I know everyone here is aware how much #Twitter has gone the drain since Elon Musk took over, but #Facebook is almost as bad.

As an example, Germany is currently experiencing abnormal warmth for this time of the year - and on every weather-related Facebook page mentioning this, there are _hundreds_ of posters either cheering this on ("Awesome! I like it warm!") or denying that this is an aberration in the first place.

They are out there in force and outnumbering everyone else by at least a 10:1 margin - and thus give the impression that they are representative of public opinion. And with this, they are _shaping_ the opinion of other Facebook users.

So there's the same problem as with Twitter - spend lots of time and effort in countering their claims wherever they appear? Or retreat and leave an entire social media platform to them - in the (possibly vain) hope that we can build better structures here on the #Fediverse that will eventually supplant Facebook and the others?

#ClimateChange #GlobalWarming #Disinformation

@juergen_hubert
Leave and don’t look back. You would be fighting russian bots. Real people are on #mastodon

@juergen_hubert Facebook and Twitter are a lost cause. Ignorance and the opposition to expertise is celebrated.

@juergen_hubert FB is just an ad swamp these days, with very little content from my friends. Although I have almost 400 friends, after a few minutes of scrolling I frequently get a screen that says"That's all, you're up to date. Get more friends to see more." WTF? And 10 ads for every friend post. Vile, vile, vile.

@juergen_hubert I have a lot of thoughts on this. Sorry in advance 🥲
First of all, I wonder how many genuine people (no bots, no trolls) are really posting those bullshit comments on those platforms. We know that, sadly, building an "army" of fake accounts is quite easy nowadays.
Also, one has to keep in mind that usually the dumbest, vilest people make the biggest noise. Maybe I'm delusional, but I imagine there's a majority of people silently rejecting all of that while also choosing not to engage at all. Sure enough, though, that doesn't change what you were describing as an effective public opinion manipulation...
Finally, I might be out of line, but my take on this whole social media fiasco is that some (a lot of?) people are actually "choosing" psychosis over reality. We've seen it with covid, with climate change, with the worldwide raise of fascism. Whatever phenomenon is perceived as a mortal danger, and also disruptive of one's day-to-day life, is simply rejected as "non-existent". The more one rejects a dangerous reality, the more other irrational, dangerous, make-believe "realities" come to life. Conspiracies spring from a psychotic mind in order to prove that reality is fake and delusions are real.
I wish we would all start calling a spade a spade. Being a QAnonist, a climate change denier, doesn't mean "having opinions". Not being able to determine what's real is simply a symptom of mental illness. I'm really not interested in a psychotic's takes on politics, history, climate topics, gender studies and so on. Why are TV channels, newspapers, podcasts, social media and all the likes giving space to those takes? Are they really promoting psychosis and lunacy?

@juergen_hubert oh no, how dare they^tm enjoy something, how could zuccbook allow non-activists to exist?

@idontlikenames ...I don't think "enjoy" is the right word here.

@juergen_hubert failbook has been the king of unsolicited misinformation for at least a decade (e.g. cambridge analytica). I think people are sad about pre-garbage twitter because it was one of the last commercial social media sites where you got reasonable information if you followed carefully.