Want Less AI Slop? Stop Looking at AI Slop.

Got to admit, the first comment visible on this AI slop Facebook profile asks a fair question.

The answer is likely in the rest of the question posed: It's highly likely the entire account is AI-generated and run by bots, no humans involved. They're in it not for the history, nor for the discussion, but for the clicks and any resultant revenue the clicks bring.

I understand the frustration these sites bring. I comment randomly on obvious scam posts, and though my comments are delightfully snarky, the engagement the comments offers is exactly what the posters want. The more comments, the more traffic the posts get, the more money they earn.

Thus the rise of AI slop. Nevermind if the text is accurate -- it's likely it is, but that's not what is going to engage the reader. Readers will stop and look at a photograph, and if it's obvious AI slop like this -- grok the tail of the plane appearing in the center of the aircraft -- the natural response is to stop and engage in a rage over the AI slop. We become part of the chum machine, earning these people microsopic bits of revenue that, over time, help these people earn a living.

Again, this is an excellent reminder that on Facebook, the product is *us*. Our clicks and pauses and comments is what they want. Yes, even the pauses. If we pause over something, the algorithm notices and uses those pauses to offer up more like content, to get us to pause even longer.

And this is the future, to the seers and prognosticators. That's what they want us to do. I'm getting tired of it.

The only solution, of course, is to aggressively block the AI slop shops. It's a constant whack-a-mole game, because when I block one, two more pop up. And the blocking effect lasts only temporary, because what matters most to the algorithms is the collective pause, the collective traffic, not what individual accounts block. This is anecdotal, but I have noticed that I can spend an aggressive fifteen minutes blocking one evening, and the feed clears, only for the same kind of slop to appear in my feed the next day.

But I gotta admit, looking at AI slop, particularly this fanciful bomber impacting a fanciful Empire State Building, is like driving past a car wreck. You can't help but look.

In Case You Need A Reminder: The Product is You

This is how much Facebook cares about stopping scammers on their platform:

I've since deleted the many comments this scammer left on a post of mine, but the gist was he didn't want jokesters contacting him but if we sent him a direct message some very exciting things, possibly involving a Tesla though it wasn't clear, would happen.

Of course, the only thing that would happen would be phising or a pig butchering scam.

But apparently the comment itself didn't violate anything, so be it.

I searched for the offending profile on Facebook. Many like it, but none the same. I wals also unable to highlight either the name or the profile pic to go to their page to report them.

So not only does Facebook not care that these scammers are on their platform, they're aiding and abetting, likely for a fee.

As always, if the service is free (as it is on Facebook because who'd pay for this) the product is you.

On another Facebook note: I've reported here before that someone used my work email account to set up a fake profile of me on Facebook. I kept getting notifications at my work email about friends I should be contacting. I reported the initial contat to our IT department, but the messages kept coming.

Last week, they stopped. So either the account is dead or the messages are going to spam or the IT department was finally successful. I should check to see if I can link my work email to my personal account now. Though that might make IT seek to get me shut down after a year. . . 

UPDATE: They're still trying.

My friend did mention the word "prize" in a response, so that one's on him.

Excited Much?

I have seen a grand total of two of his posts. I shared one of them. Man, are they excited about that.

Things Facebook Could Fix

No one at Facebook listens (I'm pretty sure if the Dead Internet theory is true, Facebook is at the center of it).

There are a few things they could fix:

1. When a person snoozes someone else for thirty days, the second the snooze is over Facebook wants to flood the zone with posts from that person, as if to say "It was kind of rude for you to use the snooze feature, so here's what you missed." More often than not, you find another reason to snooze said person pretty quickly.

Instead, Facebook could reintroduce their posts gradually, without going back in time days -- even weeks -- for content to throw at you.

2. Similar in vein to the first: When you join a new group, Facebook's default seems to be to flood the zone with posts from the new group at the expense of all else, and I mean all else, becuase I tend to see fewer "sponsored" posts in the days after I join a new group.

