Just When You Thought Facebook Couldn’t Get Any Worse…

Does this sound familiar? You pull up Facebook and the first post or two in your timeline are from your friends. As you start scrolling, however, you see ads followed by posts from groups and pages that Facebook thinks you might be interested in, which are then followed by even more ads. Indeed, for every individual post that you see from one of your actual connections, it seems like Facebook shows you 4 – 5 ads and recommendations, if not more.

This is a prime example of what Cory Doctorow calls “enshittification,” i.e., the process by which a service that started out being really beneficial to users is slowly degraded over time in order to increase value for business customers and ultimately, maximize shareholder profits. It’s pretty ridiculous, but Facebook’s enshittification will likely increase as Mark Zuckerberg tries to ingratiate himself to Donald Trump.

A recent ProPublica report reveals just how bad it could get:

This spring, Meta plans to stop working with fact-checkers in the U.S. to label false or misleading content, the company said on Jan. 7. And if a post like the one about ICE goes viral, the pages that spread it could earn a cash bonus.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also said in January that the company was removing or dialing back automated systems that reduce the spread of false information. At the same time, Meta is revamping a program that has paid bonuses to creators for content based on views and engagement, potentially pouring accelerant on the kind of false posts it once policed. The new Facebook Content Monetization program is currently invite-only, but Meta plans to make it widely available this year.

The upshot: a likely resurgence of incendiary false stories on Facebook, some of them funded by Meta, according to former professional Facebook hoaxsters and a former Meta data scientist who worked on trust and safety.

It doesn’t take any stretch of the imagination to see how this could go sideways. We know social media amplifies lies and misinformation, with controversial, outlandish, and incendiary content receiving more views and engagement than normal content. This is something that even Zuckerberg himself noted back in 2018:

One of the biggest issues social networks face is that, when left unchecked, people will engage disproportionately with more sensationalist and provocative content. This is not a new phenomenon. It is widespread on cable news today and has been a staple of tabloids for more than a century. At scale it can undermine the quality of public discourse and lead to polarization. In our case, it can also degrade the quality of our services.

Our research suggests that no matter where we draw the lines for what is allowed, as a piece of content gets close to that line, people will engage with it more on average — even when they tell us afterwards they don’t like the content.

In 2021, Facebook announced it was taking a hardline approach to misinformation, in part to deal with the COVID-related lies and falsehoods being spread on the platform. (Whether Facebook actually followed through and was successful in its efforts remains up for debate.) But now in 2025, Zuckerberg and Facebook stand poised to reward and legitimize the very same kind of sensational and misleading content they once condemned.

False content — like the anti-immigrant post mentioned in ProPublica’s report — often plays on fear and hatred. If such content is no longer moderated and shut down but, instead, rewarded, then it’s hard to see how that won’t deepen the divides already rending us apart. For anyone who’s concerned about the ultra-divisive nature of our modern discourse, Facebook’s course-change concerning lies and misinformation is concerning, to say the least.