I'm in) and Garbage (everything else).
Out of the 3,900 posts I saw, 2,715 (69.6%) were garbage.
When I tell people about this they nod knowingly and say, "Oh, the ads." But the ads were actually fine. All the ads I saw were either for local to me pages or events or for major brands. What was awful were the pages and groups that were suggested for me.
Imagine wading through a sea of the most anodyne, nostalgic garbage you've seen from the same pages over and over again. Cutesy DIY and craft projects, black and white historical photos of places I don't care about, sports teams I'm not interested in, weird celebrity before and after photos. By the end, I felt like there was something really awful happening to my brain for being doused in this pablum every day (and there probably was!).
Posts from friends: 5.3%
My groups: 7.3%
Pages I follow: 6.9%
Suggested groups: 8.8%
Suggested pages: 38.4%
Ads: 18.3%
Everyone's algorithm will be different, of course, but I can confidently say that spending three weeks reading ALL of my FB posts makes me never want to spend time on my feed ever again.
