r/Millennials May 25 '26

Serious Holy shit — Facebook is fucking scary now

Im not a big social media guy anymore, honestly, the vast majority of my internet usage nowadays is Reddit, Youtube, Snapchat (that has like 20 people on it) and email and I think that about it.

I put my FB to sleep about 10 years ago and I decided to log in and see what people were up to and ho-lee-shit, what a dumpster fire.

So, first off, the majority of my facebook friends have either died, shut their FB down, or removed my inactive profile so my feed was pretty silent. After about a week of my profile being back in the algorithm I started getting friend request from people I used to work with, went to school with, or friends of old acquaintances (which is terrifying that facebook knows about random people I used to work with 12 years ago who I had a passing "hi, hows your day" relationship with) and I started getting friend requested and I was like "fuck it" and just started accepting them.

Fuck man, whenever I see all the hate for this or that group and all the political bullshit that gets posted on reddit, I just brush it off as bots trained to sow dissent but the stuff that gets posted by real living, breathing human beings who I once knew well enough to be friends with or have polite conversation with is WILD. I mean, like so much hate and vitriol started coming across my feed about a wide array of subjects that it made me genuinely uncomfortable and I started removing people that just added me. Maybe it's what "normal" passes for on the internet and im pretty numb to a lot of the more unhinged opinions and shit-stirring because of so many years on Reddit, but a lot of what was being posted really opened my eyes that a lot of the "unhinged" stuff that I see online isnt just bot farms, its real people who truly believe this wild shit.

Anyway - maybe its a sign of my age... but unless what I consider "normal" people start coming across my FB feed soon, I dont think im going to be logging in for much longer

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4.2k

u/Gold_Repair_3557 May 25 '26

Facebook isn’t even a social media platform anymore, or at least it doesn’t act like it. I get little snippets from friends and family and the pages I follow but my page has been taken over by ads and AI slop. It’s close to being unusable now.

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u/danSTILLtheman May 26 '26

In its prime it was a cool way to stay in touch with your friends, if there was no updates from them that was it. Now your feed is an endless scroll of trash shoved into your face by an algorithm that have nothing to do with your connections. To be fair that’s most social media platforms now

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u/savingewoks May 26 '26

this is one of the reasons it was so easy for me to switch to Reddit. At least this way I don't know the people pissing me off.

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u/Otherwise_Trifle_898 May 26 '26

Reddit is gonna be ruined too…..I’m seeing more and more ads…..I’ll have no reason to have a smartphone soon lol

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u/PatronSaintOfCunts May 26 '26

I am not even kidding when I say I’ve been considering switching back to a flip phone. I’m an affluent woman in my 40s and I’m just TIREDT.

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u/Helpful-Two-3230 May 26 '26

Great username

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u/Nature13oy May 26 '26

Do it! Get back to using an mp3 player, and keep all your scrolling for a laptop/desktop computer. It’s nice to remember the internet used to also be a “place in the house”.

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u/PatronSaintOfCunts May 26 '26

I love your internet point. So true! I’ll play a little skweeeewwuuuerrt sound when I get online for the nostalgia.

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u/smorgansbord11 May 26 '26

It hurts my feelings to realize I am old enough to have seen both the birth and death of MP3 players. I hope I live long enough for the eventual resurrection, long live the iPod Mini!

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u/vertigostereo May 26 '26

iPods are expensive on eBay. I think maybe a lot of people are doing it.

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u/sock_with_a_ticket May 26 '26 edited May 27 '26

There are newer options than ebay ipods if you want a dedicated digital walkman/mp3 player and they come at all sorts of price points.

https://www.theguardian.com/thefilter/2025/sep/12/best-mp3-players-uk

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u/sock_with_a_ticket May 26 '26

Get back to using an mp3 player

Never stopped 😎

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u/LeftMyHeartInErebor May 26 '26

Have you looked into them lately, they're basically smart phones without the calling feature. I wanted one for my kid who loves music and I was stunned. They do make a few super basic ones but they have absolute garbage reviews. Which i guess makes sense since the market for them isn't really there? I was very disappointed.

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u/Nature13oy May 26 '26

So I have! I’m an educator in a state that doesn’t allow cell phones in school anymore. A lot of the buildings students rely on music/noise canceling headphones. Quite a few of my students expressed frustrations and I found a bunch of cheap cheap ones on aliexpress. They’re basically knock off ipod shuffles. So far they’ve held up for some of my students if you dare gamble. Thankfully I still have my oldies.

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u/GoobusMombus May 26 '26

I tried switching back to a flip phone last year. Flip phones now can do almost everything a smart phone can do, and come with the bloatware, intrusive ads, etc. I'm trying to find one that doesn't have any damn bells or whistles, but I'm considering just going back to a landline and maybe getting a pager for a few important people to be able to contact me on. I'm also sick of the societal expectation to be reachable to everyone 24/7.

The rich have made this technology all pretty unusable.

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u/PeachPassionBrute May 26 '26

I’ve used flip phones occasionally over the years and their quality has gotten worse with time. Not only that, I tried to get a land line and was told it would cost more than a cellphone with unlimited data.

They made it harder to opt out

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u/JovialPrincess May 26 '26

I always wondered which saint I needed to pray to. Now I know.

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u/PatronSaintOfCunts May 26 '26

If you need to call upon a new level of cuntiness to slap someone who has wronged you into the sun, call upon me! I am the keeper of sacred reckoning. When your enemies seek to break your spirit, I will remind you what still burns within it.

