It is probably a mix of people who got nowhere else to interact with people, and people using Groups. Facebook was where you'd go to talk to all your friends and family, most of my friends have been getting shadowbanned since 2012 ~ so it made me use it less. I got auto striked on my account for making a meme joke about burning a house down due to a giant spider in a video. I appealed, and it got denied. I'm not using a platform that will inadvertently ban me by AI. But the people actually posting to kill others, and actually burn shit down, and bots stay just fine?

Plus I didn't want to risk my employers Facebook App being in limbo if I got banned, so I left Facebook alone, never to return.

Facebook trying to police the world is the only thing keeping me away, if I can use the platform and post meme comments again, maybe I might reconsider, but I doubt it. Reddit is in a similar boat. You can get banned, but all the creepy pedophile comments from decades and recently are still up no problem.

> But the people actually posting to kill others, and actually burn shit down ...

That kind of burning down is classified as "mostly peaceful" by mainstream and AI.

Same here, Groups + Marketplace is actually a wealth of information. There are still a few dark patterns but most manageable for a "free" platform.

OPs comments read like we're describing something the SS built (Godwin says hi).

I stopped going on facebook a few years ago and don't miss it; I don't even need messenger as everyone migrated to whatsapp (yes I know, normal people don't want to move to signal, but got quite a few techy friends to migrate). The FB-only groups are indeed a problem, I'm delegating them to my wife.

IF I ever had to go to FB for anything, I'd probably install a wall-removing browser extension. Mobile app is of course out of question.

> IF I ever had to go to FB for anything, I'd probably install a wall-removing browser extension. Mobile app is of course out of question.

You’ll probably find you can no longer make an account. I’m in the same boat as you (not used and haven’t missed in over a decade), however, my partner needed an account to manage an ad campaign for a client and neither of us were able to make one. Both tried a load of different things and, ultimately, gave up. Had to tell the client what they needed over a video call

I just tried making one after reading your comment, and it was... pretty straightforward? I'm curious what blockers you encountered

Must be something to do with our situation? Basically both I and my partner just got told we were making fraudulent accounts. Used our real names, emails, phone numbers and same result. Used multiple other phone numbers to see if they were blacklisted for some reason, nope. Used my mother’s WiFi in case it was something to do with IP, nope. Tried from India with an Indian phone, nope.

For me it's the Marketplace. Left FB many years ago only to come back to keep an eye out for used Lego for the kiddos. At least in my region, and for my purposes, Marketplace is miles better than any other competing sites/apps.

I'd assume that any platform which get's sufficiently popular will become a bot and AI content target...

The challenges of moving to alternative solutions

The irony of a bot account sliding into a convo about internet slop is not lost.

How do you know?

The comment history does read much like you'd expect from a bot, lots of short, generic statements that vaguely tie to the subject of the post

There was no need to scroll through my history and analyze it. Your analysis is mistaken. I'm not a bot. Sometimes my comments are brief because I'm trying to be concise. I don't just express my agreement with a simple 'I agree', but respond in a more detailed manner yet also shortly.

They're brief but they also sound so bot-ish in the way they're written, I'm not the only one to have pointed that out in the thread

Yes, there are four of you here. And this is the first time I’ve encountered something like this. I hope I won’t trouble you with my answers anymore!

No trouble, you just have a different writing style!

> If I had the time (and energy) I might put some effort into advocating to moving to something else, but it will be an uphill battle.

What are the alternatives for local groups? I've recently seen an increase in the amount of Discourse forums available, which is nice, but I don't think it'd be very appealing to the average cycling or hiking group.