iyo did facebook ruin the internet?

or was it just an inevitable by-product of a # of long-running processes that were/are changing the way people live on the internet?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Facebook_like_thumb.png

no, you did

One thing I've noticed from being friends with a lot of ilxors is that a lot of the conversations that used to happen on ILX now just happen in people's facebook posts

Which is fine except facebook is so clunky that it's just such a chore to Show More Comments and it also makes me realize that that stuff wasn't really adding to my life anyway because I don't miss it here either

im gonna risk not having a nuanced opinion on this and simply state that having constant access/exposure to the lives//opinions/inner-most-thoughs/dinners/vacations/etc of other people--and what's more the narcissistically attended curation of those things--is a "bad thing."

nothing ruined anything

everything ruined everything

it is kind of the logical endgame of the internet though; the limitless access to information essentially and necessarily leads to learning what so-and-so thinks about obama's self stick.

i really have no idea, but i wonder what effect the widespread adoption of smartphones had on the typical content that's created and shared. seems like the kind of article/website/onlinething that you would create for the perusal of someone glancing down at their phone while waiting for an elevator would be different than what you would create for someone assumed to be sitting at a desktop and with a little more time

My biggest problem with relying on facebook for what-to-read-on-the-internet is that it's the same 3 people contributing 95% of my thread at the times I happen to look, and also there's just such an avalanche of stuff to read that I feel overwhelmed and shut down. OTOH it does seem to have replaced people forwarding things around or making threads about them to some extent. I still prefer finding content through ILX. I suppose I could open one of those tweeter accounts hand just have things twitted at me.

i guess the answer to this question depends on what you think is wrong with the internet, too. like, for me, an argument on the 'inevitable byproduct of long-running process side' is that the internet is now way more streamlined and standardized now. and of course standardizing things makes sense, and it's inevitable. but i miss the glory days of proto-blogs that each looked totally unique and were detached from the rest of the internet, or existed as part of Rings or whatever. now everything has wordpress over the top, or a generic Tumblr theme, whatever. bleh

Though I am an avowed Facebook hater, I don't think Facebook ruined the internet mostly because I don't think of the internet as a static thing that can be ruined by the presence (or absence) of one website (even a really big one). It's more that the internet is a constantly evolving thing made up of whatever it is that people use it for. Plus I mean, Facebook is going to change, and its reach will be diminished, and the internet will continue to exist.

One thing I've noticed from being friends with a lot of ilxors is that a lot of the conversations that used to happen on ILX now just happen in people's facebook posts

realizing i could do this was a big breakthrough for me. instead of arguing w/ the void i could argue w/ ppl who i chose to friend on fb. also they have better killfile + blocking mechanics.

no, you did

this seems really hostile

i feel like in my head im using facebook as a proxy for a bunch of things but mostly involves 'the internet' being less separate from 'irl'. like i dont think the internet is any less awful than it was in 2003 but it feels less anonymous and interestingly weird a lot of the time. also i do think that 'internet culture' doesnt exist as much anymore? idk

Twitter's way worse

Of course there's also the whole narrative now of the kids not even taking to facebook, using all kinds of ephemeral, non-verbal communicative devices instead.

facebook is so boring and mundane and most people i'm very close with don't really use it. yet deleting my account seems like more effort than not deleting it. for some reason i still browse my newsfeed pretty regularly, just as a general "let me escape this present moment" thing (not dissimilar to ILX, but ILX generally has funnier or more insightful shit to say) but not because i find any great worth in it. in general "let me escape this present moment" is a net negative in my life so i can't say i gain anything worthwhile from facebook.

otmfm

I also use it for, "let me get a quick hit of attention and gratification by posting something funny my toddler said/something witty I thought of," which has a pretty big overlap with "let me escape this present moment"

facebook ruined books

Facebook didn't ruin the internet, but it did some significant damage to the way that Facebook users (in general) manage expectations within their interpersonal relationships.

facebook ruined faces

one of the biggest effects facebook's had is replacing screen names/aliases with real names/identities as the default for presenting & identifying yourself on the web. like usernames obviously still exist but even on a site like twitter where ppl use usernames they generally have their real name/pic as their display name & avatar, whereas pre-facebook internet interaction happened on message boards where everyone was ShadowDragonX and had a pic of sonic the hedgehog

The whole thing of having to "log in" to comment, which includes facebook but is not limited to it, has definitely pretty much halted me from commenting on news/blog sites.