Instead, again take the gradual approach. We joined a group for fun, not because we want to see their content and nothing else on our feed.

3. Here's a scenario. I see something on Facebook. I decide I want to explore the topic further by doing a bit of research on the side. So I open up a new browser, tinker around for a bit, then go back to Facebook armed with additional knowledge.

As soon as I go back to that tab, Facebook refreshes. If I don't remember what group or person posted the information or opinion that got me curious, my research was in vain and I'm SOL in adding to the conversation. Users should be in charge of the refresh button, not Facebook.

. . . and That is A Crazy Lady . . .

I grew weary earlier today while on Facebook, scrolling through the stupid crap --

-- and I mean I saw two iterations of stuff like this within minutes; the other one was some morons using wood, wood screws, and the skeleton of an old box spring to build a tent platform on the top of their car --

-- and was given the opportunity to "set my preferences."

I learned the following:

1. For suggestive content, the settings are "default" and "show less," which I guess makes sense but is bad news for the perverts.

2. For political content, the settings are "default" and "more," which also is bad news, but for everyone, perverts included.

3. I still don't see a setting for "don't show me weather reports for areas I don't live in," though. I guess we can't have everything.

For a closer look at all that junk, go to my post on Facebook; I'm not going to clog my blog with all those stupid screenshots, which are full-sized screenshots to show I didn't cut anything out.

No way to turn any of it off. No way just to see what my friends have posted -- I have to search long and hard to find any of that. Just ways to lessen the likelihood. And when you block one, three more pop up. It's an infernal social media game of whack-a-mole.

Or this. It's really this.

Something I have noticed:

My phone is probably the best Facebook machine, in that when I look at Facebook on my phone, I tend to see more of what my friends have posted.

Next, the desktop computer. More crapola, but I still get to see what my friends post.

Worst -- and by far the worst -- is my Kindle Fire. I seem to have nothing but crapola on Facebook when I use it.

[Facebook Removes Post as if it Were Suspended on Wires]

Rest easy, friends. Today Facebook protected you from . . .

. . . my lament that a particular gravity simulator is no longer available on the internet.

They saved you from SPAM, folks. From spam.

Not from the obvious scams they allow to run rampant on their platfrom, not from the random idiot who is using my work email address to impersonate me on their platform (they won't even tell me, nor the IT department at work, who that is, by the way), but from a link that no longer goes where it was supposed to, as I pointed out in the removed post.

This is all I can say:

This arose because Facebook showed me the gravity simulator in my Facebook memories. Aww, I thought, when I saw it. That's a fun website. I 'll go play with it for awhile. But, alas, it's gone:

So, I thought I'd post about it and allow my friends to join in my lament. Alas, spam.

And seeing as about half of my memories are links to sites that are no longer there, you'd think Facebook would look and say, aw, the oldie is having trouble dealing with the internet's impermanence and the ongoing outage at the Wayback Machine, let's cut him some slack. But no.

Nogoodniks

When I opened Facebook Monday Morning, first thing I was was an anti-Kamala Harris screed posted on the official Pickles comic Facebook page.

Unlike the commenters on the post - aghast the comic's author would inject politics onto a page usually reserved for gentle comedy - I knew the page had been compromised and taken over by a political propagandist.

Brian Crane, former owner of the compromised Facebook page, apologized to his readers and expressed frustration that it appears he won't be able to regain control of an online community built over years. He uses the phrase "nogoodniks," which brings to mind Russian propagandists, but who knows what's going on.

If this is the kind of thing you have to stoop to to get your message out, your message, to me, is worthless. This propagandist found a way to take over a Facebook page with a big reach. The people doing this obviously have an agenda, and it's not one that favors good faith political discourse, but is propaganda pure and simple. They're bad actors, whether you agree with the "message" or not.

If you condone this type of action to spread a message you agree with, you are part of the problem. We should not nod in unison with a message we agree with when the message is put out on social media in a deceitful manner.

