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Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

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Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#111

Post by FungalRaincloud »

basch wrote: post #74
marricks wrote: post #43

When I had Facebook I was passionate about several topics, but I limited my posting to only 1 - 2 times a month. Initially when I started I got some engagement, questions, etc. As the years wore on I gained some friends who cared about those topics too, who liked my posts, shared, etc. Dozens of likes at times. Well, turns out people paid less attention over time, or seemed too. Those posts got fewer likes and shares…

>"hurt user engagement" if Facebook is personalizing everyones feed based on what they click, isnt the clicker to blame for the result of personalization, not the technology provider. it sounds like your friends didnt engage with your posts, they did engage with other posts, and the facebook feedback loop built them a filter bubble of things they liked more than your posts.

In the simple case where they look at what your likes are to determine the bubble they create around you, sure. But I don't think that's all they look at. Content could be being buried simply because a friend of a friend doesn't like that content, but likes a bunch of other content you like. It's not as simple as a reaction to your action. There's a lot of "secret sauce" that goes into it that makes it not quite so transparent.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#112

Post by callinyouin »

gdulli wrote: post #88
callinyouin wrote: post #54

This is just a thought, but perhaps this is due to an internal effort at FB to filter out "fake news". The changes in their algorithm might be showing some unintended consequences, or maybe the stories from the Tribune that are getting killed really are of dubious quality (I'm not a reader, so I really don't know). The timing of the Tribune's downward trend in post reach would seem to fit this narrative at any rate.

Fake news is about determining bad sources, not individual articles. It's about finding propaganda sites that are intentionally and maliciously inventing false stories. A fake news algorithm wouldn't apply to a credible, established newspaper.

If that's the case (and I don't doubt it is, I really don't know how this filtering is supposed to work), isn't that sort of missing the point? The way I understand it, plenty of "credible, established" media outlets are on the hook for propagating unverified, "fake" news. Filtering out the obvious conspiracy theory and propaganda news outlets seems like some really low hanging fruit.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#113

Post by [deleted] »

sigmar wrote: post #83
marricks wrote: post #43

When I had Facebook I was passionate about several topics, but I limited my posting to only 1 - 2 times a month. Initially when I started I got some engagement, questions, etc. As the years wore on I gained some friends who cared about those topics too, who liked my posts, shared, etc. Dozens of likes at times. Well, turns out people paid less attention over time, or seemed too. Those posts got fewer likes and shares…

>only 1 - 2 times a month I have suspected that facebook punishes your visibility if you don't post frequently (like a few times a day). Have you tried posting much more often than two times a month? Try two a day and see if your average engagement increases.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#114

Post by L_Rahman »

ncr100 wrote: post #77
marricks wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to spell out why, but here you go, my personal experience is this out of order sorting meant that if I tried to post anything besides vapid updates few people saw them. If Facebook wanted to go from chronological to some other transparent metric, like hotness, I'd be more okay then whatever this is. The fact this is on the feed, my profile, and heck, even searching for events last I saw, is disturbing. Also,…

Hypothetical solution: Wrap your serious posts in vapid trimmings.

I have actually started doing this. I write a text post, but then include a topical, memey, feed friendly image with it. Engagement is much higher.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#115

Post by alagappanr »

Even with over 1000 friends on Facebook - the maximum engagement that my posts reach is probably in the range of 10 to 200 or at the max 300.

One thing I have noticed is that the friends with whom you engage the most - chat, like, comments - in turn get to see your posts often and engage with them.

Anyone with whom you have not interacted in a long time - more than a few months - will never see any of your posts. I don't see any point of being Facebook friends with anyone with whom I haven't interacted in a while. You aren't getting their updates and they aren't getting yours. Facebook is a social network which I mostly see as a place to broadcast life events to all my broader friend networks and acquaintances.

For close friends and family I always prefer medium of communications that are more intimate in nature - phone calls, video calls.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#116

Post by yason »

marricks wrote: post #43

When I had Facebook I was passionate about several topics, but I limited my posting to only 1 - 2 times a month. Initially when I started I got some engagement, questions, etc. As the years wore on I gained some friends who cared about those topics too, who liked my posts, shared, etc. Dozens of likes at times. Well, turns out people paid less attention over time, or seemed too. Those posts got fewer likes and shares…

Facebook isn't helpful in following the stupid life updates either.

