Screenshot of a Facebook post, showing an AI generated cat anthropomorphised as a barber, cutting another cat's fur. The scissors the one cat is holding are clipping through the other cat's ear - an error in the AI generation

20 July 2024

Facebook is a zombie platform

I made the mistake of logging into Facebook the other day.

For some reason I was compelled to check if anyone was still using it, but instead of getting a series of posts from friends, updating me on what they're up to, the first thing I saw was a post from an account I don't follow, sharing a photo of cat.

Screenshot of Facebook, a photo of a cat sitting on the grass, with the caption — I didn't want to see this

The only reason I can think that Facebook thinks I want to see cat photos from someone I neither know nor care about is for the following reasons:

I once shared a photo of my cat about 5-6 years ago when we adopted her
my manager from a previous job posts photos of her cats and every now and then I clicked 'Like' on them
they've been monitoring my Internet use over a prolonged period and noticed, somewhere, that I've shown an interest in cute cat pictures

I continued scrolling.

Screenshot of Facebook, a photo of a cat sitting on a tree branch, again with the caption — I didn't want to see this either

And then I scrolled some more.

Screenshot of Facebook, an AI generated photo of a baby surrounded by puppies, with the caption — Dogs now, AI generated ones at that

Screenshot of Facebook, an AI generated photo of a baby sitting next to a dog, with the caption — More AI generated dogs

Screenshot of Facebook, an AI generated photo of a young woman sitting next to a dog, with the caption — And another AI generated dog

These are just a few of the ones I saw. And I never saw any posts from my friends or the pages that I actually follow.

And just to be sure, I searched a few out, and yep, they're making posts. Facebook is just not showing them to me.

I went back to my feed, where a new round of clickbait garbage photos had replaced the old ones, and looked at the comments.

It just gets worse.

Screenshot of Facebook. Anonymised users posting generic comments like — Bots

Most of the comments, if not all of them, are just bots. I've censored the names and photos in case any real identities slipped in there - I'd rather save them the embarrassment.

So AI generated photos, being posted by probable bot accounts, being liked by bots, commented on by bots, are then forced into the feeds of humans who have to scroll past this garbage.

Even more bizarre, sometimes the bots reply to other bots with obvious catfishing scams.

Screenshot of Facebook of a bot commenting on a bot's comment, asking them to add them on Facebook so they can catfish them. — This is a catfish bot trying to catfish a commenter bot...

The whole platform is just spam bots, likely powered by generative AI, talking to each other.

What the hell is going on?

I blocked these accounts and told Facebook I didn't want to see this content, but that didn't stop them from resurfacing the accounts the next day.

Yes, even the ones I blocked.

Screenshot of a Facebook post showing an AI generated image of cats on a roller coaster

This sok Chea account that I screencapped here appeared on my feed across five days, after blocking and hiding the content each time.

So either the bot controlling sok Chea is registering multiple accounts or pages (which I wouldn't put past it) or Facebook is intentionally ignoring my preference and surfacing content that I told it I didn't want to see (which I wouldn't put past them).

Neither of these would surprise me.

I should add that over the week that I was checking Facebook, on average I saw fewer than one actual post I wanted to see from my contacts or subscribed page per day. And I know these friends and pages are still sharing, because I checked their profiles too.

But why are Facebook doing this? The only reason I can think is they want to keep me scrolling past more ads before they eventually surface content I actually want to see, and this junk acts as filler.

What a mess.

However, in a twist of irony, just before writing this post I logged on to Instagram (another social media platform owned by Facebook's parent company, Meta) and was greeted with this screen.

A warning from Instagram, saying they — Oh the irony

At first I was concerned - had I been hacked?

I scoured my Instagram messages and posts, but no. No suspicious activity. I looked at my logins, and they're all from my devices. There's no evidence anyone's been in my account other than me.

So why are they giving me this warning?

I suspect it's because I:

logged in with an ad blocker
changed my Instagram email to a Proton Mail alias a few months ago (because why would I want Meta to have my actual details?)
use a password manager to log in, which copies and pastes my user/password at such a speed that it may trigger some bot detection algorithm
use a VPN for all my internet traffic

So, you know, an actual human gets threatened with account suspension for "automated behaviour" on one Meta platform, yet on their other one the whole thing is flooded with bots generating fake AI images and talking to each other and that's somehow okay.

In short, the internet is pure, unfiltered garbage, and Meta is at the forefront of its decline.

All of this makes me want to go live in a cave in the woods.

Update 27 July: I've tidied up some of the writing. However, the content of the article remains unchanged.

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