> It’s well known inside and outside of technology that customer descriptions of their own behavior are often far out of step with reality
How do you get from "people may not be reliable witnesses of their own preferences" to "I know their preferences better"?
The first doesn't sound that improbable, but the second is a non sequitur, even if a popular one. If it's easy to lie to yourself, doesn't that suggest it's even easier to lie to yourself about what others think?
My previous comment suggested multiple reasons why people might not choose the chronological ordering even if they prefer it. Most people surely aren't aware of the trick, and using it limits the number of posts available. It's not clear that it shows all of them within a range either. I myself only use it about half the time, not because I don't want things in order, but because I have the sense that I'm missing something either way.
>I think people would find Facebook less engaging and fun to use if it didn’t tune what it showed them based on their perceived interests and their activity
I think an important point is that "engaging" is not at all the same thing as "fun to use". Meth is engaging, but in the long run, not that fun. The conflation of the two is useful for apologetics but not necessarily convincing to a lay individual.
>it wouldn’t be ideal to be put in a position to have to remove family members because their posts are boring
"Boring" sounds like a different sort of thing from "spam, porn, and shock videos". That kind of post does sound more plausible.
But Facebook provides controls to filter people if you want, and there is no reason that if they stopped choosing what you see that the user's controls would have to go away.
What is the rational argument that Facebook knows which family members of nearly 3 billion people are "boring", though?
