It is crazy to me that a lot of towns have literally switched to engaging people on FB. Not only are they at mercy of FB, but there are a lot of insane people on FB. Often people who are not even members of the community comment and see those posts. Towns can't delete comments.
I cannot wait until this whole FB trends ends. I want RSS feeds or blogs. Businesses should have their own basic websites that serve their needs.
Those comments you mentioned are a bit of a problem. Whenever admin complains about them I always say, "You're using Facebook. What do you expect? Only retired people, idiots, and bots are on there."
They never seem to understand what I'm talking about because, unfortunately, most of the folks in wildfire admin are 50+ years old
> Not only are they at mercy of FB, but there are a lot of insane people on FB.
A fair number - not all - I am convinced are foreign trolls, or bots. There's something which just feels a bit different from a normal partisan, and the kinds of folks who invade every regional (town, county, etc.) group and post nonstop partisan dreck. Their profiles are off in some way, and the hours they are posting are all over the map.
FB does have the "big tent" thing going on, where they wanted to become the tool for every possible organizing principle. So you do get some of the legitimately most wacky people on the internet as well.
Is it possible that these are real people who are unwell? I can imagine a situation where users who spend a lot of time (like, to an obsessive degree) viewing and commenting on regional content start getting recommendations for more similar posts, regardless of whether it's local to them not. If there's enough users like this - and I'm sure there are - Facebook might even start treating them as a demographic, effectively creating a sort of self-organizing trolling group.
An account which seems like it was a normal account for like 10 years. Maybe it leans a bit in the direction of the content it is currently posting. But, it was mostly dormant for a few years. Then, it started posting a high volume of partisan content. It otherwise seems to be a real person, just it one day started posting hardcore partisan materials all over the regional groups (usually multiple). It's fishy.
Another one: An account which superficially seems to be a real account, except that it's got a generic enough name you can't pin down which person with that name it might be. Nothing about their profile identifies them as anyone in particular. They may have a lot of friends, but they don't appear to be people who know them IRL - just randos. Their profile feed is a mix of normal stuff and partisan stuff. What they post to groups is 100% hardcore partisan stuff. Their profile is very light on photos of themself, and always kind of low quality. There's never a photo of a place you can pin down to a real location. These don't tend to be accounts that have been around more than a year or three. Again, it's fishy.
Like I mentioned, in both cases, you'll see the accounts posting at odd hours for where they supposedly live.
They could be real people, or sophisticated trolling operations. TBH, the reason I lean more towards the latter is because Facebook is so goddamned lax about any kind of enforcement. Do I think someone could set up a bunch of fake profiles and operate them for years, all from the same Chinese or Russian IP address with locations all in the US, and Facebook would never ban them despite the accounts getting flagged? Yes, that is extremely easy to believe. If it drives engagement (and troll accounts do!), it's likely to be allowed to continue.
I'd be the happiest man on the internet for a split second if someone who works for Meta tromps on in here with a burner account and tells me I'm being an idiot, that they're fighting hard against troll armies and bots, that it's just a super hard problem because the troll/bot networks are so sophisticated. Hasn't happened yet.
Most all recommendation algorithms definitely do not care about locality of reference.
If I watch some local-to-me news stories about libraries, the algorithm decides that I like news about libraries, and begins to suggest library-related videos from all over the USA. It does not care that I only cared about libraries in Phoenix and San Diego.
Likewise, there is this one English teacher who is absolutely gorgeous and I only watch her videos to see her talk. But of course, YouTube got the idea that I like English instructional videos from anyone, anywhere, and the algorithm slowly fills my feed with videos from instructors who are not the lady I like. It's crazy, I tell ya.
I'm not on FB anymore. But when I was, I got interested in Irish topics, and it was often family research-related, and so I'd be studying some esoteric topic in a very small town in a specific county of Ireland, and of course, the recommendation engine would blossom with completely irrelevant Pages and Groups from every corner of the Republic, for no reason except to bait me into engagement.
And that's all it is, engagement bait. They on the other side of the algorithm, they know for sure that you don't actually care about those topics or locations. But they are simply trying to dangle stuff in front of you like a largemouth bass, and eventually something will enrage you or you'll need to correct someone's spelling, or make an angry face emoji on a post, and then they have your engagement, and that's all they really wanted from you.
Not to inform you, or entertain you, but to engage your shit until you absolutely lose your temper. That's what they want on social media.