Every now and then I try to use Facebook to check out what people are doing because I'm interested in their life updates but I don't really have a clue. I see some random posts from some friends, but not all nor necessarily the important posts. There are friends whose postings I haven't seen for ages, and when I go look back on his/her wall Facebook gives me a curated view with most posts hidden by default so I can't skim through the most recent twenty-or-so posts and make up my mind myself.

And don't get me started on posting to Facebook myself. If I want to say something it's an equally mystic selection of friends who might see it, or "see" it if they downloaded the post but never browsed that far. I think that the post saturation is close to 10%, at most: that many of my friends might actually see my posts.

I grant that Facebook is trying to solve a hard problem. I have a Facebook list that contains all my friends and looking at that list of chronological posts exhausts me before I exhaust the list. So there needs to be a filter, however, the algorithm to filter posts should be known to users. I would probably settle for "Most liked posts from recent days from each your friend", or something similar. Something that is finite and defined. The current views are none of that.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#117

Post by fullshark »

marricks wrote: post #43

When I had Facebook I was passionate about several topics, but I limited my posting to only 1 - 2 times a month. Initially when I started I got some engagement, questions, etc. As the years wore on I gained some friends who cared about those topics too, who liked my posts, shared, etc. Dozens of likes at times. Well, turns out people paid less attention over time, or seemed too. Those posts got fewer likes and shares…

And Twitter shows the consequences of just ordering by time posted

Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#118

Post by username223 »

jandrese wrote: post #48
dickbasedregex wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left FB ~4 years ago. One of the straws that broke the camel for me was that it was obvious FB was "curating" my feed for me. Without notifying or consulting me. Posts from friends wouldn't show in my feed and vice versa. The privacy issues were bad enough but when I couldn't trust the platform to fulfill the only need I had for it, I walked. I'm far better for it.

The worst part is you can switch it back to the chronological view, but Facebook will undo your change at their earliest convenience. You have to make a bookmark to the correct feed to keep it showing up properly. It is annoying, but I'm not a power user. I only check it once every few days to keep up with the relatives, maybe post once a week or so. It's pretty low maintenance.

AFAICT even the "chronological" view is not chronological. I don't know -- I switched over to mbasic.facebook.com because it works without JavaScript -- but I remember posts randomly appearing and disappearing.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#119

Post by basch »

Declanomous wrote: post #78
basch wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"hurt user engagement" if Facebook is personalizing everyones feed based on what they click, isnt the clicker to blame for the result of personalization, not the technology provider. it sounds like your friends didnt engage with your posts, they did engage with other posts, and the facebook feedback loop built them a filter bubble of things they liked more than your posts.

I blame Facebook. I've ranted on HN about what I consider to be an abuse of 'curation' in the past, but I think 'curation' is killing the internet. I agree with the grandparent about Facebook killing engagement, but the place I noticed it first was Last.fm. I used to spend tons of time on Last.fm looking up music. I made sure every track I played was scrobbled, and I listened to their recommendations all of the time.…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7-...

personally i somewhat agree with you. watercoolers like drudge report, techmeme, aldaily, redef show everyone the same page, not some regurgitation of their past. you experience new things by being shown something other than timehop.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#120

Post by delecti »

mikeash wrote: post #68
marricks wrote: post #43

When I had Facebook I was passionate about several topics, but I limited my posting to only 1 - 2 times a month. Initially when I started I got some engagement, questions, etc. As the years wore on I gained some friends who cared about those topics too, who liked my posts, shared, etc. Dozens of likes at times. Well, turns out people paid less attention over time, or seemed too. Those posts got fewer likes and shares…

Why is it so terrible that they control the order of the feed? If the feed was just sorted by date then it would be unusable for most people. I feel like a lot of objections to how Facebook does things come down to thinking Facebook is something different from what it is. It is not, nor is it intended to be, something that shows you every single post from every single friend.

Because there's no way to ensure you have the option of seeing everything unless it's in chronological order. Even if there was just the option of sorting chronologically then a different sorting being the default could be fine, but when you click "sort by most recent" it doesn't, not really anyway. Currently when I click that option there are zero posts displayed. That's not a typo or exaggeration, literally zero posts display under "most recent".
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