Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by treehau5 » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 7:10 PM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #93

revicon wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, I'm only interested in postings about "stupid life updates" as you call them when I'm on Facebook. I got so sick of the "10 ways batman is better than superman" articles that I started blocking every external site I saw being posted on my feed. And I mean everything, wsj, nyt, USA Today, etc etc etc. Facebook is not a newsreader, it's a place where I go to see "stupid life events" from my friends and family t…

There's validity in both positions. I am generally the same in that I only use Facebook for stupid life events and keeping in touch with people. Then again, I'd prefer not to use Facebook at all, but these days you are pretty much a no one without a FB profile. Nobody answers their phone and they hardly even text at this point. Anyway, the problem is that Facebook pretends that it wants to make people "more connected…

Texting sucks and is extraordinary frustrating to try and keep up with massive group texts (almost borderline anxiety-creating), and phone conversations are always difficult and frustrating. However, FaceTime and similar video-calling is great. I wish we could make phone just default to this.

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

#122

Post by ikeyany » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 8:01 PM UTC

delecti wrote: post #120

mikeash wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 po…

"sort by most recent posts that we approve of"*

Why isn't this being talked about by various media outlets? It's blatant social engineering via dark patterns and deception.

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

#123

Post by ss64 » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 8:32 PM UTC

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.

There is no chronological view You have either: 'Most recent' = filtered or 'Top stories' = heavily filtered

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

#124

Post by jpalomaki » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 8:36 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #53

jpalomaki wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is likely trying to maximize the time people spend on browsing their feed. Surface too many "boring" news articles in a row and user might go away. Put a nice mixture of news, goofy stuff, updates from friends, some fake news to provoke action and user remains. Hundreds of millions of people stare the news feed on weekly basis and interact with it. This creates a spectacular opportunity for employing machine…

Assuming they aren't selling this "boring" evaluation (or submitting to any other kind of pressure for making suboptimal decisions), keeping users reading their feed is still not necessarily what users want. Facebook is doing what maximizes revenue, but there's no evidence that is the same thing that will encourage users to keep using it in the long term.

That's a very good point that I did not think about. Even if they would be able to hit the right buttons in my mind to keep me browsing, I might find the overall experience dissatisfying and quit the whole thing. Like does anybody really feel "good" after spending one hour browsing Facebook or imgur?

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

#125

Post by shostack » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 9:59 PM UTC

padseeker wrote: post #72

strict9 wrote: post #16

FB has always prioritized content which doesn't lead them to see ads elsewhere (like photos instead of links), but maybe it's something else. I live in Chicago and subscribe to the Sunday edition. I also read the digital edition, and have found it lacking, particularly since inauguration. In recent months Michael Ferro became the majority shareholder in the Tribune, a person obsessed with celebrities and not so much…

I work for the Trib, and read it every day. While your comment about Ferro is true, being interested in hanging with celebrities, I have not noticed a change in the content with Ferro in charge. The Trib has always focused on very local stuff - city and state politics, the midwest, local sports teams, the spike in murders, etc. I don't think that is going to change. I think the editorial board would like to believe i…

In a world where distribution is unlimited and unbounded by location, it seems unlikely that focusing on local content will continue to work for them if they want to grow.

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

#126

Post by shostack » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 10:00 PM UTC

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…

>"I had misgivings about Facebook initially from a privacy standpoint, but how much power they have to moderate content, virtually imperceptibly, was one of the final straws that got me off of it."

Pair this with Zuckerberg's potential future political aims, the role of segmented social media advertising in this past election and privacy, that should be very concerning for one person to have so much power.

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

#127

Post by padseeker » Wed, Apr 19, 2017, 10:09 PM UTC

strict9 wrote: post #101

padseeker wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for the Trib, and read it every day. While your comment about Ferro is true, being interested in hanging with celebrities, I have not noticed a change in the content with Ferro in charge. The Trib has always focused on very local stuff - city and state politics, the midwest, local sports teams, the spike in murders, etc. I don't think that is going to change. I think the editorial board would like to believe i…

I don't disagree with the type of local content (crime, politics, sports) you describe. But that's only a small part of what people are interested in. Though the writing is sometimes sensationalist and click-baity, DNAinfo is eating the Trib's lunch for local engaging content. The number of links to DNA in my fb or twitter feed vastly outnumber Trib ones because friends share/click articles about their city or neighb…

There is active discussion right now internally about this issue. We're not the only newspaper seeing this decline in views from facebook.

