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The Facebook bubble just popped

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Re: The Facebook bubble just popped

#71

Post by ceejayoz »

ones_and_zeros wrote: post #62
thewhitetulip wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the electoral system in US to be funny. When 47.7% people voted for Hillary and 47.5 voted from Donald, yet Donald won. This is for the second time that Dems have lost this way, the last time was during Al Gore vs Bush

And they had 8 years to fix it but I don't think I heard a peep from them about electoral reform.

They only had control of the House for two of those years, during which healthcare reform was the major priority. It also requires state level work, where the GOP holds 2/3 of the governorships.

Re: The Facebook bubble just popped

#72

Post by protomyth »

Declanomous wrote: post #47
woodchuck64 wrote: post #15

Not just the left and right's echo-chambers, but those who attempt to actually listen to reality got it wrong, too: FiveThirtyEight for example has been using proven, reality-based statistics for a while and should have predicted this result. (As it was, Silver was lambasted for being too generous on Trump's chances.) At issue in this election is apparently a new idea: people who hold positions that are being publica…

I spent 5 years living in Wisconsin, and I've been telling everyone that Trump would definitely win there. The week before the election, I actually went so far as to say that I expected Hillary to win the popular vote, and Trump to win the electoral college. I wasn't predicting a Trump win out of bias. I'm very liberal, and my friends are too. However, none of my friends believed me. I'm not going to say I was confid…

Yeah, I deal with a lot of people all over the spectrum and there was an undercurrent of something going on. A lot of those leaked e-mails really offended people and they got passed around a lot. Its one thing to believe a group looks down on you, but its a whole different thing when you read the e-mails. I was amazed at the number of people that were going to that site and sending links.

It also seemed like the celebrity endorsements had the opposite effect. Some of the people who I've met who spoke ill of the celebrities used language that I don't think they normally use. It has been quite odd.

Re: The Facebook bubble just popped

#73

Post by jrs235 »

thewhitetulip wrote: post #46
sickbeard wrote: post #12

Not to mention realclearpolitics and projectthirtyfive all had poll after poll with all the number crunching data saying Clinton would win. In the end.. clinton: 59,938,290 votes trump: 59,704,886 votes 59million liked all new age sjw stuff 59million other people didn't

I find the electoral system in US to be funny. When 47.7% people voted for Hillary and 47.5 voted from Donald, yet Donald won. This is for the second time that Dems have lost this way, the last time was during Al Gore vs Bush

The electors haven't voted yet...

Re: The Facebook bubble just popped

#74

Post by Uehreka »

woodchuck64 wrote: post #15

Not just the left and right's echo-chambers, but those who attempt to actually listen to reality got it wrong, too: FiveThirtyEight for example has been using proven, reality-based statistics for a while and should have predicted this result. (As it was, Silver was lambasted for being too generous on Trump's chances.) At issue in this election is apparently a new idea: people who hold positions that are being publica…

A couple notes on FiveThirtyEight:

First of all, yes, they got it wrong, in that they gave Clinton a higher chance of winning than Trump. They didn't give him a 0 chance, and a model that has 67%ish certainty should be "wrong" about 1 in 3 times. They were better than the other major forecasts, insofar as they gave Trump the highest chance of winning.

I respect Nate Silver for his opposition to non-data-driven media narratives. In 2012, when the media was calling the race super close, Nate called them out for making a media circus when the race was actually looking really good for Obama. In this race, he did the opposite, constantly pointing out how likely a 30% chance was and how big of a polling error there could be (and also how many undecided voters there were). He also called out herding (the tendency of pollsters to not publish outliers) when he saw a ton Clinton+3 and Clinton+4 leads in the week before the election. His forecast may have been wrong, but his instincts are pretty good.

Regarding the shy-Trump effect, we didn't see this play out in the primaries (Trump often underperformed his polls), which makes me skeptical. It might be that with all the reluctant republicans felt a need to vote for him in the general election, the effect got played up. Personally, I think there are 2 big problems in polling as we do it today:

- Not enough pollsters are polling in Spanish. From the polling we do have, we know that Spanish speaking latinos vote very differently from English speaking latinos.

- Our methods for finding people are a mess. Phone polls often use land lines (Cell numbers are often unlisted and may belong to people who live in other states despite their area code) which prejudice them towards the demographic of "people who still have/answer a land line". Internet polls suffer self-selection bias. We need a way to randomly sample people without them making the first move to join a poll. This problem needs to be solved.