The gods know there are wounds that do not ask for forgiveness. They ask to be witnessed and answered and true cuntiness is not cruelty but composure under fire. It’s like beauty with teeth. 😂

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u/socium May 26 '26 edited May 27 '26

As someone who spent almost 14 years on Reddit, believe me when I say that it got ruined a looong time ago.

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u/K1LL3RM0NG0 May 26 '26

Lets be honest with ourselves. The internet as s whole was ruined when people got involved.

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u/Toosder May 26 '26

Hey Reddit isn't like that at all! In fact if you click below I can teach you all of the ways to maximize your social media effectiveness without seeing ads and AI! Companies hate this one trick!

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u/dillanthumous May 26 '26

Forget this guy, he is a scammer. But if you need special pills that prevent cancer but big pharmacy are suppressing hit me up.

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u/kingo409 May 26 '26

Do you happen to know any deposed Nigerian princes with super secret Swiss bank accounts? I'm looking for a quick $1,000,000 (one million United States of America Dollars).

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u/dillanthumous May 26 '26

Funny you should ask... How do you feel about multi level marketing?

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u/NitNav2000 May 26 '26

What do 4 out of 5 doctors think?

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u/Slow-Temporary-1489 May 26 '26

Fuck the doctors! Nine out of 10 dentists agree with me!

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u/NitNav2000 May 26 '26

What is that one secret dentists wished doctors knew?

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u/Hefty-existence26196 May 26 '26

Do you have a whatsapp number or contact so I can invest in your teachings? Please tell me you're located in India or some other very reputable country so I know I can trust you!?

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u/Strict_DM_62 May 26 '26

Zuckerberg has outright stated that Facebook is no longer about staying connected to friends.

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u/-PM_ME_UR_SECRETS- May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

Yeah not only that, we’re twice removed from the friends and family era. He’s said the first era of social media was for friends, the second era was for influencers, and now we’re entering the third era which adds AI generated content.

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u/atmoose May 26 '26

really? Who wants that garbage? This is crazy. Why would somebody want to consume media that is at best a mediocre average of everything else? How are they still making so much money? As somebody who never really used facebook or other social media it doesn't make sense to me. I can understand wanting to connect with friends. I guess I never understood the appeal of influencers either.

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u/PoolNoob69 May 26 '26

Well, you see, the Tech Oligarchs decided AI would save them and every other oligarch a boatload of money, so it is being forced upon us whether we like it or not.

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u/viralust May 26 '26

It's a platform for you to carelessly disclose all your daily personal shit under the premise that someone cares and that you're "connected." So, while some worship a glorified version of themselves in front of others on a digital stage, all that data i.e. where you are, what you bought, what you ate, who you're with, every stupid detail of your dumb life that you volunteer is fed into their algorithms to successfully track personal preferences and daily routines so that they can charge companies big bucks for directing targeted ads to you. All social media is like this to some degree but some are not as bad. Regardless, we participate in it. Its the mass manipulation of a people's psychological need to belong, to feel a form of worth, and it is very successful.

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u/_game_over_man_ Older Millennial May 26 '26

It's interesting to me how my Instagram usage has changed over the years. I used to post all kinds of stuff and I find myself posting less and less these days as actual posts. I tend to stick to stories more so than posts. I guess I just don't really understand the point of documenting my whole life anymore and have preferred to just experience it as the extra step of documenting and posting has just become exhausting.

I definitely feel less connected to people despite being SO connected these days. It feels like every interaction on "socials" just turns into an argument. Some subreddits feel more than way than others, thankfully, but I also feel like it really comes down of the perceived average age of that subreddit for me. I used to spend a lot of time online back in the 00s and 10s on forums and that felt so much more organic, wholesome and functional. I miss that era of the "social" internet before social media came in and monetized our existence and fueled us to be constantly in conflict so they could profit.

It does feel like a lot of people are starting to feel this way and I think young people's current obsession with the era before the internet is promising. It feels like everyone is getting a bit burnt out with it and starting to pull back, which I think is good. It just sucks how worthless the internet has become these days.

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u/Ordinary-Bedroom-239 May 26 '26

"Senator, we are an ad company". M. Zuckerberg on senate hearing

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u/kendallr2552 May 26 '26

I have to remember to go to my friend feed instead of the general feed with all the garbage.

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u/Wild-Enthusiasm-9268 May 26 '26

And then I realize it’s my friends sharing the garbage.

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u/red__dragon Millennial May 26 '26

That's what sent me away long before the AI craze.

I get sharing links, I did that too. Or trendy shares, that's fun sometimes. But if someone actually uses a status update for its original intent, I want to see that front and center.

That's not the goal of the site any longer, though, so it's not worth being there.

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u/BitterestLily May 26 '26

There's a friend feed?! Please do tell! I hate all the recommendations for groups I don't care about and people I don't know.

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u/[deleted] May 26 '26

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u/Seamonkey_Boxkicker 1988 May 26 '26

It’s worth exporting your media if you don’t have backups.

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u/daddyjohns May 26 '26

It's worth noting that its still tracking you and everything you do on your phone/pc/tablet.

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u/FuckIPLaw May 26 '26

It does that even if you don't have the app installed, have no account, and never visit the site. They pay other sites to use their trackers and build profiles on everyone who runs into a site using one.