Which, of course, makes Facebook part of the problem. They may not condone it, but appear either powerless to stop it or, as I suspect, no longer have humans at the tiller.

I engage very little with the political end of social media, particularly with that posted by people or organizations I don't know, because my cynical nature leads me to believe the vast majority of political content on social media is propaganda put out by bad actors.

Then crap like this shows up: People trying to profit off of his creative work.

Faceook: Two-Factor Authentication? What's That?

 

So I have discovered some negative-vibe merchant is using an email address of mine on Facebook.

I suspect it's someone fishing around trying either to determine if the email address is active or that they're trying to see if they can sneak into somewhere.

I have reported its use to the powers that be (associated with the email, because reporting it to Facebook is utterly useless because there's nobody but bots and algorithms on the other end). The powers said they'd take care of it. But I continue to get the emails asking me to confirm friends and such. I haven't done anything but delete the emails.

I did try to attach the email to my Facebook account to see if I could regain control of it, but as you can see in the image above, no dice. They don't give me the option to send a code to the email I want to capture, but rather have it sent to an email account they already know, so there's a hole in their two-factor authentication.

I'm leaving it there, and will have to report the emails to those on my end again.

Facebook is Broken

Saw this on a friend's Facebook feed this morning:

The initial post was about "weird red lights" over the Atlantic Ocean, captured in photos purportedly taken by an airline pilot. Huh. But it is posted by National Geographic, so I look more closely.

There are tells:

1. Broken English. I have no trouble with people learning English. I've learned French, and I'm sure I still sound broken in many ways when I use that language. But I expect National Geographic to do better than me.

2. The redirect. The photos/story aren't available at National Geographic, but at another website entirely.

So I know immediately this is not National Geographic despite the name.

Their "About" page is even sketchier:

1. This is a "Group by Wonderae."

2. The welcome message is to "National Geography," the group was created this summer, with the name changed almost immediately when they realized the "National Geographic" group name was up for grabs.

This has all the appearances of a junk science enthusiast trying to nail onto Nat Geo's coattails for fame and fortune.

The real National Geographic is on Facebook, viz:

Reporting this to Facebook will do absolutely nothing. They do not care. Because 99.99% of the they vetting all this information is an algorithm or a bot and not a real human, and these tools are nothing but tools in the tooly sense: They won't notice that one group is masquerading as the other, so nothing will happen. National Geographic might get snippy, but even then it'll probably take a while to get this fake group off social media. And if that happens -- that's if, becuase it's iffy Facebook will do a damn thing about this -- they'll just find another way to spread their junk science.

Facebook, you suck.

Hey Facebook, Do Better

This is the result of one of my many reports to Facebook of ads that send clickers to computer repair scam pages.

Facebook does not have its users best interests in mind; it is interested only in advertising revenue.

Facebook gave me the option to request another review. Clicking on that option brings up this pop-up, which just keeps looping me back to the same pop-up. So I clicked on "request review" a dozen or so times.

I'll probably be banned for abusing their ad reporting system.

The ads I've reported all took me to a website home to a software repair scam similar to the one Pleasant Green describes in this video.

Beware! Fonts are Spam!

Today, Facebook is offended by . . . a random blog post about the fonts used in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

They say I'm spamming by posting this content -- trying to buy popularity in a way, I guess. They won't remove links I report that take you to scam websites and such, but they will slap me on the wrist for sharing something interesting about movie fonts.

Maybe I should give them money next time; that seems to be the only difference.

Today Facebook Thinks A Light Pollution Map is Spam

Who knows how this beast works? I'm sure not even they do.

My question for Facebook is thus: Who amd I spamming? Myself? My 500-odd friends? And did the algorithm flag this, or did a visitor flag it as spam? Who knows.

I have, of course, requested a review. I exepct, of course, to have nothing come of it.

More Friends! *MORE* Allies! More I Say!

Again, the weirdness of Facebook:

How many Facebook friends do I have? I don't know. And I'm not sure Facebook knows either.

