Facebook peculiar "recommendations"/ads

[MC Bodge]

I'm not a big Facebook user, but I do use it to keep up to date with (real life) groups I am involved in.

For the past few days my feed has been full of weird things that I am not following or interested in. GB News was one of them and I have just seen something about a swimming group in The Philippines, but there have been many more, some of which appear a little disturbing. There are ads for all kinds of irrelevant things too.

I am assuming that FB's popularity in s waning, so they are trying to boost people's engagement, but it is having the opposite effect on me.

[deckster]

The simple fact is that if you don't interact with much, then FB doesn't have any data with which to drive its recommendation engine. So you'll get random ste, until you interact with something. If you want to see relevant content then you need to train it by clicking on stuff that is interesting and ignoring (or, better, clicking the cross to close irrelevant stuff). Or if you really don't care then continue to not interact but expect to see a whole of entirely random and irrelevant content.

[Mobile Chicane]

I got this. WTF?

[Marc p]

I only use FB for a couple of groups related to my work, so most ads revolve around that.

I have a started getting a great one on YouTube though, I regularly use YT to watch car related (or my latest vice of murder mystery) videos, yet bizarrely I now seem to be getting adverts for holidays in Kazakhstan

[shedweller]

This popped up in my YouTube feed the other day...

These algorithms are getting smarter and smarter

[Spare tyre]

I keep getting them about penis length reduction and a breeding program where all the women are desperate models who want me.

[GasEngineer]

Marc p said:

I only use FB for a couple of groups related to my work, so most ads revolve around that.

I have a started getting a great one on YouTube though, I regularly use YT to watch car related (or my latest vice of murder mystery) videos, yet bizarrely I now seem to be getting adverts for holidays in Kazakhstan

Where is Kazakhstan?

[x5tuu]

Mobile Chicane said:

I got this. WTF?

so ... does it?!

[rossub]

I deactivated it 3 months ago due to the constant ‘suggested for you’ and ad bombardment.

Final straw was an ad popping up about something totally obscure that I’d been speaking to the Mrs about. I’d heard about these things being able to listen to your conversations and it seemed to be too much of a coincidence to me.

Not missing it at all!

[InformationSuperHighway]

I was about to quit Instagram the other day with the way it did I it’s suggested content. Not what it was but simply how intrusive it was.

Trying to scroll became impossible as 2 out of 3 posts were suggested the other being from someone I follow (which was really all I was interested in).

Luckily I found that you can turn off suggested post in the feed and it’s been night and day difference for usability.

Wonder if FB has a similar option?

[rossub]

I tried to find a way to stop it and googled to see if you can, but apparently not. Not surprised, as everyone would shut it off if they could.

[TonyRPH]

I don't see any sponsored posts in my FB feed.

I use the F.B. Purity browser plugin

However I think this only works on desktops not mobile devices - not that I would ever install any Facebook app on a mobile device...

[MC Bodge]

rossub said:

I tried to find a way to stop it and googled to see if you can, but apparently not. Not surprised, as everyone would shut it off if they could.

I found similar.

They must have recently changed it to recommend/suggest more things. I presume that TikTok does similar and Facebook is no longer the new thing.


The noise is now drowning out the content that I am looking for.

[MC Bodge]

For whatever reason, Facebook has now stopped suggesting stupid and irrelevant posts, including the pouting young Russian girls with huge breasts in bikinis and running clubs in Manilla.

They must have realised that it wasn't a good way to engage with their users.