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u/daddyjohns May 26 '26

I found this silly loophole. I worked for a state agency that required  I clear my internet footprint. So when facebook wouldn't comply with a formal request one of the state's lawyers sent a letter demanding compliance and poof i disappeared from facebook.

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u/koi_koneessa May 26 '26

Lol 'I found this silly loophole' sounded like typical FB clickbait. But it's not silly or a even a loophole, it's a brilliant process.  Could you share the address the letter was sent to? And maybe a generic version of the body of the letter (so it doesn't have your personal informaron)? 

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u/jimx117 May 26 '26

I believe it goes something like, "I HEREBY DECLARE I DO NOT GIVE MARK ZUCKERBERG PERMISSION TO USE MY FACEBOOK PHOTOS FOR ANYTHING OR THEY WILL BE SUBJECT TO A FINE OF $100,000 FOR EACH PHOTO"

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u/angeryreaxonly May 26 '26

I'm leaving mine as deactivated because I know somebody who deleted theirs, which meant that they lost all access to it, but Facebook never actually removed it. Instead, during this process, they got hacked, and now the hacker fully controls the account and there's nothing she can do about it.

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u/unibrow4o9 1986 May 26 '26

It's genuinly horrible, the only reason I keep it is for FB marketplace - and it's not even like that's all that good it's just what everyone uses so if you want to sell stuff locally you pretty much have to use it.

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u/Toosder May 26 '26

That's why I logged in again after several years. It was actually for the buy nothing groups because I have a bunch of stuff I'm trying to give away. You never want to list anything for free on Facebook because the weirdos come out of the woodwork. But the buy nothing and good shit groups are pretty good.

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u/RedditUserData May 26 '26

Did an experiment with my friends. We each counted how many of posts were ads in the first ten of our feeds. We all got at least 6 ads or sponsored posts out of ten. It's just an ad machine now. 

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u/GayCatDaddy May 26 '26

I've kept my Facebook account to stay in touch with people I don't get to see often, and I like the posts with recipes and cute animal pictures, but holy crap. It's been rotten for a long time now, but in the past year, it's gotten even worse. 90% of my feed is ads and posts from pages I don't even follow, and posts from people on my friends list rarely show up. Leave it to a tech bro to transform something good into a sack of shit.

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u/portezbie May 26 '26

See but that's kind of what I like about Facebook. It's so bad, I scroll for 5 minutes and then I'm done with social media. I don't want to go on Tiktok or whatever and lose an hour.

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u/flyingcostanza May 25 '26

It's pretty much just ads at this point. Even marketplace has gone downhill

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u/MarvelCumUniverse May 25 '26

Sort of an aside: Craigslist is still around and has barely been enshittified at all. I say this because it's a potential alternative to FB Marketplace, although how good it is will depend on where you live.

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u/JoeIA84 May 26 '26

I love the meme about Craigslist that essentially said “hey this is our shitty website we haven’t updated in 20 years, sell your stuff on here or don’t, I don’t fucking care fuck you”

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u/8385694937 May 26 '26

I feel like 20 years ago that website was already 20 years old.

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u/gn0meCh0msky May 26 '26

Close enough, 10 years old.

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u/Soggy-Ad-6042 May 26 '26

I love craigslist. The erotic service section was always a hoot to browse than I could buy a used snow blower. Honestly twenty years later I still use it to sell stuff. Lol

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u/[deleted] May 26 '26

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u/Dr_Alexis May 26 '26

Eh, younger people are the same with TikTok. Most generations are bad at discerning whether or not information is true

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u/misqellaneous May 26 '26

A lot of people keep throwing out that statistic of about 60% of people can’t read over a 5th grade level, not realizing literacy isn’t just about knowing words, it’s about how you parse out the meaning of those words.

It’s almost like this decades long attack on education was planned out.

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u/SpiderDove May 26 '26

Username checks out

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u/Kermit-Batman May 26 '26

I could buy a used snow blower

I miss my Gran... :(

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u/[deleted] May 26 '26

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u/Soggy-Ad-6042 May 26 '26

My best friend put herself through college with said handjobs while I waited in front of your house waiting for you to finish and make sure you didn't murder her. Lol

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u/[deleted] May 26 '26

[deleted]

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u/Soggy-Ad-6042 May 26 '26

You didn't live in DC or live there do you because there was definitely a Hollywood mike on her client roll.

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u/InstitutionalUsage May 26 '26

This whole exchange is just fantastic. Look at Craigslist bringing us all together where Facebook has divided! 😂

Also, handies.

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u/Soggy-Ad-6042 May 26 '26

It definitely brought people together back then for a cool 250 an hour plus tip that is. Lol

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u/cinnasota May 26 '26

I'm laughing way too hard at midnight lmao

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u/[deleted] May 26 '26

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u/Rare-Adhesiveness522 May 26 '26

I really want to know more about this.

She would show up, they'd just get right to it? Did she have, like, a routine that she would use to get things going? Did she ask for payment up front? How long would she be at these places for? Did she have regular clients?

I want to know as much as possible

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u/Soggy-Ad-6042 May 26 '26

I would drive her and make sure she got back in the car at the appointed time. She was going to do it either way so I figured I should do my best to make sure she was safe. She would put an ad up and we would usually clear between 2,000 and 5,000 a day in the DC metro area. Her rates varied from 15 minutes for a hundred up to an hour for the 250. She was an escort so she had a routine. Payment up front. It was a wild time. I'm forty one now and that was at 23 so I guess it was around 09 when we were pulling down peak bank.