like i was always taught that revealing any personal info on the internet was A Bad Idea but facebook was the first major site to encourage it because of its origins as a college-level thing where that actually made more sense bc you were only interacting w/ people in your irl english lit class

fb is one thing the internet had to become as it mainstreamed into the "real world" i.e. the economy. i think it's a point along this continuum of claiming the reality of social interaction for the market, through a syntax of desire created from the forms of representation that networked machines allow. the fb effect i've noticed the most irl is people it would seem increasingly turning their lives into a bunch of discrete performed categories in this ongoing game for visibility, sort of the same for all social media it's true but fb was there first. not pretending to be an expert or anything, just cobbling stuff together from a limited pov

and fb being there first prob why it's the most boring lamestream version of it now i guess

xp 'log in to comment' is a necessary evil now because spambot technology has gotten too good

fb effect i've noticed the most irl is people it would seem increasingly turning their lives into a bunch of discrete performed categories in this ongoing game for visibility, sort of the same for all social media it's true but fb was there first.

and not like this is super new or bad or anything, just a thing people do that is aided by fb imo

people definitely did things for the sole purpose of bragging rights long before they could take selfies and post them to their news feeds, although facebook tends to elevate that aspect of social experience.

more like: did millennials ruin the internet or did the internet ruin millennials

my wife's news feed seems way more annoying than mine but that's because people actually share personal information whereas my friends are pretty laconic. something related to gender going on there.

realizing i could do this was a big breakthrough for me. instead of arguing w/ the void i could argue w/ ppl who i chose to friend on fb. also they have better killfile + blocking mechanics.

― Mordy, Monday, February 23, 2015 12:31 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark

You moving a lot of this to FB has definitley made ILX a much more pleasant reading experience, ty

xps definitely, it makes that process very easy and "liquid".

don't mean to march into the convo, just "sharing" some "thoughts" in a box. i feel like there were visions for the internet, flawed geek visions with totalitarian flavor maybe, that posited it as something outside/above "the hustle" or w/e but that was not to be the case lol, and that sort of thing is definitely being pushed against because it isn't really compatible with "we have to turn everything into a possible revenue stream", see for example why ISPs in the US are actually worse for free and clear access rn.

Twitter's problem is that people can hide behind seemingly endless fake profiles and numerous accounts. Facebook is way stricter on this and pretty much always has been so it's harder to post evil shit on there, or if you do it's under your own name. still happens like but even Twitter's head honcho did some major mea culpa last week about how useless they are at dealing with trolls/ spambots and how he personally Will Sort It. god knows how.

i mean i have my suspicions about why ISPs really want to throttle service but nothing solid at all, that info isn't exactly the first thing that pops up on google (lol) for a lazy researcher like me.

There's also kind of an interesting, unspoken sadness to my facebook feed when I look at whose posts make up 50% of it -- the divorced mom who quit her job to start an ill-advised business and seems a bit adrift, the "older cool guy" from my college town who I generally like as a person but never seems to have found his way in life, the middle-aged poet my wife knows from some discussion group -- also a very nice and intelligent person, lost her non-profit job a couple years ago and hasn't been able to get back on her feet, the perpetually single, the trapped-in-bad-relationships. And then also just a bunch of random parents and show-offs.

re what euler was saying, there are definitely gendered versions of the sharing / liking economy.

fb def. makes it easier to judge it's true

I find Facebook more depressing than Twitter because with FB you learn that some people, no matter how much they claim to care about you, think you want to read their repugnant political views. Twitter is a more appropriate place for that - I think FB should be like a set of concurring reunions.

xp - you know you can unfollow these people and your feed will change?

The interesting thing with fb, how it feels "different" from past internet experience, is the ongoing chess game with the algorithm -- how what fb presents you with is responsive to your behavior, but you aren't entirely sure how. Like if you are promoting an event, do more people see your post if you link to the event page, or if you game the system and post the event flyer as a photo, because "people prefer to look at photos"?

Trick question: The internet was never good.

twitter ruined ilx, facebook ruined the internet

xp - you know you can unfollow these people and your feed will change?

This is seriously the magic bullet right here

unfollow is so crucial

people show up more in your feed if they've been clicking on you / scoping you out - y/n? paranoid?

i still don't really get pages or events, seems like there are pros out there, i just want to make a thing for my thing and not think about anything, y can't i do that.

p. interesting to me how earnest this thread is -- like, there's a joke or two but this feels like a q that is important to people. I think about it too - feel like fb didn't ruin shit until the upworthy style of presentation got perfected but once that happened, fuckin A. if you don't curate the shit out of your fb feed it's just garbage clickbait forever and it feels like it's getting worse daily, but at some point even your ex-coworkers will get sick of that too and stuff will change a little...maybe? if upworthy headlines are the terminal point of social media that's kind of hilarious and horrible

