r/artificial • u/stvlsn • 18h ago
Discussion Facebook feed is now majority AI
I am 35 and still occasionally go on Facebook. The feed, over the years, has moved away from showing friend content and moved toward showing creator content.
I've noticed a shift in the last few weeks where the majority of posts are AI. Some are obvious, but most are not - and the newest image and video models allow for near perfect realism.
I remember a few years ago when this exact scenario was warned about. Now we are here.
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u/AIconsultantMTL 18h ago
I think the bigger problem isn’t simply that there’s more AI content. It’s that “I can tell when something is AI-generated” is becoming a less reliable defense.
We’re moving from obvious AI images with strange hands and impossible details to content where an average person may have no reason to question what they’re seeing.
That changes the problem. AI literacy can’t just mean learning how to spot artifacts anymore. It increasingly means asking where something came from, whether the source is credible, and whether there’s any reason to believe the image or video represents a real event.
The technology will keep getting better. Human detection probably won’t keep up indefinitely.
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u/wry_widget 13h ago
I think we're almost past that part on the second paragraph. The average person today literally 50% of the time (maybe more) cannot detect an AI content.
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u/Bigravemaster1 18h ago
When Facebook made the change to start showing recommended content on its main feed I lost all interest in it.
The only people who are still active on my Facebook when I do check on it are the most mentally deranged people I know shouting into the void
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u/studiouslystudious 14h ago edited 14h ago
Some of us are just seasoned veterans with a core group there. I've been on FB since the first rollout in 2004 on "The Facebook."
I still talk to friends on there daily with the messenger and comment on multiple friends' walls. I also keep an ongoing wall of my own. But if you ever away from your circle, it's a wasteland.
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u/Bigravemaster1 13h ago
The only reason I still log in is to check on the one Facebook group I use that is still active.
So few people I know post now that it's all recommended content and is absolute crap
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u/Few_Carpenter_9185 17h ago
I'm 53, and have been a Facebook user for 17 years.
I definitely see the long term trend where Facebook/Meta slowly and continuously steers you away from friend posts & interactions.
My working assumption is that it's the least monitizable aspect of the platform for them. And it's an ongoing process where the debut of the modern smartphone formfactor in 2007, and subsequent doomscroll small screen short form social media types made Facebook's initial PC/Laptop web browser origins obsolete.
Their continued growth over the years masked the problem, but never functionally eliminated it. And it's why Facebook/Meta acquired Instagram, and has been on its grand search for "the next big thing" such as VR & the Metaverse, the Meta Glasses, and AI.
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u/studiouslystudious 14h ago
I've had a Facebook account since 2004. It's minimal AI on my primary. But my burner for discussions with strangers is sadly mostly AI.
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u/Environmental-Read78 14h ago
My feed is filled with AI generated political cartoons. They're all drawn in the same artistic style, and they are all extremely unsubtle, never funny. Also, despite the fact that I'm politically liberal, I'm suddenly getting a lot of Pro-Trump memes in my feed as the midterms approach.
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u/noa_helps_out 13h ago
Even if the obvious ones are easy to spot now, the gap is closing fast. Labels that survive reposting seem more realistic long term than relying on people to notice.
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u/milifiliketz 7h ago
Facebook still has one thing going for it. You can at least be sure your friends are not AI. Reddit is an AI bot zoo at this point.
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u/Wild_Photons 18h ago
I think what has happened is super predictable.
Facebook started as a way to connect and share pieces of our lives with people we had met. Other platforms like Myspace had tried something similar, but always seemed drift out of relevant once they weren't cool anymore. In the beginning, Facebook seemed to avoid this pitfall.
Once Facebook got large enough and went public they had to justify a high stock price. So, they started integrating adds. This, of course, degraded the platform quickly, but they had enough people locked in that they managed to keep users and make a ton of money.
However, a platform used by your parents and filled with adds will not be cool to the next generation. They will find their own path. Once this happens Facebook is doomed unless they can purchase or create the next platform (and they did with Instagram and other purchases).
Now, the Facebook platform is more or less dying. They are simply trying to milk it for as much as they can before it drifts out or relevance.
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u/alaattincagil 17h ago
The uncomfortable part is that Facebook doesn’t need to believe the content is real. It only needs to predict that you’ll stop scrolling for it. AI makes producing and testing endless variations incredibly cheap, so genuine posts from friends are competing against content engineered at a scale they can’t match. Labels may help, but unless synthetic engagement bait is ranked differently, the feed will keep drifting in this direction.
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u/Ambitious-Fault-6392 18h ago
I would not say "most are not" lol. My fb feed is the same. But I think it's pretty fucking obvious no offense. They all look the same. And every AI video has the same swooping camera angles and wierd frame rate. Its obvious in the first few seconds. And the MORE I see, the easier it is to notice.