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The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

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Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#81
post #41

You are obviously giving Facebook to much information to act upon. Some suggestions: 1. Don't use Facebook :) 2. If you use it don't tag your family members as such. Or your close friends as FB "close friends" 3. Never tag anyone in photos 4. Never set "relationship status" 5. Never add info about where do you live, work, etc. 6. Having separate public profile for your company/work related stuff is probably a good id…

See also: https://stallman.org/facebook-presence.html

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#82

This is not a problem, and I certainly hope Facebook does not fix it. Why? Because it forced the OP to narrow down his audience and show the post only to those who would enjoy it. That's a much better experience than everyone trying to push everything they publish to you.

His mom is enjoying his content. However, facebook assumes that since his mom enjoyed his math or programming blog post, the blog post must have been baby pictures of his child uninterested to friends. Therefore, his friends don't get to see his programming articles.

Basically, your posts about work/hobby etc get penalized if your family likes them.

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#83

I'd like Facebook to have an option to see all posts, without filtering, just as they're posted. It's not hard, it's a simple UX, but it's just not there.

It's probably a core part of their scalability that they never have to produce a complete list of posts. Every fetch is on best effort basis within a small time constraint.

Not a complete list, but doing what twitter does, fetching the latest and adding a notification to the top when there's a new one.

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have a page, Facebook wants to milk you, so they've got this weird algorithm that pushes your posts to only a small fraction of the page's followers, expecting you to start "promoting" them. While this does enable Facebook to force brands to buy advertising, it is also an user-friendly change. Nobody who I have spoken to about this thinks that "like/follow" = "I want to see everything they post" on Facebook.…

I wasn't aware that facebook does partial publishing/pushing from Pages. I'm co-admin for an org's official Page (and Group). Our bylaws require advance announcement of various things, like meetings and resolutions. We've been using our official Page just like our mail listserv, assuming all our subscribers are getting all of our announcements. Frankly, this sucks. Minimally, it violates the UX design principle of le…

> We've been using our official Page just like our mail listserv, assuming all our subscribers are getting all of our announcements.

They will get it if they access your page directly, or subscribe to notifications from your page. It's the same with a personal profile, I believe — not everyone will receive your posts on their news feed unless you've interacted with them a fair bit.

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#86

I'd like Facebook to have an option to see all posts, without filtering, just as they're posted. It's not hard, it's a simple UX, but it's just not there.

What I want is a feed API to write my own post selection algorithm. Sadly, it's never gonna happen.

There used to be a Feed API, but it was removed for privacy reasons... people (understandably) didn't like that their friends could allow another company to read their posts.

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#87

I'd like Facebook to have an option to see all posts, without filtering, just as they're posted. It's not hard, it's a simple UX, but it's just not there.

They used to do that. They had two different news feeds, one with their algorithm and one that was just a real-time feed. Then they scrapped the real-time feed in favor of their algorithm-based feed. It's not that the real-time was hard to do, it's that the algorithm is more easily monetized.

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#90

I'd like Facebook to have an option to see all posts, without filtering, just as they're posted. It's not hard, it's a simple UX, but it's just not there.

They used to do that. They had two different news feeds, one with their algorithm and one that was just a real-time feed. Then they scrapped the real-time feed in favor of their algorithm-based feed. It's not that the real-time was hard to do, it's that the algorithm is more easily monetized.

Moving the feed from 'chronological' to 'algorithmic' obfuscates the true quantity of actual content on the user's timeline, thereby allowing a higher density of ads and other sponsored content without the user necessarily being able to tell or prove.

I hypothesized about other benefits and drawbacks here [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12190724

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