Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier
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Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier
#2Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier
#3> Data scientists on that integrity team—whose job is to improve the quality and trustworthiness of content on the platform—worked on a number of potential changes to curb the tendency of the overhauled algorithm to reward outrage and lies. Mr. Zuckerberg resisted some of the proposed fixes, the documents show, because he was worried they might hurt the company’s other objective—making users engage more with Facebook.
Delete your facebook account. Zuck and co. are poisoning their users for profit.
Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier
#4It all comes down to every PM's favorite metric: engagement.
When users get into a heated flamewar, that's high-engagement. So you want to do everything you can to ensure that the most possible users get sucked into flamewars. I feel like this should be banned, but it's unclear what the best approach would be. Mandating chronological feed order?
Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier
#5Here is the interesting bit: "Mr. Zuckerberg announced he was changing Facebook product managers’ goal from helping people find relevant content to helping them interact more with friends and family."
What this did not take into account -- and I suppose it is easy to see in hindsight -- is that the Buzzfeed social justice stuff is proselytized by people you know. We have all heard various people "going no contact" with "toxic" (as in "masculinity") on Facebook and other social media. When people get into social justice, they constantly hammer the people they know about it, doing "call-outs" and "checking privilege." This does not happen to strangers, it happens to people they know ... just like a recent convert to a religion can become an irritant with their newfound beliefs and their attempts to work it into conversation on almost any pretext.
Here is another type of example for you: check your various feeds about COVID. One group is "they are killing us with their refusal to vaccinate" and the other is "they are killing us with these vaccines." Nobody is convincing anybody else, it is just yelling across the aisle. More sharing between people you know just means more yelling.
Facebook focused on the easy part -- who, upon which they already have a firm grasp -- rather than the hard part, what, namely trying to automate some kind of machine understanding of content. It's the what which is divisive and angry, not the who. My friend's wife shares photos of her garden and her chicken, fine. But she goes on and on and on about COVID, about four-fifths of her posts are about it. I'm already vaccinated, I am tired of hearing about it. And the people who are not vaccinated by now are not going to be convinced by yelling at them constantly, but it sure feels good to yell about the bad people, whoever they are.
We saw this all before with the various Christian fears about D&D in the 1980s and the Satanic panics. It's just a new flavor of people yelling at those nearby: friends and family. Now it is mediated by Facebook, Instagram, and the like.
Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier
#6> Data scientists on that integrity team—whose job is to improve the quality and trustworthiness of content on the platform—worked on a number of potential changes to curb the tendency of the overhauled algorithm to reward outrage and lies. Mr. Zuckerberg resisted some of the proposed fixes, the documents show, because he was worried they might hurt the company’s other objective—making users engage more with Facebook…
Am I in the super-minority if I say I've unfollowed about 80% of my FB friends? I've never seen a political or outrage post in the last 3 years since I just unfollowed everyone but my closest friends and family.
Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier
#7It all comes down to every PM's favorite metric: engagement . When users get into a heated flamewar, that's high-engagement. So you want to do everything you can to ensure that the most possible users get sucked into flamewars. I feel like this should be banned, but it's unclear what the best approach would be. Mandating chronological feed order?
Don't the constant flamewars push people away from Facebook, thereby reducing engagement in the long run? I quit Facebook several years ago because I honestly just didn't like the experience. It was miserable and I didn't enjoy going to it any longer.
I have the phone numbers of my closest friends and family, why wouldn't I just call or text when I want to talk to them?
Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier
#8> Data scientists on that integrity team—whose job is to improve the quality and trustworthiness of content on the platform—worked on a number of potential changes to curb the tendency of the overhauled algorithm to reward outrage and lies. Mr. Zuckerberg resisted some of the proposed fixes, the documents show, because he was worried they might hurt the company’s other objective—making users engage more with Facebook…
Am I in the super-minority if I say I've unfollowed about 80% of my FB friends? I've never seen a political or outrage post in the last 3 years since I just unfollowed everyone but my closest friends and family.
I did that too. Until I realized most of the group that remained overlapped with friends/family I communicated with in Telegram, WhatsApp and SMS chats. So there was no point to keeping a Facebook account.
Addition/edit: Furthermore I closed my account because I truly and sincerely believe that mass social media has a more negative impact on society than addiction, untreated mental illness, and all forms of abuse (child, domestic, etc) put together.
Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier
#9> Data scientists on that integrity team—whose job is to improve the quality and trustworthiness of content on the platform—worked on a number of potential changes to curb the tendency of the overhauled algorithm to reward outrage and lies. Mr. Zuckerberg resisted some of the proposed fixes, the documents show, because he was worried they might hurt the company’s other objective—making users engage more with Facebook…
Am I in the super-minority if I say I've unfollowed about 80% of my FB friends? I've never seen a political or outrage post in the last 3 years since I just unfollowed everyone but my closest friends and family.
Probably? I know that you're capable of doing that, but most of our friends and family log onto Facebook to zone out, not to curate their feed. Their feeds will continue to be full of garbage, not even counting the ads that show up that often target people for political ends.
I would much rather Facebook removed link posts entirely, and also provided an easy toggle option to disable shared content in the feed.
Re: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place, but it got angrier
#10One reason why Facebook keeps failing in increasing "meaningful social interaction" could be because they at the same time tries to sell ads.
It seems like it would be easy to simply exclude "reshares" from users news feed. They could try to: "Sort by date" and "only posts posted/shared by my friend directly". Personally I think that would remove much of the toxicity. Secondly, simply ban news sites from the platform.
Facebook is trying to fix an algorithm that can't possibly work, because it has two opposing jobs, increase time spend on the platform and at the same time it has to downplay the content people engages with the most.