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Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

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Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#131

Post by wingerlang »

oh_sigh wrote: post #12
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.…

Have you ever seen the posts? Some relatives comment on them so they show up on my feed, but the post will be something like "do you like dogs or cats better?" And my aunt and 10 million other people will make a post just saying "cat" or "dog"

Open LinkedIn today and you're almost guaranteed to see some engagement bait prompting you to react X or Y for different opinions.

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#132

Post by wingerlang »

zentiggr wrote: post #100
miohtama wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just followed people at random. AFAIK follower building like this is now banned in Twitter ToS

And they can tell? I'm not on Twitter but I can see just following everyone that passes in front of my mouse, and so be it. If that's banned, I'd egg people on to do it more and more and help tear down the idea that follower counts mean f** all.

There used to be services that let you sign up to follow and be followed back. I don't think anyone serious about quickly gaining followers will sit and click manually. They definitely can tell people automatically doing this (at least the naive ones)

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#133

Post by crdrost »

jandrese wrote: post #126
ryandrake wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

Those posts really are a curse. And they are usually not quite that simple, there is always some PEDMAS quirk to it so ~70% of the people get it wrong, causing yet more comments pointing out how they are wrong and further inflating engagement. Those are worse than the stupid Farmville/Mafia Wars posts that used to horrendously clutter up the platform, at least those are easy to block. Those math things come from all…

For folks that are out of the loop, the post looks something like “24/4*3: 80% of people get this wrong!” and the arguments in comments are between people who do this the way most computers do (multiplication and division have the same priority and the leftmost one goes first, so you first calculate 24/4 to get 6 then multiply by 3 to get 18) versus the way that the acronym literally says to do it, (multiplication comes before division in the acronym so you first multiply 3x4 to get 12, then divide 24/12=2).

Part of the reason that it generates so much animosity is that we condition people to think of math as always having a right answer, it is the Fount of Objective Truth. The idea that math is sublimely subjective, is indeed an artistic medium, does not seem to be well-appreciated and is often not even acknowledged. This is usually chalked up to the fact that math has “rules,” which is a very strange sentiment because the points in a sports game also follow “rules” of a similar sort but we usually don't regard those as either objective or subjective, they exist in a murky third world where we do not ask those questions...

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#134

Post by sangnoir »

deathanatos wrote: post #88
erulabs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

> I mean, you must see the primal appeal - essentially the posts are "haha, who else does {{COMMON_THING}}?!" No, and I feel like I'm explaining to the AI what human behavior looks like here. Yes, the sort of meme discussion you quote is fairly common, but it's not just "common thing", it's some sort of shared experience that's probably private; you're not sure if everyone else experiences it, but saying you experien…

> Who the heck eats Food?

You're on the right path, but you're missing the milquetoast sting at the end; something that's controversial, or slightly embarrassing that makes the activity seem niche, but really isn't. "Who the heck eats Food with the Fridge door open?" - or "Who the heck eats Food slowly, so the crinkly wrapper doesn't wake the kids?".

Yoi can find the same sort of viral drivel under "relatable tweets" on Twitter.

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#135

Post by marcus_holmes »

deathanatos wrote: post #88
erulabs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

> I mean, you must see the primal appeal - essentially the posts are "haha, who else does {{COMMON_THING}}?!" No, and I feel like I'm explaining to the AI what human behavior looks like here. Yes, the sort of meme discussion you quote is fairly common, but it's not just "common thing", it's some sort of shared experience that's probably private; you're not sure if everyone else experiences it, but saying you experien…

you have what I call a "Kardashian problem" - I don't understand why the Kardashians are popular. Who the hell would be interested in these people? Why would anyone waste any time watching them or paying them any attention? And yet people clearly do, as the Kardashians are (or were) making millions from other people's interest in them. Clearly it's not their problem, it's that I don't understand their market.

If you're struggling to understand why this FB page has such an enormous following,the answer isn't that "they're doing it wrong, people aren't like that" - because they're clearly not wrong, and enough people are like that to give them that huge following. The answer is that you don't understand that market.

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#136

Post by BLKNSLVR »

Igelau wrote: post #122
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

Mine is Universal Paperclips, except it makes engagement statistics instead of paperclips.

The scenario describes an advanced artificial intelligence tasked with manufacturing paperclips. If such a machine were not programmed to value human life, then given enough power over its environment, it would try to turn all matter in the universe, including human beings, into either paperclips or machines which manufacture paperclips.[0]

Replace "paperclips" with "clickbait" and "human life" with "the right to privacy". "Artificial intelligence" then becomes Mark Zuckerborg.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paper...

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#137

Post by irrational »

vmception wrote: post #117
tyingq wrote: post #38

I had a somewhat similar experience at a much smaller scale a long time ago. I used to buy and sell domains. Bought one that was very close to being on the first page of Google results for a keyword related to personal finance. Did a bit of sprucing up the page, dropped a few links, and it did get on the front page for a few months, with AdSense paying me several thousands dollars a month while it lasted. The page it…

in a similar vein it is hilarious thinking about the people at the Donuts registrar confused about the sudden interest in .finance domains the .finance people are monetizing way more way faster without ads

I haven’t heard of this. What are people doing with finance domains?

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#138

Post by cblconfederate »

r721 wrote: post #3

>18M comments That is just sad. I wonder how many times each one of those 18M comments was viewed on average.

facebook's commenting interface, showing only the few latest comments and discouraging threading is aiming to create the largest number of duplicate comments with immediate (and thus outrageous) reactions.

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#139

Post by majani »

tyingq wrote: post #38

I had a somewhat similar experience at a much smaller scale a long time ago. I used to buy and sell domains. Bought one that was very close to being on the first page of Google results for a keyword related to personal finance. Did a bit of sprucing up the page, dropped a few links, and it did get on the front page for a few months, with AdSense paying me several thousands dollars a month while it lasted. The page it…

On the bright side, the algorithms are way more fair and even handed than the human editors of old. I don't think the majority of YouTubers, Twitch streamers and bloggers would ever have made it past the editorial desk at traditional media companies

Re: Unmasking the most viral page on Facebook

#140

Post by sundvor »

majani wrote: post #139
tyingq wrote: post #38

I had a somewhat similar experience at a much smaller scale a long time ago. I used to buy and sell domains. Bought one that was very close to being on the first page of Google results for a keyword related to personal finance. Did a bit of sprucing up the page, dropped a few links, and it did get on the front page for a few months, with AdSense paying me several thousands dollars a month while it lasted. The page it…

On the bright side, the algorithms are way more fair and even handed than the human editors of old. I don't think the majority of YouTubers, Twitch streamers and bloggers would ever have made it past the editorial desk at traditional media companies

Editorial desks still exist?

Saying this in jest, but there was a time when this was highly respected and I feel that the number of places that have them must be diminishing quickly - or a shadow of their former pasts.

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