I'm thinking about this not because I feel friendless or want to wear a totem of social media allies, but because I've hovered at the 511 to 513 friend threshold for many months now on Facebook.

But sometimes Facebook tells me I have 509 friends. Sometimes 511. Occasionally 512. Rarely, 513. I don't know how they count them. I don't think they know either.

Neverlethess, there's a few inches over here, ho!

Another Facebook Absurdity

(Click the photo to embiggen) 

Facebook, surely even you see the absurdity in this.

You "can't show" me whatever offensive content it was I posted. It's so long ago I Gandalf-in-Moria Faced when I looked at the date. You offer me a chance for me to defend my content, but as you can't show it to me and I can't remember it, you may as well have asked me to recite The Lord's Prayer in Klingon as rebuttal; that would be as effective as me stabbing around in the dark trying to defend my honor.

So I went with the standard "You misunderstood my content; it was a joke," not really knowing if this is accurate.

Next time I guess I'll write a vignette about Private Ogilvy as I try in vain to remember what it was you're shoving down the Memory Hole. 

News Item: Facebook, Instagram Appear to Be Out of Serivce

 

Panic, of course, in the streets. Including me, I'll confess.

SINNER, Part 2

First, I'm not letting this bug me.

But from a communication and technical writing perspective, it's interesting.

They won't show me the content they consider to be spam. Yet they offer me opportunity (rare for Facebook) to defend it.

There are a few things wrong with this approach:

1. I don't know whether they object to a comment on someone else's post, a comment I made on a post of my own, or an entire post. I can't see anything missing. I didn't go far back in my own stuff because about 99% of my content is throwaway, but still.

2. They won't show me the content, but they want me to defend it. They want to know if they misunderstood something, or if it was a joke, or whatever. They're making me guess at the content, so the best I can do is guess at the reasons why I think their removal of it is in error.

3.  They don't really give a timeline on how long their review will take, who's doing the review, etc.

I know they're a private company and can do whatever they want. Still, it's an odd situation for a company that makes money off me and other users in ways that'd make my head spin if I knew.

Which makes me wonder if some of the snark I posted on a paid customer's (or customers') posts is the root of it all. That's the only thing that comes to mind. I was potentially hurting someone's cash flow, and that is worse than spamming.I do recall posting links to this video on sponsored ads promoting the same grift under a different name. That could be it.

SINNER

I'm spamming, I guess.

I mean, I might be. Where they won't tell me what content it was I was spamming people with, I can't really say. I post a lot, and about 99% of it is jokey stuff. I mean, I would have suspected this post, but there it is still there on my feed, plain as day.

Interestingly, when I requested a review, "it was a joke" was one of the options I could select. But since they wouldn't tell me which post it was, it might not have been a joke. But it probably was.

And yes, there's plenty of much more objectionable stuff on Facebook, but it's still there, where they won't even tell me which of the seven deadly sins I committed. It's a weird place, man. Because they don't tolerate spam, unless they're being paid for it; then they have a relatively robust tolerance of the stuff.

It's not Facebook jail, I guess. At least not yet. We'll see.

This *is* A Hot Mess

Facebook, a word.

You toss a lot of random stuff into my feed. Occasionally, I'm gonna comment on it.

These folks seem nice, and they're really excited to have me follow them because I "recently commented on their post."

I go to their page. I look at many of their posts. [Insert Confused Gandalf in Moria GIF]

I'm sure my comment was witty, but it does me little good to follow a food truck based in a city I have driven by maybe twice in my life.

If you're going to do this kind of thing, at least let me know what post I commented on.

Yours and etc.,

A Facebook Babbler.

We Tackle the *Big* Issues

We tackle the big issues on Facebook, we do.

I'm having Gen X difficulties in capturing the entire thread. Go here to see it in all its inane glory.

Worlds Are Colliding, Jerry!

 

Thusfar, I've been able to maintain space between Facebook and the real world. But sooner or later, WORLDS WILL COLLIDE.