I'm not here to whine. The news business is what it is. We rely on outside sources to drive our traffic. Traffic means eyeballs which translates into ad revenue, hopefully anyway.

When google changes its algorithm that might hurt our web traffic we have to respond accordingly. SEO people have all kinds of discussions, and write articles, when google makes a change. This article is something similar.

It seems like facebook has been changing their algorithm determining what appears in a user's feed, which is effecting our traffic. The same efforts we put in 6 months ago using facebook are having diminishing returns. The point of the article is its effecting us, and apparently not just us.

Whether facebook will address this issue, either in public or private remains to be seen. However I see there is an advantage of talking about it publicly, to determine if it is just us (it's not) or if its affecting others (apparently it is) and what can be done to remedy the situation.

On a side note I like DNAinfo as their content is hyperlocal. It's probably harder for the Chicago Tribune to do that.

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

#128

Post by derefr » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 3:14 AM UTC

marricks wrote: post #102

revicon wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, I'm only interested in postings about "stupid life updates" as you call them when I'm on Facebook. I got so sick of the "10 ways batman is better than superman" articles that I started blocking every external site I saw being posted on my feed. And I mean everything, wsj, nyt, USA Today, etc etc etc. Facebook is not a newsreader, it's a place where I go to see "stupid life events" from my friends and family t…

As I grow older, one thing I value more and more from friends is their opinions, knowing what they care about and perspectives they have to share. I don't think I was alone in spending too much time on Facebook thinking I was connecting to my "friends" talking about important things. Facebook seems to have intentionally or unintentionally stifled that, so I left. If you view it as a "vapid" place to share, and do im…

Agreed re: the separation. I don't know that I find that all that "hard", though.

Facebook is the place where I can see posts from all my high-school/college/work acquaintances and my extended family. Do I like these people? Sure! Do I want to know what they think about anything? Please, no; every time that happens I end up liking them less! And do I want them to know a single thing about me? Even less! Giving them even the slightest awareness of my actual interests would be a moralizing disaster for everyone involved!

Now, my friends, I have a Discord server for. There, we share all the stupid things we would say to one-another in person, but never ever if it was going to be on a big searchable record somewhere where my Grandma might see. I have some of those same friends added on Facebook, but none of us ever post there. There's no need.

I wouldn't "delete Facebook", as I actually do value keeping up with acquaintances and relatives... from a distance. It's very easy to keep it separated from my "important talking"—because nobody I'd ever want to do any "important talking" with would ever see anything I wrote there.

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

#129

Post by derefr » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 3:15 AM UTC

treehau5 wrote: post #121

ravenstine wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's validity in both positions. I am generally the same in that I only use Facebook for stupid life events and keeping in touch with people. Then again, I'd prefer not to use Facebook at all, but these days you are pretty much a no one without a FB profile. Nobody answers their phone and they hardly even text at this point. Anyway, the problem is that Facebook pretends that it wants to make people "more connected…

Texting sucks and is extraordinary frustrating to try and keep up with massive group texts (almost borderline anxiety-creating), and phone conversations are always difficult and frustrating. However, FaceTime and similar video-calling is great. I wish we could make phone just default to this.

You're crazy! I find the whole concept of synchronous conversations soul-destroying; and the higher-bandwidth they are, the more about you they reveal, the worse it is. The concept of a video call is, to me, on par with a job interview, in that it makes me instantly lose every shred of self-esteem about my appearance, body language, and speaking mannerisms I've ever built.

How about we all just go back to writing letters, so we can take months to compose an air-tight, well-considered, face-on reply, without that being uncouth?

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

#130

Post by majewsky » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 3:01 PM UTC

L_Rahman wrote: post #114

ncr100 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm seeing this with blog posts, too. Where a serious topic is discussed, but it's illustrated with appropriately-captioned meme images. I wonder if they do it to please today's meme-craving reader, or just to avoid overly long sections of text without any breaks (what Germans lovingly call "Bleiwüste", i.e. "lead desert").