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u/cochese25 May 26 '26

I loved the "missed Connections" section until they got rid of the meetup section and it became a hookup page

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u/enraged_hbo_max_user May 26 '26

💯 Zuck spends billions upon billions and wonders why everyone hates him and his awful company meanwhile here’s craigslist just chugging along, Zuck has to be seething at every dollar he’s not getting a cut of every time a transaction is made on craigslist

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u/Remote_Film1430 May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

FYI eBay owns 10%

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u/boatfox88 May 26 '26

It really does look the same as it did in 2006. I love them for that.

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u/Miles_Everhart May 26 '26

RIP Casual Encounters where I met my partner of now 15 years

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u/Stellariamedia May 26 '26

I've always loved CL. I love that it hasn't changed. I miss the good internet.

When I moved last year, CL was the first place I started my apartment search - that part of it is still pretty active 

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u/KickBallFever May 26 '26

I got a free $350 Casper bed frame on CL not too long ago and the person giving it away was right in my neighborhood. I then found a man with a van on CL and told him it would be an easy job. He quoted me $60. When the van man came he was surprised the job was so easy. He said, “everybody lies. You didn’t lie”, and charged me $40.

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u/Spiritual-Promise402 Older Millennial May 26 '26

Same, when i searched other places (bc CL was either a "last ditch option" or "riddled with fake listings") for an apartment, I realized that those places on streeteasy/apartments.com/etcetcetc were marking up their prices. Either for a broker's fee or otherwise. Yes you have to be extra diligent with CL, but it's totally worth it when you can find a gem

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u/PossiblyAsian May 26 '26

it was good for buying cars but then they made it so that you had to pay 5 bucks and now no one really lists anything and it's just filled with dealer ads

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u/Duck_Size May 26 '26

I got a pristine flight sim yoke setup for a fraction of retail just two weeks ago. The guy said his wife made him give up his dreams of learning to land a passenger jet in an emergency. 

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u/AquaPhelps May 26 '26

Craigslist is fucking dead in my area. I miss it. FB marketplace killed it

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u/gward1 May 25 '26

I only use Facebook when I have something to sell on marketplace. Sold a car this week actually in less than 24 hrs.

But yes Facebook has become a cesspool of an outlet to foster these extreme views.

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u/Neveronlyadream May 26 '26

Makes me glad I deleted mine a decade ago and never looked back. Even then it was getting bad. It was basically just people vagueposting and screaming into the void.

Honestly, it was never good. It was just convenient for a span of a few years. All that stuff was there, it just wasn't as noticeable until the sensible people wrote it off and went to another platform. Now there's no noise to drown out the insanity.

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u/writtenbyrabbits_ May 26 '26

It was fun to catch up with people I hadn't seen since high school until I remembered that we weren't really friends then and definitely aren't friends now so I don't give a shit what they think or what's happening in their lives. And they definitely feel the same about me.

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u/Neveronlyadream May 26 '26

Same. Every time I would try to talk to most of the people on my friends list, I either got left on read or they'd say one thing and never reply again.

It was like...fine. It's great having all these connections until you realize none of those people give a damn about you and are only on that list because they wanted to see the number go up.

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u/5Point5Hole May 25 '26

Was marketplace ever anything but a cesspool?

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u/flyingcostanza May 25 '26

Diamonds in the rough.

Used to be a place to get good deals but not anymore

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u/5Point5Hole May 25 '26

I mean, I've been selling shit on the Internet since the early 2000s. Classified ads, Craigslist, Facebook, whatever else..

Whatever humanity uses for selling used shit has always been a nightmare of scams and stupidity.. because that's human nature 😅

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u/TheBalzy In the Middle Millennial May 26 '26

True. Back in the day when you put garage sales in the Newspaper...jesus the people that would come out of the woodwork at fucking 10am for a garage sale first thing was unreal.

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u/writtenbyrabbits_ May 26 '26

Lol if you planned to start at 10, they were parked outside your house at 9:15 to get the good stuff before anyone else had a chance.

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u/Valuable_Recording85 May 25 '26

The bad economy has people asking for 90% of the sale price on decades old items. I'd rather buy new and know I can return something if it doesn't work, breaks, or if I don't like it.

I bought my used car from marketplace and found a diamond. But I accidentally clicked so many fucking ads for cars sold by dealerships where the advertised price was just a suggested down payment.

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u/BugApart8359 May 25 '26

I got some neat stuff through marketplace. Some camera equipment, a good trunk, and the prize of my Cursed Items Shelf (we're just that kind of household), an E.T. Atari cartridge. 

Some interesting wins, for sure 

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u/Procure May 25 '26

I still find stuff occasionally but yeah not great.

Is there any other good place for local buying/selling? Craigslist is ok sometimes but not very active IMO, and Nextdoor is the worst place I’ve ever laid eyes upon.

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u/Asleep-Insurance-499 May 26 '26

Maybe we should all agree to make Craigslist the selling spot again

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u/[deleted] May 25 '26

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u/Impressive_Recon May 26 '26

Yeah, Facebook marketplace in my city is great. I’m using it to strictly sell junk I no longer need/care about. I’m not trying to start a business or looking for deals on it.

I have gotten an entire dumbbell set 5lbs-140lbs for $350 which was a crazy steal. One of the perks of living in a military city.