Lastly, I want to point out that even Trump's campaign didn't see this coming. No one (except Bill Mitchell's yard sign and Halloween mask model) saw this coming. We have a lot of work to do to fix polling.

Re: The Facebook bubble just popped

#75

Post by zzalpha »

alva wrote: post #41
Jemaclus wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, they did predict it: 538 had 35% chance of Trump winning and emphasized the uncertainty factor, while other outlets had Clinton's chances as high as 99%.

Just like they predicted Trump's chance of winning the primary as 2%. Hilarious defence of their work in recent tweet "Clinton came within 2 points of 307 electoral votes, in which case polls would have been right in 49 of 50 states. " ie. If the results had been different, our prediction would have been correct.

If the results had been different, our prediction would have been correct.

First, that comment is about the polls, not their model.

Second, it's called a polling error. It's actually a thing.

This election happened to be extremely sensitive to polling errors due to the nature of the electoral college and the fact that a number of key races were extremely tight.

When an average poll has a 3% margin of error, and you factor in state-level correlations (and the fact that the state level polls tend to have more variable quality than national polls), a slight error results in a huge swing.

Which is the entire point they're making, if you're willing to set aside the snark and read what they wrote (since it's actually, you know, interesting and informative).

Re: The Facebook bubble just popped

#76

Post by gumby »

What a screed. Example:

> To make matters worse, social media is a poor platform for getting people to understand opposing views. Another Pew study found that only 20 percent of users modified their stance on a social or political issue because of what they saw on social media. ...

OK, but did people "modify their stance on a social or political issue" due to newspapers? TV? Or did they just pay attention to things that reinforced their existing biases?

There may be a good criticism of FB, but this isn't it. And a scientific study (not sure what that would look like, but whatever) might well show the opposite.

Re: The Facebook bubble just popped

#77

Post by 551199 »

woodchuck64 wrote: post #15

Not just the left and right's echo-chambers, but those who attempt to actually listen to reality got it wrong, too: FiveThirtyEight for example has been using proven, reality-based statistics for a while and should have predicted this result. (As it was, Silver was lambasted for being too generous on Trump's chances.) At issue in this election is apparently a new idea: people who hold positions that are being publica…

FiveThirtyEight and Nate Silver's predictions have been hilariously wrong about Trump in every way possible.

Reading this honestly makes me question why I read HN.

Re: The Facebook bubble just popped

#78

Post by renaudg »

herbst wrote: post #16
sickbeard wrote: post #9

What an absurd article. Facebook is worldwide but somehow the US only elections popped it's bubble? Not to mention this was a 50/50 opinion split.. not exactly earth shattering.

Well for one thing i never heard anyone using Facebook as news source, if U.S. people really do that there is at least that. Otherwise really absurd article, agreed.

i never heard anyone using Facebook as news source

Well, that's one hell of a bubble you're living in.

Re: The Facebook bubble just popped

#79

Post by sickbeard »

zzalpha wrote: post #64
jbondeson wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 59million liked all new age sjw stuff That is such an absurd and reductionist dismissal of this election that is no different than the equally wrong people saying "59 million people liked all the old sexist, homophobic, racist and xenophobic attitudes, and 59 million other people didn't" What you are doing here is just perpetuating the problems that have plagued this election cycle and made it so people are complet…

I almost think this was a textbook troll. Start with a reasonable statement. Back that up with some interesting facts. Then drop a bomb in the room and wait for the aftermath. Pretty nicely crafted, all things considered...

Thanks but you're wrong. Maybe SJW is a trigger word for you but it was just a general description of the divide shown in the US election. The people living outside of the cities obviously rejected things being shoved down their throats. For the record I liked Hillary, but I wouldn't be surprised if she lost against a frog.. let alone trump.

Re: The Facebook bubble just popped

#80

Post by nzjrs »

herbst wrote: post #11
ghouse wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they're not. Read the article. Their research indicates Facebook shows you news, even fabricated news that agrees with whatever you already believe.

I've read the article, it says that Facebook did favor Trump somehow and and does passively suggest that they did this knowingly by showing other cases where they did that. I realize its not the complete message, but its appearantly the subtle message they want to bring over.

Which article did you read?
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