Anyone notice something different about Facebook political ads?

This is just about the one thing we know about FB beyond any doubt, as mentioned above: Anger/annoyance gets more engagement/clicks/views than anything else, and that is dollars in FB's pocket. Whether one personally gets a deluge is pertinent, but not central.

Yes, there's plenty that follows from that along various paths, but that is the one, singular, absolute thing we can say about FB.

There's a vast gap I think some of the population fails to really think about between being simply convinced by an argument or statement, and being influenced by what you see. I think the idea that FB isn't having a significant influence on society is staggeringly silly.

I left not because I was bombarded with bad stuff, but because it struck me as being a negative influence on society. It was not how I wanted to be connected to people. I have rejoined with zero connections for Marketplace, though I'm not using it as much as I thought I would (and unsurprisingly got no response the one time I inquired on a lathe from my one-month-old, zero-connections profile).

To the OP, I wouldn't be surprised that nothing has changed for other people, or that you can't track down the thing that made your experience change. Outside of social media, I've randomly wound up on a few rather unexpected political mailing lists; I have suspicions of which groups I've interacted with who might've thought handing their membership data over to these groups was a good idea, or possibly even what I'd want, but it's maddening. It's not hard for the data people to keep track of someone across many platforms, so it doesn't have to be an FB thing to change how FB treats you. Maybe a seemingly unrelated entity got your email from some other list, and here you are...

Mumble argle bargle. Sorry for the ramble. Heck, not having to mull this was part of why I left FB... Silly me.

I have unfriended and unfollowed numerous people over the last two years.

Every time I go on FB I evaluate my friends, or those I follow to see if they bring anything to the table.

I unfriend or snooze somebody at least 50% of the time. There were a half dozen casualties this morning

In reply to Jesse Ransom :

I expect most of us are in a similar boat.  I too, deleted it when I realized it was adding no value to my life.  I rejoined when CL used cars and other forums (not this one, thank god) started dying. 

I hate the lack of archives and searchability (forums are WILDLY better for hobbyists for this reason).  Just as an example, one group I'm a member of has a pretty talented interior upholstery guy.  He posted some great prototype door panels and other restoration pieces.  When I went back about 6 months later to try and find the posts, it was nearly impossible using their search tool and any combination of "door, panel, reupholstery, trim panel, etc".  I have started screenshotting posts with the relevant pictures and username and storing them in my car restoration folder on my computer, which is both utterly ridiculous and makes me feel like an old man. 

slefain said:

Professor_Brap (Forum Supporter) said:

I get almost zero political advertisement on Facebook. But I might have broke the algorithms. 

Me neither, but I also try to poison their algorithm on purpose when ads do show up.

I'll play with there ads some, but mostly think the E36 M3 posting keeps them away. 

Any person that posts mostly political content gets deleted. 

Any political advertisement is flagged as offensive or spam.

I get more political/COVID/the world is dying content from GRM than FB at this point. 

Facebook:

Never a problem with political or other FB ads.    

 (Or whatever else you need cleaned up)

 

tomtomgt356 (Tommy) said:

When I am really bored I will go through and report every ad I see as offensive. Doesn't matter if it is something I would buy or not. All adds are offensive and I report them as such.

When I feel like it I report ads as "not interested".