One Shocking Truth About Social Media

think-pieces ruined the internet

wow i never get upworthy shit just constant deejay / electronic music / albums by bands news and social justice axes / snarky stuff from brit ilx zing crew ("look at that over dere!") but then i'm pretty strict about unfollow, if you post one annoying thing u r gone from the safe space of my feed immediately.

mordy otm about killfiling on facebook, pruning your feed for annoying people is so necessary. but i keep some in there just to keep me in check even though they are basically spamming my life.

i moved away from the city i had lived in my entire life this year and fb is an okay way to feel connected to my friends back home, so i appreciate it for that. i'll occasionally argue with someone in the comments but i don't find it's a great platform for that, better to have some distance than like arguing with a random dude u went to hs with over whether bill maher is islamophobic

i know this is a set up for a knee-slappingly self-deprecating comeback but communities like ilx or sa at their best is the best form of the internet imo. unless you're a celeb or "work" for it (lol) twitter is just too much shouting into the void (the only non-spam followers i have on twitter are irls and ilxors) and fb is too personal so u can't go full sociopath. like u get good writing, you can outsource a lot of 'content' mining to ppl you "trust", get enough feedback to not make u feel like a shrimpy voyeur, perfect anonymity

mords is always a welcome sighting, i don't get why everyone's always so seemingly annoyed @ u tbr. xps

Are you interested in this post?

Yes, you're my daddy. No, I'm your guinea pig.

that image could fit in with that Jon Bois football story from some years back

pretty sure craig robinson of flipflopflying did that a while back

can't really find proof but so it goes these days

never not the sleaziest cesspool around: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/20/parents-outraged-meta-uses-photos-schoolgirls-ads-man

Meta, the $2tn (£1.5tn) company based in Menlo Park, California, said the images did not violate its policies

still sleazy one day later

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/21/meta-expose-author-sarah-wynn-williams-faces-bankruptcy-after-ban-on-criticising-company

with Charlie Kirk shit taking over the entire internet it feels like a lot of conservative slop has been leaking and I'm starting to see posts like this on my feed

Mourners in shock watched as something no one expected rolled quietly into view: an entire fleet of Tesla vehicles, headlights glowing like a solemn candlelight procession. Elon Musk himself had ordered his cars to accompany Charlie Kirk on his final journey — a symbolic gesture that turned a private farewell into a historic moment. The sleek electric cars moved in silence, their presence both futuristic and deeply human, capturing the weight of loss and the power of tribute. For many, it wasn’t just about technology or fame — it was about respect, legacy, and one man’s emotional decision to honor another in the grandest way possible. People along the route stood frozen, some with tears streaming, realizing they were witnessing history in motion.
FULL STORY HERE: (lol not linking this)
👉 More details below in the comments 👇👇

this has 35k likes and has been shared nearly 3k times, far more than any of the lefty shit I see (granted I am sure there's a lot of blue slop out there too). and I'm sure there are thousands of pages like this full of insane AI-generated shit for conservatives, all this shit just piling on their brain, anyway I am starting to think there are a lot of people out there who legitimately believe these stories, or at least think "well maybe that's exaggerated but the core of it is true"

I for one expect at least twenty thousand robots to show up to my funeral. I’ve spent my whole career tackling stupid software bugs, the least I merit is some respect from you fucking dimbulb machines

Burying a fleet of teslas would be a good way to unload some excess stock...

Someone on another forum shared an AI slop story he had gotten because FB discovered he is a Springsteen fan: it was Bruce Springsteen pretending to be a pizza delivery guy in order to surprise Steven Van Zandt for his birthday. Had a picture of the two of them with Bruce in full pizza delivery regalia, too (also AI ofc). The prose style exactly identical to what frogbs posted.

A more wholesome fake than the Charlie Kirk thing obviously but still unnerving to think of info-excluded ppl being fed this fan fiction slop 24/7 on there.

I am starting to think there are a lot of people out there who legitimately believe these stories,

My dad thinks Mossad are deleting his Facebook posts. Why not believe some teslas are dancing down the street?

Y'all what you call AI slop, some call ~the metaverse~...

and hey, here's some dorky glasses for you.

have a nice rapture!

xxp - there was a ton of that stuff when Ozzy died. Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger seem to be referenced in all of them

definitely something unnerving about that, I mean that kind of fanfic has been around since the internet started but with AI generating kinda-real looking images and older generations spending a ton of time online it does feel pretty sinister.

real question is what % of the likes/shares/comments are from people actually believing it? for all I know they could be 95% bots as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fbY0VXYahs

I adhere to the dead internet theory that it’s just bots talking to bots, maybe even me.

I am Botacus!