I'm no fan of FB, but the problem is deeper than FB. If FB vanishes overnight, some other service will take its place, and the same people who posted on FB will post on whatever the new website/service is.
Yes, it would be nice if FB fades into obscurity. But what would be nicer is if people had some basic decency and responsibility (everyone, me included) before posting clickbaity, flammable, junk stuff. I have no clue how to achieve this, but the internet used to be a fun place (for learning, niche topics/ideas etc) - those days are gone, and it sucks
Nextdoor is one of the most depressing social media sites I've ever seen. It's even more depressing than Facebook, if that's possible. It's a platform that seems to be built on the paranoia of lonely, socially isolated people.
This may not be the best place for this, but I run forth.news -- we publish primary sources, like releases/alerts from governments. (IPAWS -- the emergency alert system -- for example, is here: https://www.forth.news/lists/ipaws)
If there are PIOs/PAOs here who are looking for a new place to share alerts (for free), I'd love to chat. Our audience is growing quickly, and we can be a replacement for Facebook/Twitter/any other site making it more difficult for constituents to read alerts.
I would say that the missing link in the discussion is that the valuable data they are mining is social networks and the fidelity of their data there is of a much higher fidelity than what FB or IG provides since these are in-person events, typically.
Also all those data promises go out the window as soon as they are acquired. Then it's Privacy Policy updates with retroactive addendums. Would be very surprised if that wasn't the ultimate goal.
AT Proto has a chance to really help here, so that governments and other orgs and publish structured content like posts and events, and have them indexed and distributed through all kinds of AT Proto services and apps, including, but not limited to Bluesky.
I hope to see turnkey organization oriented PDSes that let an admin management multiple accounts, and also host web pages with the same content that's distributed on network. Then gov posts has a web home and can be subscribed to in AT Proto apps.
> Not only are they at mercy of FB, but there are a lot of insane people on FB. Often people who are not even members of the community comment and see those posts. Towns can't delete comments.
It was extraordinarily telling when Nazi musk showed country flags to IP on shitter. The amount of astroturfing happening to local discussions is terrible. And who is doing this? Countries where 1$ is a day's or 2 days propaganda wages.
And my community is one of those "only facebook" government messaging areas. And what do they get? 1/2 are real locals, the other half who knows. But what I do know, is that they smell like AI created profiles, and primed for propaganda.
I recently signed up to NextDoor, since I'm not even on FB anymore.
Not that NextDoor is any less toxic or useful, but your hyperlocal government agencies may be signed up there, as well. NextDoor has a dedicated "Public Agencies" tab/feed where you can ignore all the hoi polloi, if you so wish.
Many "real accounts" on NextDoor actually disclose their home neighborhood, although I have no idea if/how they filter out the liars and impostors and bots.
I think you're 100% correct. The only value that Facebook adds over a website is allowing people to write low quality comments for likes on every post. If people want to give feedback, they can write an e-mail, send a letter, or gasp go to a town hall meeting in person. That requires effort though, and so most Facebookers won't bother, which would be great. Writing snarky, uneducated comments is not engaging. Facebook is not needed AT ALL.
On official announcements from a municipal government? Yes. Imagine a scenario like...
Foo Town: boil water advisory for Tuesday. The water department has noted a risk of harmful pathogens in tap water and recommends boiling water for 2 minutes before consumption all day Tuesday.
Commenter: It's all those [racial slur]s shitting in the reservoir. If that [expletive] police chief doesn't run them out of town, we're going to have to round them up and shoot them!
Assume the commenter has done this enough times to figure out what the platform's moderation will catch and what it won't. The town would probably like to be able to do some additional moderation.
Might get banned? Sure. Would get banned? No. You can’t say that with certainty. From my own experience reporting comments exactly like that the automated report is almost always closed the first time. If I appeal to a human reviewer (if they still have those?) it’s a 30/70 chance, 70 being the chance the report is closed again since “this doesn’t violate our…”
> Not to mention that’s a gigantic strawman.
A strawman of what? Are you claiming this doesn’t happen or do you just have qualms with the frequency claimed that it happens? I encounter deplorable comments like that daily. Granted I’m one data point but you haven’t presented your data points that lead you to conclude GP’s comment is a gigantic strawman.
But I think the person you responded to - “towns can’t delete comments” might be overstating it?