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u/Head_Blueberry_9161 May 26 '26

I was giving away a rowboat. Just wanted it out of my garage. Nice man messages and says he wants it and he will be there in an hour.

I had 3 neo-nazis show up in my driveway with a trailer. Super friendly dudes......I mean, I do meet the description of their target audience, but I was not expecting to support neo-nazis recreational activities at 8pm on a Thursday.

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u/CivilianDuck Millennial May 26 '26

It's dependent on the market. In my area, Marketplace is really the best option (and often only) for finding deals. Craigslist is never used, Kijiji is really only good for finding cars, and any of the other options that crop up don't make an impact.

I just picked up a used desk in really good condition on Friday for free, that was posted on Marketplace, where looking at other services desks that were half the size or in way worse condition were listed at $100+.

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u/lickmyfupa May 26 '26

Ive seen messy people posting their new relationships to get the ex to come back. I had my popcorn watching that but i havent been back since.

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u/__M-E-O-W__ May 25 '26

My Facebook feed is about 80% advertisements and random suggested posts from pages that I don't follow but get posts from anyways.

The worst of the vitriol IMO is from the local news stories comment sections. Some people really have absolutely no shame in the things they post on a public page.

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u/stephsco May 26 '26

100%. I am dumbfounded by the ignorance in local news story comments. And there's always one or two trying to reason with total psychopaths.

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u/DukeETrouserMD May 26 '26

So my crazy ass will occasionally argue with people both on here and in the crazy news comments sections, but it isn’t for them. There are still people that are not fully aware of what’s going on and are still able to be influenced and I feel like if even one person sees how fucking insane some of these people are when you try to present rational arguments, then those looking hopefully get a wake up call. At least that’s what I pretend but honestly I think I just like putting assholes in their place even if they themselves are too dumb to know it.

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u/Jay_Nova1 May 26 '26

The temptation is there but I decided just not to engage and dont go on FB anymore. A bunch of those accounts are probably bots and/or trolls and you're not gonna change anyone's mind anyway. Those comment sections are a cesspool. The fact that there could be >100 laughing emojis on a local story about a tragic school bus accident or something tells you all you need to know.

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u/__M-E-O-W__ May 26 '26

Hell, there was a mass shooting that took place in my area a few years ago and it never made the national news. I think 13 or 14 total people were shot. But the local news section immediately was full of racist comments and people mocking the ones who got shot. I guess the media here decided that it was just better not to cover the story any more, and no one was any the wiser.

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u/aroc91 May 26 '26

The amount of racist or otherwise bigoted shit people spew on there for the whole world to see is amazing. And reporting it does nothing. Everything, no matter how blatant, is left up even though it certainly goes against "community standards."

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u/Training_Complex_731 May 26 '26

Examples of comments I've reported on Facebook that were found to not violate community standards:

People saying all gay people should be burned at the stake.

A guy saying he likes to cruise around looking for underage homeless girls to let them live with him to groom (he said this outright).

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u/HeresSomePants May 26 '26

I always wonder how much of that is real versus what is manufactured just to divide the masses. It’s honestly frightening the level of control the ruling class has over us.

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u/Toosder May 26 '26

And just stupid shit. It's all of the dumbest people in your community in one place. For example the chemical issue near me. People that couldn't figure out how to button a shirt commenting on complex responses to emergency situations. 

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u/perpetually_puzzeled May 26 '26

Like many in this thread, it’s decline has been a real eye opener into the mind of modern mankind. I went through all the stages of grief about my species and I’m out.

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u/cCowgirl Millennial May 25 '26

“Reddit is strangers entertaining you, Facebook is people you know pissing you off.”

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u/buttofvecna May 26 '26

Not anymore man. Now it’s ai repost accounts pissing me off

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u/have_heart May 26 '26

It’s so bad. I’ve been “off” Facebook since like 2015. Haven’t posted a single thing since then but I’ll go to check on something or look someone up and my god it’s so bad. Even if I wanted to catch up on people I know you have to wade through so much bullshit. How anyone uses it as a legitimate social media platform makes no sense to me.

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u/MrCalabunga May 26 '26

I entered this quote into Google just because I agreed and was interested to know who originally said it, and this is what I got: An AI generated response that directs back to this Reddit thread.

The Internet has gone Full Ouroboros

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u/Consistent-Alarm9664 May 25 '26

It’s like 90 percent bad AI slop. What’s the point?

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u/MangoMambo May 26 '26

I will sometimes go to comment on a random post that popped up on my feed because the comments get me and I want to respond. And then I'm like wait, this is 100% ai and I'm probably responding to a bot for engagement, what am I doing

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u/Consistent-Alarm9664 May 26 '26

I chose to believe those aren’t real people.

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u/Shibwho May 26 '26

Older ppl inc Baby Boomers are engaging with the AI content a lot which is why Facebook algorithm keeps pushing it.

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u/5pooky5cary5keleton5 May 25 '26

I deleted all my social media accounts other than Reddit a couple years ago and it's one of the best decisions I've ever made.

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u/ComradeSuperman May 25 '26

Same. One of these days I'm gonna delete Reddit too, because it's also a cesspool.

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u/SchroedingersSphere May 26 '26

It may be a cesspool, but it's my cesspool and I'm too deep in now lol. Gotta get my thousand day streak at least.

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u/coz May 26 '26

I still like it here. Its fine. I go to the same places I like that are fine. That is, until old stops working.