I am Botacus!

We are all Botacus.

this has 35k likes and has been shared nearly 3k times, far more than any of the lefty shit I see (granted I am sure there's a lot of blue slop out there too). and I'm sure there are thousands of pages like this full of insane AI-generated shit for conservatives, all this shit just piling on their brain, anyway I am starting to think there are a lot of people out there who legitimately believe these stories, or at least think "well maybe that's exaggerated but the core of it is true"

― frogbs

so when are we allowed to treat this shit like the doomsday cult it is? i mean, my god. anvil's dad is just one example. millions upon millions of americans, and it's not just americans, are, like, delusionally psychotic

ok i understand that i am, like, basically a healthy person, and like, at the same time, i'm also a transgender witch. how fucked up is it that i'm the voice of reason here?

People along the route stood frozen, they know how bad Teslas are at self driving.

never not the sleaziest cesspool around: https://indicator.media/p/explicit-ads-for-nudifiers-and-ai-girlfriend-apps-continue-to-plague-meta

I used to lightly roll my eyes at people who would always bring up FB starting as a hot-or-not site for Zuck's classmates, but they were 100% right about the rot at the core

did they take away the "Snooze Friend" function?

oh guess not whew

i find it strange that you have to open a message in order to block the sender, you can't just do it from the main feed.

one day i will unfollow the two people who i snooze for 30 days every single 30 days.

big day for our guy:

https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortune-deluge-fraudulent-ads-documents-show-2025-11-06/

https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-school-palo-alto-shut-down/

They’ve rolled out AI suggestions for groups I guess?

I’m a member of a four USPS/union groups and a Fuji X100 owners group.

Now showing posts from UPS Community, FedEx Community, an Air Force recruit group, Hyundai Sonata Owners and a revolving cast of Army base related groups.

Made a burner account to conduct some business on FB marketplace, essentially just wanting to buy a used kitchen appliance ... worked fine for a few days but then today it wouldn't let me proceed without uploading a video of my face to "verify" it's really me. What in the fucking dystopia is this shit? I just want to buy a stove? This company can fuck all the way off

What the fuck

there’s this really sad unique 2010s - present moment that happens when, you’re on facebook, and it shows you a simpsons clip, for the first time, and it looks like a great clip, and you know if you check it out, to click on it even once, will mean an onslaught of simpsons clips, and futurama, king of the hill, then family guy, etc etc. so i don’t click it, even though i would actually just like to watch that one clip, just that one

in the last couple weeks i'm suddenly getting flooded with the most pathetic pro-Trump MAGA content in my Facebook feed, lots of shit about what a great job he's doing. but I'm happy to report that in a lot of the cases the reactions 90% laugh emojis and the comments are VERY disrespectful and nasty.

bots?

The eeriest phenomenon is people who pass away who never had their profiles converted to a memorial page and nobody in the family is able to commandeer the page.

Every so often a friend of a friend shows up on People You May Know page and she died in 2010 of a heart attack. Page just frozen in amber since then other than people posting annual Miss you posts but also people who somehow haven't figured out in 15 years that she's died wishing happy birthday

Yeah I have one of those too. Bizarre and upsetting.

When Dad passed i very quickly got Dad's page memorialized but I am pretty sure they use automation to do it.

I sent them a copy of Dad's memorial page. They wrote back that they couldn't do it because the page contained a different name than my father's profile name.

His name was Anthony and his profile said Tony. After much cussing a human fixed it, I guess lol

wonder if this is part of this insane push to make AI clones of dead people, they must know young people aren't signing up for Facebook and that within 20-30 years there will probably be more dead people than living on the platform

Every once in awhile, a dead friend will message me on FB to promote cheap Rolex watches. Always good to hear from them.

two twins of a set of triplets from my hs both died (separately) and there are people still ghoulishly wishing them a very special day on their birthday. both of them! i don't use fb anymore really but a friend told me. that's some ghoulish shit. also the third triplet is still alive and well afaik.

Yeah sometimes I'd see that and it'd be more like "happy birthday in Heaven" or "happy birthday, I miss you", and then along that people who are blissfully unaware.

I trimmed my friends list years ago based on the idea that if I don't know someone well enough to realize they died maybe I shouldn't be online friends w them

sorry that made me lol and is ever more relevant with each passing year

There are people for whom fb provides the exact right level of closeness without having to make actual contact, and I've generally been able to curate appropriately so I see that stuff and minimize the other cruft.

I legit do want to know basic status (at the level of marriage / parenthood / graduation / divorce / death, general "how ya doin") about people at that closeness level. If it gets less good at providing that information, that diminishes its entire raisin de etry.

