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The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

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Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#111

Post by rhizome »

ProblemFactory wrote: post #53
bad_user wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But wasn't the feature of making yourself a "brand page" and/or having "subscribers" (which don't count toward the 5,000 friend limit) supposed to mitigate this a bit? 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. Basically they screwed "organic reach". Oh, and abou…

> 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 did this thinking that I don't want to share semi-private pictures of family with strangers, or to spam my family and friends with programming stuff.

Do you know there are friend groups you can use to eliminate that problem? "Family and school," "Programmery Peeps," if you post using either of those groups for visibility then it seems like the issue is moot.

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#112

Post by anigbrowl »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #95

I find a lot of sites feel like they're overtuning their recommendation engines, to the detriment of using the site. YouTube is particularly bad for this - given the years of history and somewhat regular viewing of the site, I feel like it should have a relatively good idea of what I'm interested in. Instead, the YouTube homepage seems myopically focused on the last 5-10 videos I watched.

YouTube is weird. I made the mistake of watching a flat earth video last year in order to get a handle on that growing weirdo fad. Well it turns out that flat earthers are really avid content consumers (presumably because of the enormous cognitive reinforcement requirements to maintain such a belief) and YouTube really wanted to help me with that. It took a couple of months for it to stop offering me a portal to a better, flatter world every time I refreshed a page.

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#113

Post by vidarh »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #103
ryanbrunner wrote: post #95

I find a lot of sites feel like they're overtuning their recommendation engines, to the detriment of using the site. YouTube is particularly bad for this - given the years of history and somewhat regular viewing of the site, I feel like it should have a relatively good idea of what I'm interested in. Instead, the YouTube homepage seems myopically focused on the last 5-10 videos I watched.

Youtube is definitely over-weighing the last few videos. Then again, it's likely optimized for a different market segment. Especially with how many children are given tablets. Like, brief intense fascination with many subjects in general is genuinely hard to optimize for, especially when a huge portion of your market has long-lasting intense fascination with a few subjects.

But there ought to be no reason for them to be unable to at least roughly cluster users into segments based on viewing habits as well as topics.

Of course it's possible they have, and realised they still make more money by focusing on the more recent videos.

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#115

Post by anigbrowl »

bad_user wrote: post #38
danso wrote: post #13

tl;dr, as I understand it: when family members Like your Facebook content in relative quick succession, FB apparently interprets it as a signal that it is family-specific content. I didn't see any metrics but this seems plausible. I think I'm more of a fan of FB than the average web geek, probably because I used it at its phase of peak innocence (college years) and have since weaned myself off to the point of checkin…

> But wasn't the feature of making yourself a "brand page" and/or having "subscribers" (which don't count toward the 5,000 friend limit) supposed to mitigate this a bit? 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. Basically they screwed "organic reach". Oh, and abou…

Ah, that explains a lot. I know very little about social media marketing and wondered why my attempts to launch a few pages related to art projects were drawing such little attention from my social circle. Being me I assumed it was because my art is shit and largely abandoned a project I'd spent months developing. Zucked again.

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#116

Post by Uhhrrr »

mrleinad wrote: post #14

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.

Between this and their terrible search and filling up all the white space with ads, it's clear that a FB replacement is nigh.

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#117

Post by bluGill »

rhizome wrote: post #111
ProblemFactory wrote: post #53

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 did this thinking that I don't want to share semi-private pictures of family with strangers, or to spam my family and friends with programming stuff. Do you know there are friend groups you can use to eliminate that problem? "Family and school," "Programmery Peeps," if you post using either of those groups for visibility then it seems like the issue is moot.

Most people don't use them. It is too hard (10 extra seconds is too hard). Facebook is good at figuring out from the pattern of likes who else will be interested in seeing something. It is only when you have an important announcement that they screw up.

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#118

Post by ProblemFactory »

watwut wrote: post #79
ProblemFactory wrote: post #53

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 followed specifically to be informed of events. It was quite infuriating when they changed algorithm and I missed them. If I get notices from pages/groups I dont care about anymore, I either unfollow or mute the next time their post annoys me. Quite a few friends were following pages for the same reason.

> If I get notices from pages/groups I dont care about anymore, I either unfollow or mute the next time their post annoys me.

I do that as well, but I think it's extremely rare among Facebook users. Everyone else I know either:

* Puts up grudgingly with "spam" they no longer want to see, or eventually

* Complains "Facebook is full of crap these days, I'm deleting my account".

A filter algorithm is a much better experience than manual unsubscribe for most users. With how easy it is to "like" anything you see on Facebook and the rest of the web, it is almost necessary to assume that subscriptions should "expire" unless the user keeps actively interacting with the page.

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#119

Post by anigbrowl »

baq wrote: post #55
bad_user wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But wasn't the feature of making yourself a "brand page" and/or having "subscribers" (which don't count toward the 5,000 friend limit) supposed to mitigate this a bit? 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. Basically they screwed "organic reach". Oh, and abou…

...and it causes the political echo chamber problem which results in extreme polarization of whole societies based on fake perception of what the other side is doing vs what they're actually doing. terrible indeed but generates views thus revenue.

I find this thesis questionable. I'm a very political person and do a good bit of politicking on FB, including my group membership selections. I don't find this echo chamber effect at all, not least because there is a lot of inter-group antagonism (people who stage raids on other groups and so forth). I certainly don't get all my political ideas/news/anything from FB, but it seems more diverse than it is usually characterized as.

Does it make things more polarized, I would say yes. But that is a general thing with the internet and has been true since the creation of usenet; the Internet accelerates everything including political trends. I find the best way to guard against technology's impact on cognition is to maintain time for reading things on paper, and also time free of media consumption.

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#120

Post by chickenfries »

eightysixfour wrote: post #43
chickenfries wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pruning my friends improved my experience, but they grow back over time as people rediscover you or you make new acquaintances. I wonder if you could make a game or website that forced you to prune your facebook friends down, perhaps by looking at your social graph and telling you that you haven't messaged with a person in x years or something, or that you've never even "liked" something they posted. Some heuristics…

I wish the Facebook API allowed for unfriending - I've always wanted to build a tinder swipe app for it.

That's basically what I want. Outrageous that they don't allow unfriending via the API, but not unexpected coming from Facebook.
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