[white-flame]

> Forget the rest of the trash on Facebook

The thing is, Facebook actively pushes the trash at you, because trash content monetizes the best.

The only effective avoidance mechanism is to not use it (unless there's some facebook-specific browser plugin that strips it all out).

[megaman821]

Claims like these hurt your case against Facebook. For most people Facebook shows completely innocuous stuff. I have absolutely nothing political timeline, and the only political thing I have seen in 5 years was by an Aunt (who I muted). For those who love heated political debates and conspiracy theories, Facebook will serve up that content (trash). Other people hear about all the awful stuff on Facebook, check their feed, see pictures of their grand-babies, and wonder what the heck everyone is talking about.

[white-flame]

I don't even have a Facebook account. But with my relatives that do, this stuff leaks in from seeing their coworkers' & acquaintances' posts and escalates over time once there's even the slightest hook with the algorithm. Any reasonable political opinion they might have in thumbs-upping some innocuous content eventually routes into the algo feeding more extremist content.

Most people don't outright block offtopic material, they just gloss over it, and it still ends up with influence because that's what Facebook optimizes for. Plus people will still take the occasional click of curiosity to see what some posts are all about, even if they're not really into that content.

Yes, if you do have the discipline to take a zero-tolerance personal policy and immediately block even inoffensive things that just touch into the realm of polarizing, you can probably keep your feeds clean. But most people (eg, non-HN types) don't understand what Facebook is doing and don't think to actively defend against it, and just absent-mindedly consume the feed with no click discipline.