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Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

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Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#61

Post by pessimizer »

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…

Just because you were honest with your partner about cheating on them doesn't mean they have to stay with you. That isn't a mixed message about whether your partner wants to hear the truth or not. You're not being punished for telling the truth about what you did, you're being punished for what you did.

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#62

Post by kreeben »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #54
rob74 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, probably lots of people actually did notice it, and either (a) shrugged and thought "not my job", or (b) notified someone else about it, who then did (a)?

There's also likely a (c), which is people who don't think that Facebook should do anything about it. I guess that could be considered part of a set with (a), but I thought it should be mentioned separately as it's a different motivation.

Might I suggest (d): analysts, disgusted by the fact this crap is on top, tweaked The Feed in an attempt to disfavor that type of content then ran a simulation but saw their simulated ad revenue become lower than allowed minimum, then did (a) and went out to have lunch.

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#63

Post by mitigating »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #55
mitchdoogle wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When conducting scientific research, I'd think "not caring" is a desirable trait. You don't want anyone's personal feelings to get in the way of reporting accurate information.

I think this is just being pedantic. You have to care about something to formulate and test a hypothesis. You have to care about what the data say to bother gathering them and collating them into some report in the first place. "To care" can be "to be curious about something" or "to have an interest in something", not just "to be concerned about something."

No, you have to be interested in something. Caring implies that you have an emotional desire for the hypothesis to be either true or false and that leads to bias. Scientific interest drives motivation.

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#64

Post by Damogran6 »

blackearl wrote: post #14

You see this on Youtube as well. Comments acknowledge "The Algorithm", mentioning that the algorithm suddenly chose this video from 2013 to be popular, or that people who were picked by the algorithm to like this video must be cool. This has happened with music too, Plastic Love and Ryo Fukui's Scenery being some examples I noticed. Maybe it really is "the algorithm" right now but it seems like this could be easily m…

"All hail the algorithm" - SuperfastMat on Youtube

(which is a highly entertaining channel, it's good he's self-aware)

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#65

Post by fragmede »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #54
rob74 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, probably lots of people actually did notice it, and either (a) shrugged and thought "not my job", or (b) notified someone else about it, who then did (a)?

There's also likely a (c), which is people who don't think that Facebook should do anything about it. I guess that could be considered part of a set with (a), but I thought it should be mentioned separately as it's a different motivation.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

- Upton Sinclair

In particular, stare too hard at that viral page, realize how scummy that page is, and then spend the rest of a career at facebook trying to tear down the systems that made that the most viral page, are likely going to earn you enemies, and cause the company to lose money (in the short term, at least).

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#66

Post by krolden »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #53
jonas21 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the central tragedy of Facebook. They set out to build a platform where anyone, no matter how small, could compete with big media on a level playing field based on a straightforward metric: whether a user cares enough about a post that they're willing to engage with it. Publishers get rewarded for producing compelling content, users get to see more content they care about, and Facebook makes money since peopl…

I'm really not sure if that was ever what Facebook set out to do. My mental construct of Facebook is analogous to Morty following the path defined by the death crystal but towards the end goal of 'the most money'.

Collect data

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#67

Post by input_sh »

simoneau wrote: post #20
FilthyAnalyst wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you will see comments from friends on posts like these. Even if they have a million comments it will come into your feed with a friends replies visible.

And I think that's why these are so viral. When you see a question and your friend's answer, it makes you feel like you're responding as well.

That or the post is some variation of "tag someone that does X", or the one I've recently noticed "tag your favourite celebrity and see if they'll respond". Random pages I've no connection to are now popping into my feed because some page I follow responded to someone that tagged them under one of those. Completely pointless.

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#68

Post by IncRnd »

> If that bothers you, now imagine if, instead of being a random woman, you were a company with employees, and the same thing happened. Imagine if Facebook allowed you to reach inconceivable levels of scale and then, one day, they flipped a switch and made it all disappear. Pretty messed up, right?

This was buried right at the end. I estimate this is the real import of the article, but it went virtually unnoticed and unattended, only mentioned in passing.

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#69

Post by ryandrake »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #58
deathanatos wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, the "who here has never had a DUI?" question is tailored for engagement. The actual % of people who have had a DUI is really low, and so the number of people who can engage with that honestly is really high. Then there's the fact that DUIs tend to evoke a strong moral response, so people will dive into the comments to wag the finger at all the DUI havers. We're all here commenting on posts about tech and tech…

Reminds me of those posts from a few years ago that were like:

    "[Simple math problem, like what's 5 x 4?]: 95% of people can't solve this! I bet you can't either!"
With hundreds of thousands of commenters "engaging" with it. I don't understand anything about this behavior. 1. What does the poster have to gain from a post like that, 2. What do all the commenters have to gain, and 3. What does SocialMediaCompany gain? The promise of social media is long dead. It seems to now just be bots (or people who behave as bots) responding to bots (or people who behave as bots)... everywhere.

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#70

Post by IncRnd »

fragmede wrote: post #65
brendoelfrendo wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also likely a (c), which is people who don't think that Facebook should do anything about it. I guess that could be considered part of a set with (a), but I thought it should be mentioned separately as it's a different motivation.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair In particular, stare too hard at that viral page, realize how scummy that page is, and then spend the rest of a career at facebook trying to tear down the systems that made that the most viral page, are likely going to earn you enemies, and cause the company to lose money (in the short term, a…

Did you stare at that page on Facebook? The top post has millions of comments.
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