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Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

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Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#21

Post by dan-robertson »

mdaidc wrote: post #19
creato wrote: post #2

I greatly enjoyed this sentence: > The one mystery we weren’t able to figure out is why any sane person working at Facebook would feel comfortable publishing a content report that admitted that the most viral publisher on its platform this year was a barely active drop-shipping scam page full of stolen video content run by an LLC that doesn’t even exist anymore.

When corporations hide facts we call them immoral, and when they publish the facts we are scratching our heads? Facebook does a lot of internal research which to me seems to be coming from a good place. Doing that research carries a lot of risk for them; e.g. the recent 'whistleblowers' mainly leaked that exact research reports. But instead of giving Facebook credit for even doing that, we always take a negative appr…

Yeah I also find it surprising that people are shocked that Facebook have internal studies into e.g. whether instagram causes depression in teenage girls (answer: inconclusive), like they’re a bad company for investigating whether their products have negative effects on people…

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#22

Post by h2odragon »

"The Algorithm" or "Its Zuckerberg's fault" etc are all simplistic, comforting narratives to distract from the horrifying truth. The Clickfarm bots and fake account NPCs have collectively achieved an emergent intelligence. We humans aren't the majority of our social networks anymore, and we don't have any idea what it is the bots are pushing for.

The people we want to hold accountable for this mess are being run over by this steamroller just as we are.

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#23

Post by creato »

mdaidc wrote: post #19
creato wrote: post #2

I greatly enjoyed this sentence: > The one mystery we weren’t able to figure out is why any sane person working at Facebook would feel comfortable publishing a content report that admitted that the most viral publisher on its platform this year was a barely active drop-shipping scam page full of stolen video content run by an LLC that doesn’t even exist anymore.

When corporations hide facts we call them immoral, and when they publish the facts we are scratching our heads? Facebook does a lot of internal research which to me seems to be coming from a good place. Doing that research carries a lot of risk for them; e.g. the recent 'whistleblowers' mainly leaked that exact research reports. But instead of giving Facebook credit for even doing that, we always take a negative appr…

In hindsight, I can see this quote is generating a lot of discussion about the content reporting, but I intended to focus the latter part of the sentence, which I thought really highlights the ridiculousness of social media.

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#25

Post by ALittleLight »

A while back I was trying to get twitter followers. I experimented with a few different strategies - quick reactions to big accounts I agreed with or disagreed with, saying what I thought people wanted to hear, saying what I thought would be controversial hot takes, tweeting about everything trending, etc. I basically got no traction. I was getting low tens of thousands of impressions a month according to the twitter analytics tool and maybe 1 or 2 new followers a month - and, to be honest, those new followers were probably bots.

Eventually, I hit on a new strategy. Instead of trying to generate good tweets I just followed people at random. I forget the exact number, but somewhere between 15-30% of the people I followed at random would follow me back. I realized I could probably get an arbitrary number of followers this way but it would be a pretty stupid and meaningless achievement so I quit doing it.

The "viral post" strategy of the article, asking things like "Who the heck sleeps with the fan on?" maybe similar as a kind of brainless strategy to get followers. I guess some people like responding to these prompts. I suspect it has the same weakness as the "follow back" strategy though. Nobody really cares about the account or connects with it or even understands what you're trying to do. These people aren't your followers so much as they are people who like small talk and coalesced around you for a time.

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#26

Post by snowwrestler »

creato wrote: post #2

I greatly enjoyed this sentence: > The one mystery we weren’t able to figure out is why any sane person working at Facebook would feel comfortable publishing a content report that admitted that the most viral publisher on its platform this year was a barely active drop-shipping scam page full of stolen video content run by an LLC that doesn’t even exist anymore.

Every reply so far has missed the point of this sentence, so here it is:

Facebook reporting accurately is sane, but Facebook is in charge of what is being reported, which is not sane.

Like, imagine if your friend was slowly poisoning himself by flavoring his food with lead for a month. Even if he is honest with you about what he’s been doing, it’s still not a sane situation. If anything it’s less sane to be seemingly lucid and forthright about a month of self-destructive behavior, but not actually do anything to change it.

The question here is: why did Facebook allow the situation to get so bad that this page was the top for a whole month? Why didn’t someone at Facebook notice this stupid pointless scam page was surging and do even a little of research and tweaking to change that?

They have seemingly abandoning any responsibility for the behavior of the machine they built and operate. Personally I don’t give them many points for just reporting that.

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#27

Post by rconti »

ALittleLight wrote: post #25

A while back I was trying to get twitter followers. I experimented with a few different strategies - quick reactions to big accounts I agreed with or disagreed with, saying what I thought people wanted to hear, saying what I thought would be controversial hot takes, tweeting about everything trending, etc. I basically got no traction. I was getting low tens of thousands of impressions a month according to the twitter…

> I suspect it has the same weakness as the "follow back" strategy though. Nobody really cares about the account or connects with it or even understands what you're trying to do. These people aren't your followers so much as they are people who like small talk and coalesced around you for a time.

But if the entire point is to get impressions so you can sell a product, or whatever, do you are if people don't particularly like you?

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#28

Post by Traster »

I can't help but think it's not a coincidence that Facebook decides to produce a content report that lists the top 20 most viewed items and it just so happens that the top 20 items are inexplicably spam. Either facebook is enitrely dominated by spam (possible) or facebook figured out they could just boost a few items to make sure anything embarassing doens't make the short list.

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#29

Post by Marvin_Martian »

dan-robertson wrote: post #21
mdaidc wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When corporations hide facts we call them immoral, and when they publish the facts we are scratching our heads? Facebook does a lot of internal research which to me seems to be coming from a good place. Doing that research carries a lot of risk for them; e.g. the recent 'whistleblowers' mainly leaked that exact research reports. But instead of giving Facebook credit for even doing that, we always take a negative appr…

Yeah I also find it surprising that people are shocked that Facebook have internal studies into e.g. whether instagram causes depression in teenage girls (answer: inconclusive), like they’re a bad company for investigating whether their products have negative effects on people…

Its more that people are shocked* that facebook communicated to the outside that such problems were nonexistent, despite knowing that this was a lie.

*not sure wether shocked is the right term to begin with, it seemed more like indignation to me.

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#30

Post by erulabs »

deathanatos wrote: post #13
hirundo wrote: post #5

"Facebook flipped a switch, favoring comments and reactions over shares, and suddenly a food blogger from Utah became the largest publisher in the country, if not the world." While the firehose volume is disproportionate, the direction wasn't random. Whoever is copywriting these messages is an artist, drawing an outstanding number of responses. I felt the urge to react when I read them and bravely restrained myself.…

> I felt the urge to react when I read them and bravely restrained myself. You feel an urge to react at bizarro twilight zone non-sequitur text posts? I'm sitting here trying to fathom why millions of people would even react to something like that. Like… what was "thumbs up" worthy in any of those?

I mean, you must see the primal appeal - essentially the posts are "haha, who else does {{COMMON_THING}}?!". Millions of people want other people to know they too are just like them.

Facebook's algorithm is optimized for engagement - but people aren't desperate to engage - they are desperate to be engaged with.

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