A quick Google search surfaced multiple articles. They all stress that comments can’t be deleted due to their viewpoint, but they can be deleted for other reasons -such as obscenity or violating the platform’s TOS.
The ACLU article seems to have the strictest criteria - stating a comment cannot be deleted unless it is advocating for violence.
> That goes against Facebook policies and the account would get banned.
lol. the "lol" isn't directed at you. I'm not laughing at you. But FB is infamous for "we will ban you due to some stupid innocuous or mostly innocuous thing but you can report the worst things imaginable and that 'doesn't violate community standards'
I've had a lisfranc injury, which while not life threatening is very serious and the quicker the surgery is done, the better outcomes.
My podiatrist did X-Rays incorrectly, I told her I'm seeking 2nd opinion just to confirm her findings. I've found a guy that specializes in lisfranc at Rush. He performed correct weight bearing x-rays. It was a bad sprain and not a torn ligament. It took 12 months to completely heal but I was walking mostly normally after 4 months.
Always SEEK 2nd and 3rd opinion if it is something serious. You can also "find" algorithms use for diagnosing and treating suspected condition to make sure your physician is up to speed.
Not all physicians are equal. They also deal with burn out, and have better and worse days.
I live in a suburb by a major city in the US, and know so many neighbors. The sense of community is really strong. I help my neighbors remove snow and take their trash out as they are old.
I feel like some people are just making assumptions or are extremely introverted.
A lot of people are assuming that the main people you would be interacting with in a city are your neighbors. There are many more positive interactions you'd have, outside.
Nobody says it does. However, if I am solving big business problems and making enough to justify a private cook, why wouldn't I do that to optimize and focus on my area of expertise?
I don't want to be a code monkey. I want to talk to business people and come up with solutions. I don't care if LLM writes most of it or a junior dev...well I do LLM is better.
Ironic that the parent poster should use the phrase "code monkey" since most would likely agree being an "LLM prompt monkey" is an even lower rung on the ladder than that. The business people can surely find a LLM prompt monkey for much less salary than what a code monkey gets so I'm not sure anyone would want to embrace that future. In fact, if the AI gets good enough, the business people won't need the LLM prompters at all; they'll talk to the AI themselves.
Business people already talk to LLMs, and people who know how to code hate it.
I haven't written single line of code since Dec but I've been putting a lot of focus into systems design and making sure I understand how all the pieces of our system work together even if I don't know how the individual parts work.
The amount of times I hear my (fairly technical, mind you!) boss say "why can't we do X, Claude says it's simple" is pretty baffling, and my coworkers and him will have hours long debates about it.
Lol. I think a disconnect that engineers often have with product people is that product people want it to be done now (right or not) and engineers want it to be done right, which obviously takes more time. But I think a good engineer knows how to get it 80% of the way there quickly, and knows which 20% is ok to sacrifice or take on as tech debt.
Alas I'm not one of those engineers, but I'm fortunate enough to work with some.
There is a lot of that, but there is also the fact that you can get lulled into a false sense of "it is working" in general the motto is 90% of the work in 10% of the time and 90% of the time to get the 10% more done, and the devil is always in those 10% that often hinge on decisions made during the 90% phase.
It also depends on the requirements, and what the actual thing you want done. For software, sure you can probably patch it and there are some inconveniences you can live with depending on the clients requirements, for hardware... a little bit tougher... But it still depends on what is being done and what are the constraints, as long as people are reasonable, usually, it works out... Except that people rarely seem to be reasonable...
The issue is that the business problem you're solving is the problem of producing food. Why should you be kept around as the middleman, instead of hiring the chef directly?
No it hasn’t, middle managers are the ones telling everyone below them to use AI as much as possible, even if it makes no sense and screws things up. AI is a middle manager’s dream.
Yes, this is what I meant. There hasn't been much news on it for some reason, but in Microsoft at least they're getting pushed out of their role, either to some more direct role, or out.
I'm sorry to say but the business people don't want to talk to you, they want to replace you, that's what the LLM is for as far as they're concerned. Currently you're just filling the role of beta testing that replacement. The fact that you're so happy to throw away your fellow devs in the hopes of getting in bed with those people just makes this whole situation quite sad.
Maybe just get an MBA or something, I doubt its any safer from LLMs but thats clearly what you want to be doing
I'm not sure your experience is the norm.
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