Revisiting Facebook

In March, in a rare moment of sobriety from the artificial intelligence drug, a revamped Mark Zuckerberg — gold chain around his neck, wild hair — promised that Facebook, or at least part of it, would return to simpler times, when the social network was… well, a social network. An innocent era when he himself looked like a wax figure rather than a wannabe rapper.

This was the announcement of a new featured tab on Facebook called “Friends,” designed to filter updates from “friends” (Meta’s euphemism for Facebook contacts). It would be, in Zuckerberg’s words, a “return to the OG Facebook.”

I created my first Facebook account back when the site still required a university email address — an account I deleted in 2018. A few years later, when I created my second one, Facebook was almost unrecognizable, transformed by an amalgamation of features seasoned with a crazy recommendation algorithm.

I was intrigued by this novelty, the “Friends” tab — though to this day I still haven’t received it — and because of it, I started accessing Facebook regularly again. This dive into unhealthy digital waters was motivated by genuine curiosity. If Zuckerberg himself admits that Facebook is much more than a site (or app) for connecting people, since “seeing friends’ status updates” became something from the “OG Facebook,” the question remains: what is Facebook today?

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It’s hard to define Facebook. The sidebar, with 20 options, is like one of those ice blocks unearthed from the North Pole, each item representing a forgotten geological layer/era. There are remnants of the radical shift to video in the mid-2010s, the one that caused a meltdown at digital newspapers when the company reversed course; the gaming section that boosted people’s entry into the network in the late 2000s (remember FarmVille?); the groups that in 2017–2018 seemed like the only thing left there; and, of course, Meta AI, the face of bro Zuck’s new obsession with generative artificial intelligence. (Notable absence: the infamous metaverse that gives the company that owns Facebook its name.)

At the center of the computer screen (I would never install the Facebook app on my phone) is the news feed. Almost without “news,” because that’s gone out of style, but with a varied menu of contextless content, clickbait, AI creations, sponsored posts, sponsored scams, some lost people who stick around as if we were still in 2010. And incomprehensible craziness: in this return of mine, for example, the algorithm decided to suggest groups for “single women” and “needy cougars” and lecture ads from a disgraced entrepreneur (is this a scam?). Even if my life depended on it, I couldn’t explain why these suggestions appeared.

At this point, it’s likely that stuffing the news feed with questionable content is a necessity rather than a choice.

In the sidebar there’s an item called “Feeds.” These are filters for types of content: from friends, pages, and groups, displayed in reverse chronological order. Now that’s innovation! I started accessing these feeds when I discovered them, because they’re finite and contain content limited to what I chose to follow and from my “friends.” With 163 “friends” and following a handful of pages, I can get through all the updates in just a few minutes, and I don’t even need to check the feeds every day.

That said, my limited sampling gives the impression that people don’t post on Facebook anymore. Those who do post don’t share much about their own lives. It feels like it’s become a ghost town, where the ghosts are “memories” (reposts from a time when Facebook had a more relevant role in life), AI-generated “fun facts”, recycled dad jokes from when the internet was hand-cranked, and sensationalist or outright fake news. And scam ads. Lots of scams. It’s almost the same experience as wandering around a tourist spot wearing shorts and sneakers, with those mannerisms that mix wonder and uncertainty and give away someone who’s not from around there — easy preys for scammers. I was surprised by the amount of sponsored scams — criminal content that Meta is paid to promote.

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There is (a little) life in specific places. The marketplace is one of them. I sold some junk I had lying around the house, based on trust. Everything went fine. Apparently, I got lucky in my naivety, because after I mentioned the deal I made, lots of people warned me about the risk of scams on the platform.

Stories and reels are another, though I suspect they’re only there because people don’t care about or don’t notice cross-posting with Instagram. This duplication creates a feeling that Facebook is a blue clothing for Instagram — which, in turn, is also crammed with features and I usually call the “millennial Facebook.” Instagram which, by the way, I think people only keep using because they settle for very little, literally: that 2/10 of the screen at the top — the stories — where you can still see photos and videos of normal people amid a non-suffocating volume of ads and cheap promotion.

The “OG Facebook” that Zuck wanted to resurrect is an impossibility because it implies giving up obligations that didn’t exist back then, and which today are incompatible with Meta’s size, greed, and entanglements. Ghost town? Let me correct myself. Facebook is more like a decaying city, full of dangers (scams) on every corner and where, at the end of the day, money rules.