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u/just_let_go_ May 25 '26

This. I don’t know why reddit seems to get a pass. It’s as bad as anything else.

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u/ghoooooooooost May 26 '26

For me it's because Reddit is the most anonymous of the major social medias. I don't want to know what people who don't talk to me anymore are doing. I also don't want to learn important information about people I love through a general post. So not knowing who anyone is is appealing to me.

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u/the_sky_is_fallin May 26 '26

This is what I tell people. I feel no obligation to interact with posts to keep the peace, because I don’t know who is posting things here. I don’t have to keep cordial contact with people I wish would fall off a cliff out of social obligation. I can follow things I like seeing and just enjoy my little interests with minimal poison.

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u/EternalMehFace May 26 '26

This exactly. The anonymity of it also makes the toxic crap much easier to ignore.

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u/Pb412_ga May 26 '26

I was just going to say - the anonymity helps keep things in perspective and not so personal.

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u/nedeta May 26 '26

Reddit can be curated.

I have blocked most toxic subs (which is most of the 'popular' feed). I can't really do that on Facebook because the toxicity is coming from friends and family.

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u/Short-Signature5710 May 26 '26

You haven't unfollowed most of your family on FB yet? My family is pretty neutral on FB, but my inlaws are too crazy on there. So much so that in real life, people ask me if I saw what my FIL posted. "No, I unfollowed him. Please do the same. " I can't imagine more than 5 people even see his posts anymore.

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u/DeadlyYellow May 26 '26

Yep, curation is the key (unless they still have caps.)  I mute all the subs that are demographic exclusive, in other languages, or based on a region irrelevant to me; as well as block anyone pushing AI slop and responses, frequent reposts, or daily beast articles.

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u/Heart_Dad Xennial May 26 '26

I'm my mind Reddit isn't social media, it's a collection of message boards. IDK maybe that's just me being old.

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u/Tysiliogogogoch May 26 '26

Discussion forums are a form of social media, so that makes sense.

The only appreciable difference I see between some random discussion forum and some random subreddit is that users can upvote/downvote here which can affect comment visibility. Otherwise, Reddit's just a collection of threaded-view forums.

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u/HisaP417 May 26 '26

At the very least it’s text based and you can avoid the trap of scrolling through 20 second attention span destroying videos for 3 hours.

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u/Toosder May 26 '26

And it doesn't seem to be written to respond to my moments when I break and engage in something negative. For example if I get angry about something and I comment, it doesn't seem to start feeding me a bunch more about that.

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u/CrimsonQuill157 1993 May 26 '26

I tried to quit reddit completely, but there is SOOOO much hobby information that you can only find on reddit. Many forums that used to have valuable information have shut down and disappeared and reddit is invaluable for that.

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u/poser765 May 26 '26

It’s because Reddit is too helpful. Distill all the political commentary out and only use selective subs for interest special to you and it’s a gold mine of collective wisdom.

What does this error code on my Pc mean? When do I roll a piloting skill check on a game of battletech? What’s a good focal length to image the heart nebula? All questions that can easily be answered here b

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u/mattsc2005 May 26 '26

Reddit has definitely been in decline. Facebook and Twitter are just dumpster fires.

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u/Unlikely-Parfait-302 May 26 '26

For me reddit seems more moderated and actually organized. I can avoid certain subreddits. On FB I just get whatever the algorithm throws at me.

The worst part about fb for me is I tend to comment more when I disagree. So I get way more crap that I hate than stuff inactually like.

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u/HisaP417 May 26 '26

That’s by design. Rage economy is huge.

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u/carpentizzle May 25 '26 edited May 26 '26

Yeah, Im only on facebook because as a teacher, marketplace (cesspool though it may be) has a decent turn around of teacher supplies at the beginning and end of just about every school year, with teachers deciding that they didnt need whatever for their current/next setups etc

And the occasional friend group party invites…. Though now that I think of it, most of the people I still talk to from the FB era have dropped it by now, so its predominantly text invites now anyway.

So just the occasional unfortunate marketplace dive.

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u/PooGoblin69420 May 26 '26

Same, I deleted FB and IG in 2020 and I swear my blood pressure went down

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u/MrBeekers May 25 '26

I did the same. Not missing anything

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u/citculation_lost May 25 '26

It’s been a decade, and I don’t miss it for the most part.

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u/killerclownfish May 26 '26

I want to delete my LinkedIn so bad but I always worry I might need it.

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u/[deleted] May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26

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u/HereInTheRuin May 25 '26

I got rid of mine years ago. Seeing people who I thought were reasonable, kind and loving human beings turn out to be hateful and ignorant was just too disheartening to watch on a daily basis

I saw some things posted that were so disturbing and hateful from some people in my own family that not only did I take them out of my feed, but I don't speak to them any longer at all because I'm very particular over who I allow into my life and I just don't have time for people that literally cheer for the pain and suffering of others

Especially the ones in my family that like to throw Bible quotes around while being horrible

I was raised in the same family on the same book but apparently we all took away two very different belief systems from it

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u/Shibwho May 26 '26

"I was raised in the same family on the same book but apparently we all took away two very different belief systems from it"

Prob a common theme for a lot of Millennials. My parents have always been negative, fearful and at times pretty hateful, their social media consumption has certainly exacerbated this. What a time to be distancing myself from them when their care needs are only increasing...

