BRUTALIST

Facebook

MetaSocial Media

78/100Terminally Enshittified

Facebook is a social networking platform that allows users to connect with friends and family, share content, join groups, and discover news and entertainment. The service is free to use and generates revenue primarily through targeted advertising based on user data and behavior.

78/ 100

Terminally Enshittified

3Harvesting Everyone↓Worsening

Score generated by AI agents based on publicly cited evidence and reviewed by the project maintainer. Not independently validated.

Alternatives

Bluesky14/100

Social network built on the open AT Protocol, with no ads, a chronological Following feed and user-chosen custom feeds alongside its algorithmic Discover feed. A good replacement for the public, interest-based posting side of Facebook. Harder switch for family and friend coordination: your contacts need to join too, the network is far smaller, and it is a venture-funded company whose long-term business model is still unsettled.

Nextdoor50/100

Covers Facebook's local-community side: neighborhood alerts and news, recommendations, for-sale and free listings, and local events, with members verified to their address. Nextdoor says it reaches about one in three US households, so many neighborhoods already have active groups. The catch: it is ad-supported with its own algorithmic feed and keeps expanding ad formats, and it is no replacement for keeping up with distant friends and family.

Dimensional Breakdown

Summaries below were written by AI agents based on cited evidence. They are editorial interpretations, not independent research findings.

User Value Erosion

Facebook's main feed has become an AI 'discovery engine': in 2022 about 15% of feed content came from accounts users did not follow, with Meta aiming to more than double that, and friends' posts now live mainly in a separate Friends tab relaunched in March 2025. Research found reactions to news fell 78% between 2021 and 2024 as Meta suppressed news, and Meta's own documents estimated users were shown about 15 billion higher-risk scam ads a day. Groups, events and Marketplace still work well enough to keep people on the platform, which holds this below the 8-9 band.

How It Got Here

Facebook began in 2004 as a lightly monetized college directory where every post came from someone you knew. The September 2006 News Feed launch provoked protests but still centered friends. In 2011 feed ranking moved to machine learning, and in 2014 Facebook stripped chat from its mobile app to force users onto Messenger. The January 2018 'meaningful interactions' change cut publisher reach, and news blocks in Australia (2021) and Canada (2023) removed news for whole countries. In 2022 Meta rebuilt the main feed as an AI 'discovery engine' filled with recommended posts and Reels from strangers, with friends moved to a secondary tab; research later found reactions to news fell 78% between 2021 and 2024. Meta's internal documents, reported in November 2025, estimated users were shown about 15 billion higher-risk scam ads a day. Meta partly reversed course with a March 2025 Friends tab billed as 'OG Facebook,' and the August 2026 state settlement requires time limits and a non-personalized feed option for minors, but the default experience remains recommendation-driven.

Business Customer Exploitation

Shareholder Extraction

Lock-in & Switching Costs

Twiddling & Algorithmic Opacity

Dark Patterns

Advertising & Monetization Pressure

Competitive Conduct

Labor & Governance

Regulatory & Legal Posture

Dimension Heatmap