You must be joking. Almost everyone with whom I interact is decidedly left of center, except for a few friends and relations who are the opposite. For me, this is the bubble I’m comfortable in, and I can afford to be in the bubble because I don’t rely on my FB feed for all my news, opinion, and current events. Honestly, I cringed when I read that Bird Box was meant to be an allegory of social media, with the idea that one glance at it would destroy the user’s mind. How pathetically suggestible have we become?
A couple of strategies have helped keep FB a pleasant place for me, to the point that I have to struggle to grasp how others may not feel the same way.
I keep my friends list manageable. I don’t know most of them IRL, but for every friend I have at least an idea of how we became connected. In the case of many, we have numerous mutual friends so there’s a lot of cohesiveness there. If you have seventeen mutual friends with me, then chances are I’m going to friend you. By the same token, if you already have 4999 friends, then you’ve already lost control.
I almost never just “scroll my feed”. Instead, I just go through my notifications. I only get notifications of friends’ posts, and posts to group pages I belong to and am interested in. Which brings me to my third point…
Try not to join vaguely defined pointless group pages. Stick to groups which exist to serve a definite area of interest, e.g. local history of your city, NASCAR, other sports, etc.
Well, you know, it depends on what you mean by “we”. After all, “we” as Americans chose Donald Con Man Trump to be the actual president of our country. Never underestimate how stupid “we” are when you include all of us.
My good buddy had one of those de-motivational posters framed and hung in his cubicle. It was an above view looking down at a meeting room table that had a bunch of reaching arms with the hands all clasped together in the center. The top of the poster said: “Meetings”
The bottom said: “None Of Us Is As Dumb As All Of Us”
Not really, considering the results of the popular vote. We didn’t, as a people, choose Trump. Of course that doesn’t alter the fact that Trump did win the Electoral College in 2016, and came within a whisker of winning it again in '20, despite losing the popular vote by over 7M votes. (As a Democrat, it deeply troubles me that too many of us tend to overlook this fact. ) The deeply flawed Electoral College system, at present, heavily favors Republicans; while historically the advantage has gone the other way, I don’t see that happening again for the foreseeable future.
For a contrast, consider the reelection of Richard Nixon in 1972. He swept nearly every state of the Union including the entire West Coast (which admittedly was much more conservative at the time). Whatever Nixon’s shortcomings, it’s clear that he won thanks to widespread popular support all across the country, in industrial states as well as rural ones. In 1972 it was factually correct to say that “we” the people chose Nixon for a second term in office. The population of the country was differently distributed, and the Electoral College was still working as the founders had intended.
By historically, do you mean before the parties basically swapped/redefined themselves in the 1960s? Because because while pre-1960s it may have favored the democrats, that’s only nominal and not really meaningful. Democrats were the party of the rural regressives then - at least, more so - the urban/rural conservative/liberal delineation between democrats and republicans wasn’t as clearly divided in the past.
The system has always favored the rural over the urban.
And in the past, both Republicans and Democrats used to be competitive in both types of geography, so the bias could fall either way. But I agree it was much less pronounced, unlike what we saw in '16 and '20.
ETA: In my previous statement I did mean to say the Electoral College advantage had gone to the Democrats at times, so, not necessarily all the time.
I think maybe it’s not so bad to lose touch with people. I’m “friends” with a bunch of people from high school and college. But most of these people I haven’t seen in 30 years. A lot I barely considered acquaintances. So who am I “friends” with? A teenager/20-something I kind of hung out with in the 80s/90s or some middle age person halfway across the country?
FB is getting increasingly confused, as far as the stuff showing up on my feed.
It seems to think I am a lawyer. No, I am not interested in setting up a 7-figure virtual law firm.
And why do I get all these ads for would-be politicians from outside my area or state? There’s a candidate for country magistrate (a hack who serves on a “fiscal court”, doling out tax funds for one of a bunch of districts in a county). These guys make up to $160,000 a year, which sounds like a huge waste of money. This particular bozo says his priorities are (in order): God, Country, Family, Community. Good to know the community he would serve comes in dead last.
I, OTOH, would dearly love to be able to disable Marketplace, Reels, and everybody’s “stories” from my feed. I don’t have any intention of posting a “story” of my own, and I’m not interested in being notified when a loose acquaintance adds to theirs.
Bumping to describe my ongoing current experience:
I live in Europe. I am therefore under GDPR jurisdiction, which defines extensive rights under which individuals may exercise control over their personal data. One of these is the right to compel any organization to disclose precisely what information they have on me, what they use it for, and how.
Last year, I sent such a demand — twice, after they ignored the first one — to Facebook at their European office in Ireland. Several months after the legally mandated deadline for response, they sent back a bland form letter whose surface text says “we have your letter, please give us more information about what you’re looking for” but whose subtext unmistakably says “we have no intention of complying with the law.”
I posted a lengthy message to my friends explaining the background so they would know where my profile went if FB chooses to suspend or delete me when I raise a fuss. It’s linked below if you care to read it.
They’re not just an unethical company. They’re actively, knowingly criminal.
I almost never go on my FB page. Most of my friends are friends and relatives in Europe. I speak and read a fair amount of German but seeing I don’t do it every day reading their posts becomes tedious.
Most of my close friends don’t go on my page because they can’t understand the “gobbledegook” the others have posted to me.
I dumped facebook years ago because of the Cambridge Analytica crap. I knew things were only going to get worse, and I was right. See, e.g., facebook and Apple fighting because Apple wants to give people the right to exclude data miners, which pisses facebook off.
Piss off, Zuckerberg, and quit wrecking the Anini Beach area with your ill-gotten gains.
Point one (possibly made before, even in this thread): for more control of what you see in Facebook, download the FluffBusting Purity (FBP) extension – at least on Chrome, it gives you a lot of control.
Point two: what I hate about Facebook is that every so often, it won’t show me anything. I always suspect someone posted something that isn’t behaving well and the feed gets stuck and won’t allow any posts after the bad one to appear (this is going on for me right now). It usually takes two or three days for it to clear up, which I also don’t understand.
Seems my Facebook page attracted the attention of a Russian dating scammer. I suspected as much from the odd hours and broken English; confirmed the suspicion with a reverse image search.