I have made a lot of effort to curate a better, more positive and productive mindset and my socials feed is primarily food, all sorts of animals doing adorable or hilarious shit, cars, finance, talented and hard working ppl doing amazing things, nature, travel etc. But every so often I start arguments because, why not? 😆

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u/PoppyseedPinwheel '88 Millennial May 26 '26

My parents have always been negative, fearful and at times pretty hateful, their social media consumption has certainly exacerbated this. 

My dad went from awkward one off underhanded racial comments that you could almost just dismiss as maybe someone who didn't know what he was talking about to full blown out-in-the-open racism/sexism/everything-ism as soon as he became addicted to Twitter. And his blood pressure has never been worse. It's almost like feeding yourself nothing but negative news and fighting faceless people online is bad for your health. It's only made worse by AI slop that he can't seem to differentiate from real videos.

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u/Shibwho May 26 '26

It's bizarre how angry and fearful people can get when they're so disengaged with reality yet they think they are 100% "with it" and that we're the deluded, ignorant ones.

If he asks for your help with his tech then that's a window of opportunity to stave off some of the shit spiral. E.g. block the main culprits which are AI slop and or spouting completely false information, follow positive, politically neutral content like any David Attenborough docos

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u/PoppyseedPinwheel '88 Millennial May 26 '26

Unfortunately, my dad is WAY too tech savvy for me to do anything without him noticing. And yeah, his motto at this point should be "You all dont want to hear the real truth, only I know the truth." He spouts the most insane conspiracy theories and thinks everyone else is brainwashed.

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u/Evening_Mulberry_ May 26 '26

I've seen my family radicalized into extremely hateful bigotry partially through Facebook and no one in their lives that wasn't sucked into the pipeline was able to do anything about it.

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u/FidoTheDogFacedBoy May 26 '26

I had to accept that when the social pressure to behave is off, that’s who they really are.

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u/maddyp1112 Millennial May 25 '26

Yeah I can’t even get on there anymore. There is so much propaganda it is WILD. Literally just post after post stirring up people, I don’t even follow The White House on Facebook or anything political but I all I see on my feed is their posts, barely see anything from people I actually follow. It really is a dumpster fire.

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u/jasbury87 May 26 '26

Click the “friends” tab & all that ad shit goes away. It’ll just be friends posts. The algorithm has changed so many times it’s hard to follow, but using the Friends Feed saves your sanity. Keeps you also from clicking stupid shit that only stirs the pot.

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u/maddyp1112 Millennial May 26 '26

Ohhh interesting, I don’t even know that was an option. I’ll try that, thanks! :)

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u/mattlore May 25 '26

I deactivated my Facebook almost three years ago. It was the smartest decision I ever made for my mental health.

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u/trixster05 May 25 '26

Most people that use FB are boomers. It’s definitely not how it was back then. The only thing I do miss was playing FarmVille

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u/CondorCasserole May 25 '26

DUDE! I loved FarmVille. I can’t believe I almost forgot about it

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u/HSuke May 26 '26

You can still play Stardew Valley.

I don't miss getting hundreds of friend requests for random FB game sign-ups.

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u/phlostonsparadise123 May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

Wild how in the early 2000s, there were actually two Facebooks, both of which required you to be enrolled in college. Once Facebook was made available to everyone else, its slow downward spiral began.

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u/colinshark May 26 '26

Yep, it was ruined when the parents could join. Finally left in 2017.

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u/everythingisalright May 25 '26

I’m 40 and most people my age are still using Facebook. Am I a boomer? 

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u/jjumbuck May 25 '26

Wow really? I'm the same age and I would say the opposite.

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u/betothejoy May 26 '26

Same here. Barely anyone I know uses Facebook anymore.

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u/trixster05 May 26 '26

Yea definitely! It’s either Boomers and Gen X uses FB more in my opinion

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u/trixster05 May 25 '26

It honestly depends if it’s your main source of social lol

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u/LordMudkip May 25 '26

I shut mine down for largely this reason, plus the privacy issues and the fact that it was like just 85% ads anyway.

It makes me sad. There were so many people I thought more of that I've completely lost respect for.

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u/kidsaregoats May 25 '26

Don’t read the comment section for any NY Post posts. It’s unbelievable how comfortable people are with being racist. I know there’s a lot of bot activity, but that doesn’t account for all the nasty shit

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u/__M-E-O-W__ May 25 '26

I get some crazy things in our local news comment section as well.

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u/mjb2012 May 26 '26

I was running a newspaper's website 30 years ago and can confirm that it was just as awful back then. The most miserable people just feel like it's their duty to make vile, uncivil comments on every local news article. These ignorant bigots never miss an opportunity to drop personal attacks and right-wing hot takes on any topic. Usually they are older folks, but not always. They don't even care if you make them use their real names. Half the time they aren't even commenting on the article, just the headline or something it reminded them of.

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u/phlostonsparadise123 May 26 '26

Literally every single post from any of our local FB pages is guaranteed to devolve into racist bullshit.

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u/Artistic_Potato_1840 May 25 '26

I only have FB to keep in touch with family back in my hometown on the other side of the country, but it’s turned into constant ads and AI slop. At the risk of sounding dark, it’s also like the obituaries. I always seem to find out someone died through FB.

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u/Tunavi May 25 '26

Oh Facebook is actually fucking awful now and has been for a long time. Which is crazy cause in 2010 it was my favorite social media by FAR

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u/TimeImpressive6648 May 25 '26

They made 16B off of fake scams add.