Depressing Facebook trend:
Loads of people leaving laughing emojis under stories about horrific racist violence.
Seeing so much of this. Horrible.

I haven't had a login to Facebook in three months. It's been great.

I put off quitting for years because I was worried about losing touch with people but man it feels good to be done with that shit.

Loads of people bots

in spite of facebook's best efforts to shit up my feed with unbelievably stupid and/or vile posts from entities i'm not connected to in any way, it actually manages to be pretty good about 60-70 percent of the time for me because i've joined like a hundred groups called "Through the Lens - Nevada" and "Utah Herpers" and "vintage backpacking photos" and "Utah ghost towns / cemeteries" and "Utah hikers" etc. etc. So about 60-70 percent of my feed is someone's hiking photos or bucket list snake finds or other landscape photos, all things i find enjoyable to look at. Fairly reliably though facebook will try to ragebait me with some noxious bullshit meme or reel or ai garbage which will sometimes repel me for a day. My Instagram feed is a lot more annoying because of who I follow - mainly fags and fitness accounts. Youtube is my go-to for relaxing train ride content. Other than those three i don't fuck with social media anymore, especially news-adjacent like X or Bluesky, very glad to have quit those.

been thinking about kicking it entirely too. lately I'm getting ads for their "generate AI video" thing and some of the example videos are just horrifying shit and I wonder why am I still on a platform that's going all-in on this. the main reason I think is it's good for events. that's how I know what's going on around towm and how I promote my own stuff. oh and I talk to a lot of people through Messenger but I hate it as a chat app. but that's what people use.

but there *is* plenty of good stuff on there, I mean of course there is, a big chunk of the internet is there now. thing is you can curate your feed all you want but you still rely on the algorithm to serve it to you, if you see something you like it's always so ridiculously difficult to find it again, unless it's an ad in which case you'll be seeing it for two months straight. so to answer the question in the title yeah by creating an internet where everyone puts there content on one of 4 platforms who then control who sees it did ruin the internet. at the very least it kinda killed all the fun viral stuff the it used to be good at regularly producing, I mean what have we got since Rebecca Black

I haven't been on fb for years, but I'm trying to sell a cymbal through my wife's account. It says it's posted but the listing isn't visible to anyone -- the cymbal brand is "Wuhan", so my theory is that it's getting filtered because the system thinks it's a COVID conspiracy theory, lol.

I really hate Facebook but also I have multiple pages I administrate on it (3 for work purposes, 2 for fun), and at this point it really is the easiest way to stay in at least vague touch with a lot of people I like who I don't see all that much. I am thinking of finally moving a lot of my personal posting to some kind of blog, because I hate the idea of feeding the Zuckerbeast. Not a Substack, since that has all of its own issues, anyone have recommendations for other platforms?

beehiv

My therapist asked me last week why I don't write. It's a difficult question because it doesn't have one answer. One of the answers, I think, is that for the past decade I've been trying to figure out how to go on strike against the Internet.

Because the whole thing is bullshit, really. On ILX it's fine because the only people getting paid are the bandwidth providers, there aren't any advertisers or anything like that. Once an Internet site starts becoming a for-profit business and/or taking advertisers, though, I cease becoming a member of that site and start becoming an unpaid employee. Oh I'm getting paid in "exposure", awesome, thanks very much. Assholes.

I guess some people would say that I'm fighting a battle that was lost decades ago, but I don't see it that way. Nobody actually fights for lost causes, is how I see it. It's a difficult thing to do, is all. Outside the Overton Window, I guess you might say. I just feel like, I mean, the workers have a right to control the means of content production.

I guess it's OK for me to go on social media itself and promote the idea that people should strike against social media. If the owners started feeling actually threatened by my advocacy, though, they'd do what owners do - they'd "fire" me. IDK. I never said I was a good organizer. It's been a decade and it's just now occurred to me that what I've been doing for the last decade might actually be some form of strike. I do feel a kinship with someone like William T. Vollmann, however he conceives of himself. Limiting my participation in the corporate Internet - by which I mean _any site that operates with a goal of profit_ - is certainly of significant detriment to me personally. I just think it's worth it in the longer term, not just individually, but as part of a collective struggle, a class struggle.

Probably most people don't think of "communism" as "I don't post to Facebook". I kind of do, though?

Though my FB feed gets more ads than a decade ago, it's also free of angst: no rightist agitprop, just suggested Miami Herald or gay synth pop content. I've never had a problem with FB generally.

I logged in for the first time in ages and my feed had morphed into like 80% ads. It's like when you stop to tend to your garden, just gets overgrown with weeds. But honestly I prefer my garden.