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The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

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Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#211

Post by icebraining »

rhizome wrote: post #188
icebraining wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it make better business sense?

Because if e.g. you watch a Tool video, the ad rates for you watching a Korn video after that are higher than if you watch a Zeni Geva one. Alternatively, Kesha > Lady Gaga vs. Kesha > Joni James. Unscientific, but it comports with conventional wisdom with regard to fiduciary duties to stockholders.

Because if e.g. you watch a Tool video, the ad rates for you watching a Korn video after that are higher than if you watch a Zeni Geva one

But why? If I've watched hundreds of Zeni Geva videos over the years, but it's my fifth Tool video, why would I be more likely to click on a ad on a Korn video?

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#212

Post by kuschku »

sangnoir wrote: post #65
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…

> But only 24 hours later they've disabled my account because of "security concerns", without notice and now I'm waiting on their support to reply after I've sent them my picture for validation. I'm not a Facebook's biggest fan, but I think this is a valid security concern (I'm assuming you used the same name as your initial account). Cloning FB accounts and impersonation is a valid threat vector for getting inside s…

I’ve got over a dozen Facebook accounts with the same name, and people frequently message the wrong one, but Facebook never tried closing any of them.

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#213

Post by thinkingemote »

fritzw wrote: post #175
crowbahr wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix, I think, has killed their own recommendation algorithm when they removed stars and made it boolean. I don't know if those buttons even do anything anymore because I think they're just matching based off demographic and who they're trying to market to now. It's recommending shows that I never would watch in a million years and giving them high matches despite me disliking most similar shows just because I'm a…

I think Netflix probably did it because people are inherently bad at being objective. For the average person, 2 stars for a movie and 4 for another isn't based on anything measurable, even they couldn't explain. I'm shocked at some of the amazon product reviews, most of which are 5 star reviews even if the product is absolutely terrible. Movies are different than products, but it's the same people doing the reviewing…

With stars you can cross compare with others to see if they have the same score. With simple thumbs up recommendations you cannot compare the ratings as the score is whether it appears to you or not.

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#214

Post by thinkingemote »

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.

YouTube's home page system is quite hackable in a way, but you need to use the search or other recommended videos to change your viewing pattern.

In other words it doesn't consider you as someone with a long history. You can change your profile from a conservative to a liberal in a few hours watching videos. Whether it's possible to have a balanced amount of crazy ( not the same as a centrist) is something I'm currently working on, it requires effort!

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#215

Post by firasd »

Even aside from complicated questions like the Newsfeed algorithm, when a friend started hitting Like on nearly every post of mine I appreciated their caring but mentally discounted the meaning of their Like in terms of being a reaction to the content of my post. It's like "Like Inflation". So the algo should probably do the same about indiscriminate likes...

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#216

Post by c3534l »

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.

Part of that trend is because recommendation algorithms aren't all that interested in making recommendations anymore. They're interested in getting sales or views. To do this, they use dumber algorithms that are easier to understand ("people who bought this also bought...") and over-value recency. They're not helping you find new content, they're trying to prolong the time you're on youtube.

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#217

Post by wfunction »

nkrisc wrote: post #165
kerbalspacepro wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding Amazon: "Oh, you bought a wallet? Here are twenty wallets of the exact same type but with slightly different colors that you might want to buy, too"

My Amazon homepage is full of stuff I already own. Even worse is their internet-wide remarketing makes it so I see stuff I own on many of the sites I visit. There was however one moment where Amazon got it right: they recommended to me a book that only a week earlier I had purchased on a whim from an independent bookstore with cash. Creepy good.

> There was however one moment where Amazon got it right: they recommended to me a book that only a week earlier I had purchased on a whim from an independent bookstore with cash. Creepy good.

That is creepy. Any way it might've been more than just a coincidence?

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#218

Post by theseatoms »

unoti wrote: post #206
Semaphor wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if it is because of weird tastes or something else. But for sites like Steam, YT, Netflix I always wish for more tuning parameters because their recommendations are all horrible. On Netflix, for example, I get recommended stuff that's similar to other things I didn't like. Amazon is often the best of them for books because their engine seems to only really value the last few things I looked at / bought a…

> for sites like Steam, YT, Netflix I always wish for more tuning parameters because their recommendations are all horrible. The problem with those recommendation engines is that they're not optimized to serve your needs. They're optimized to serve the goals of their respective companies. And the problem comes when your needs are a little incompatible with the needs of the company. Consider Netflix for example. Their…

> They're optimized to serve the goals of their respective companies. And the problem comes when your needs are a little incompatible with the needs of the company.

Ultimate they are compatible though. And yes I mean in the econ 101 way. This tension should be at least partially resolved via pricing scheme innovation.

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#219

Post by avar »

icebraining wrote: post #203
avar wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the user. What you're describing is still going to cause complex UX. So let's say I'm interested in exactly two things. Russian dash cam videos and videos of trains without narration. I go to the homepage and click on one type of video, what should the next video be? A random video from the two categories? One or the other? Should it show me a banner at the top indicating what recommendation mode I'm in (historic…

Like I said, I think the homepage is already quite different from the next video in the user's perspective, so there's no need to show banners or anything like that. Homepage = full profile analysis, next video = similar to current. By the way, the Android app does absolutely have an UI equivalent of a homepage, it's even called "Home".

I mean once the user selects a video you need to continue showing them context, because at this point they may not remember what mode they're in to begin with.

Making your app behave differently because you navigated to the current state via different menus is very bad UX design. That's all I'm saying. Your suggestion would entail either UX complexity or such implicitly different behavior for YouTube.

Yes Android has a "Home" button. But what I meant by no real UX equivalent is that when you open youtube on the web you'll open a new tab and go to youtube.com.

When you do so an Android you've likely just dismissed the app in the past, and opening it again will bring you back to the last video you were viewing. You don't go through the homepage by default.

Thus it's more of just another menu item on Android, not something that's equivalent to / on a website.

Re: The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

#220

Post by JacobiX »

fritzw wrote: post #175
crowbahr wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix, I think, has killed their own recommendation algorithm when they removed stars and made it boolean. I don't know if those buttons even do anything anymore because I think they're just matching based off demographic and who they're trying to market to now. It's recommending shows that I never would watch in a million years and giving them high matches despite me disliking most similar shows just because I'm a…

I think Netflix probably did it because people are inherently bad at being objective. For the average person, 2 stars for a movie and 4 for another isn't based on anything measurable, even they couldn't explain. I'm shocked at some of the amazon product reviews, most of which are 5 star reviews even if the product is absolutely terrible. Movies are different than products, but it's the same people doing the reviewing…

Popular recommendation algorithm like collaborative filtering by matrix factorization takes into account the accounts for user and item biases (the simplest method is to normalize the ratings of a particular user by the average of ratings of that user).
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