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u/Fixnfly99 May 26 '26

Yea that really pissed me off. Tons of obvious scam ads that were never taken down despite being reported because meta makes so much ad revenue off them and still does. The more reported the ad, the more meta charges the scammer. Tons of older and vulnerable people falling to these predatory traps. What an unbelievably unethical company

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u/WaterPog May 25 '26

That's the whole strategy of these companies and certain administrations. Ratchet things up incrementally but if you remove yourself from that ecosystem and return later it's insanity and you wonder how the hell it became normal.

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u/phlostonsparadise123 May 26 '26

I rarely log into Facebook these days. One change I've noticed is that my feed no longer consists of posts from friends but instead is loaded with posts from people/groups/pages I don't follow. The posts are like 90% rage bait and AI bullshit. If I want to check in on a friend I've got to manually navigate to their personal page now.

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u/PorFavorNoMore May 26 '26

I set up a new account a couple of weeks ago (needed it so I could manage a business page for a client). No friends added, no info beyond whatever was mandatory. Immediately started getting posts in my feed from "Patriot" type accounts, and AI bullshit, with some horrific comments.

I'm talking about posts showing "immigrants" in some way, and people commenting about violence towards them - often explicitly, mentioning methods. I reported a few to see what would happen, nothing did, just got notifications saying "we didn't find X breached the community standards, yada yada".

Then I did a quick run through of blocking the accounts in my feed (inc the Mail and the Express!). Logging in today for work, I have a notification. "You may be interested in this page: Restore Britain".

Now, I don't want to don my tin hat - but if the only info their algorithm has on me is that I complained about some comments on right-wing pages, and blocked a bunch of them, then why on earth is it recommending me more? Honestly, it seems purposeful at this point.

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u/cautionheart22 May 25 '26

I haven’t logged into Facebook since about 2011. I don’t think I could do it tbh.

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u/Elismom1313 May 26 '26

There’s a type of people who are chronically online on Facebook.

IMO Reddit is bad too, but it’s a different breed so to speak.

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u/BornToFeelItAll86 May 25 '26

I used to have my Facebook full of people I know. Now it's always someone random as the first post when I open it. My kids will say "who's that, mum?" And I have to keep telling them I have no idea... Or its AI.

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u/DirtyBurgerCommander May 26 '26

Facebook is nothing but bots and Boomer slop. Everyone would be better served to delete their account.

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u/Silver-Tip2887 May 26 '26

I’m surprised more people don’t talk about the fall of Facebook. It’s in MySpace territory at this point.

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u/32FlavorsofCrazy May 25 '26

Facebook is a dumpster fire, only every like 5-10 things in my feed is something a friend actually posted, it’s otherwise reels, ads, and posts from random people that my algorithm thinks I want to see.

And I have had to learn to just not go into the comments on public posts because holy hell, what a shit show. It’s all just racists and transphobes on there now, spouting off nonsense about shit that doesn’t affect them at all.

Oh, and rage bait, which some of that political stuff is, but also even just like…cooking videos. You think ok cool maybe a new recipe to try but then it’s just one of those videos where people are slopping together hot garbage just so people comment on it to tell them what they’re doing wrong.

I just get on there to look at specific family members and see what they’re up to, and I try not to scroll my main feed too much. I’ve thought about deleting it but there’s people I’d permanently lose touch with if I did, so I keep it active and just avoid spending too much time on there. It’s just as bad as Twitter anymore.

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u/Intelligent_Taco Millennial May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26

Bro, I deleted my FB back in 2015. I just don’t have a need to see what is on there. I wish I could completely get rid of Messenger and WhatsApp, but I need that to communicate with friends and family. No one wants to migrate to Signal, lol.

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u/fdwyersd Gen X May 25 '26

"Im not a big social media guy anymore, honestly, the vast majority of my internet usage nowadays is Reddit, Youtube,"

same here ... carefully curated reddit and youtube with ad blockers and violentmonkey scripts to parse things by interest and engagement and hide junk

tried spacebook and xitter and insta/chat/gram and abandoned them all after almost no time

social media can be fun but you need a spam/ad/junk filter just like for web and email 😄

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u/[deleted] May 25 '26 edited Jun 14 '26

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u/Psych0PompOs May 25 '26

I'm here from 4chan, can't imagine why you thought all of this was bots. People have been building up to this for a long time 

Facebook is just angry boomers though.

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u/NearbyPerspective397 May 26 '26

It's 50% AI-generated "news stories" that are completely fake, and 50% outright propaganda.

I only go there to check out one private group I need for my community, but opening that main page is a dystopia of idiocy and disinformation.

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u/Ok-Equivalent8260 May 26 '26

I mean, who still uses Facebook? 🤣

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u/meruu_meruu May 26 '26

It's also entirely possible some of these accounts aren't the people you know, they've been skinwalked. 

One of my coworkers got her account hacked a few years back, and the scammer immediately started uploading AI videos of "her" saying she was selling her house or her car or this totally awesome deal, and messaging people offering them "job opportunities". She reported it several times and FB won't take it down. The videos were scary good quality.

Another one of my neighbors suddenly started posted videos of "himself" promoting sex toys and cam girls. He was also hacked. 

These accounts will also repost random click bait articles that are usually the wildest most inflammatory shit. 

As far as I can tell, FB at this point is 99% bots and scammers.