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I ‘Liked’ Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days

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Re: I ‘Liked’ Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days

#101

Post by fit2rule »

phillmv wrote: post #26

From the TFA, >Also, as I went to bed, I remember thinking “Ah, crap. I have to like something about Gaza,” as I hit the Like button on a post with a pro-Israel message. >By the next morning, the items in my News Feed had moved very, very far to the right. [...] >Rachel Maddow, Raw Story, Mother Jones, Daily Kos and all sort of other leftie stuff was interspersed with items that are so far to the right I’m nearly afr…

Think about it. This is an article, with its own 'share on Facebook' icon, entirely about a single persons interaction with a mechanized society, highly intricate and well and truly operating under the constraints of its totalitarian designers. Its not like we vote for Facebook features; that privilege is reserved for those with money to spend, making money, and it is an exclusive club indeed. Particularly given that those who attend to "Facebook habits", i.e. members of that church, are not in control. At all.

So yeah, count "survive a dystopian dilemna" on the list of things that are now well and truly DONE.

Re: I ‘Liked’ Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days

#102

Post by fit2rule »

protonfish wrote: post #22

So if you like everything on Facebook, the result is political extremism and the most insipid pop culture trash. What frightens me is what if this has nothing to do with Facebook, but is instead about human nature? Does this also describe what happens to a person's life when they stop caring, when they are no longer motivated to put forth the effort to be discerning, when they give up trying to make anything but the…

>What frightens me is what if this has nothing to do with Facebook, but is instead about human nature?

Maybe its more likely that its a reflection of those who have the power and influence to game the Facebook algorithm; i.e. those who are most heavily invested in the need/right to influence social perception. The right-wing are currently invested in this business with much to lose. Why is it such a surprise?

Re: I ‘Liked’ Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days

#103

Post by zem »

seizethecheese wrote: post #97
zem wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i have yet to meet anyone who wants the things they've 'liked' to show up in their friends feeds. it's a purely user-hostile feature that facebook insists upon because it drives their engagement numbers up.

User hostile? If displaying liked content to friends increases engagement, what's wrong about that? What would a feed that wasn't optimized for engagement look like? Facebook would already be a dinosaur in that case. People go to Facebook to see the most relevant and engaging content, what your friends like seems like a great source for this!

it's user-hostile insofar as no one wants their likes showing up in their friends' feeds. from a consumption point of view it makes little difference; you see content and interact with it. note that there is absolutely no way to opt out of this feature.

Re: I ‘Liked’ Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days

#104

Post by tothepixel »

mgb313 wrote: post #84
dethstar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is very simple and should like all the loaded like buttons http://pastebin.com/CUhS9vq4 , it also unlikes whatever was already liked though, since fb doesn't seem to change the class.

That's not going to work. Facebook will block you from liking on account of "going way too fast". Calling a sleep() function after every like might help...

You can actually use this method on LinkedIn to endorse all of your friends, and because it offers more results, you can set an interval to endorse infinitely. My LinkedIn friends all hate me now because they've been endorsed for random things.

Re: I ‘Liked’ Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days

#105

Post by dang »

scoot wrote: post #60

Could someone please put 'Liked' in the HN title in quotes so it makes grammatical sense. As it stands, the title makes it sounds as if someone tried Facebook for two days and was happy with what they saw. (I know this is the original title, but that doesn't make it correct.)

Ok.

Re: I ‘Liked’ Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days

#106

Post by snowwrestler »

zem wrote: post #92
snowwrestler wrote: post #82

There's going to be a lot of Facebook bashing in this thread, but I'm going to posit that this response from the Facebook software is not unexpected or even wrong, because the author is purposefully playing against the assumptions built into Facebook algorithms. Most people rarely "like" branded or advertising content on Facebook. So Facebook has tuned their algorithms to be very sensitive to the few data inputs it r…

i have yet to meet anyone who wants the things they've 'liked' to show up in their friends feeds. it's a purely user-hostile feature that facebook insists upon because it drives their engagement numbers up.

It would be purely user-hostile if all Facebook users feel the same way your sample of users does, but that's not necessarily true.

Re: I ‘Liked’ Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days

#107

Post by zem »

snowwrestler wrote: post #106
zem wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i have yet to meet anyone who wants the things they've 'liked' to show up in their friends feeds. it's a purely user-hostile feature that facebook insists upon because it drives their engagement numbers up.

It would be purely user-hostile if all Facebook users feel the same way your sample of users does, but that's not necessarily true.

fair point, "purely" is an exaggeration, but it is at least telling that not a single one of my friends actually wants this behaviour.

Re: I ‘Liked’ Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days

#108

Post by jerf »

protonfish wrote: post #66
jerf wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So if you like everything on Facebook, the result is political extremism and the most insipid pop culture trash." Bear in mind that "extremism" is the expected result of any reasonable algorithm that you abuse like this. If you like X, the algorithm will focus around X. If you like everything the algorithm suggests, you'll end up liking a "bigger target", and it will start suggesting stuff yet further away from your…

Your idea that it was due to his pre-existing politics could be tested if others wanted to repeat the experiment, but the fact that he ended up with both extreme left and extreme right political news seems to be disproof enough. The expected outcome of liking everything the algorithm suggests indiscriminately should be more moderation, not more extremism. If (as a oversimplified example) you like colors so the algori…

"Your idea that it was due to his pre-existing politics could be tested if others wanted to repeat the experiment,"

Your phrasing suggests that you misunderstood my point, but does not prove it. My point is not that he started with extreme politics (or politics that might be viewed as extreme by most people since of course $MY_VIEWS are always perfectly sensible and obviously correct, it's everybody else who is extreme), my point is that he started with politics at all.

"The expected outcome of liking everything the algorithm suggests indiscriminately should be more moderation, not more extremism."

Uh, no, that makes no sense. You're engaging in an operation that is deliberately blurring Facebook's impression of you. Open your favorite image editor. Cover an image with pure white. Put a blob of black in the middle. Start using the "blur" tool. It doesn't shrink. And that's not perfect, either... the center of the blob will remain the darkest, but in this system, Facebook keeps presenting you with more "extreme" views, and you keep telling it you like it. Of course it pulls you away from the "center"... you keep telling it to. And this is where the raw volume point comes in... the extremes are louder, so if you blur like that you'll see a lot more of it.

Re: I ‘Liked’ Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days

#109

Post by Gracana »

yutah wrote: post #52
Gracana wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can turn off "private results" in your google search preferences. https://www.google.com/preferences

I turned off "private results" a long time ago and my results are still customized...

Now that you mention it, it's obvious that mine are as well. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Re: I ‘Liked’ Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days

#110

Post by Houshalter »

fit2rule wrote: post #101
phillmv wrote: post #26

From the TFA, >Also, as I went to bed, I remember thinking “Ah, crap. I have to like something about Gaza,” as I hit the Like button on a post with a pro-Israel message. >By the next morning, the items in my News Feed had moved very, very far to the right. [...] >Rachel Maddow, Raw Story, Mother Jones, Daily Kos and all sort of other leftie stuff was interspersed with items that are so far to the right I’m nearly afr…

Think about it. This is an article, with its own 'share on Facebook' icon, entirely about a single persons interaction with a mechanized society, highly intricate and well and truly operating under the constraints of its totalitarian designers. Its not like we vote for Facebook features; that privilege is reserved for those with money to spend, making money, and it is an exclusive club indeed. Particularly given that…

Good god, this reads like a parody. There is no totalitarian conspiracy to manipulate your facebook feed. You are not in a dystopia. Having users vote for features of a popular website is unreasonable.

If you like everything a recommendation algorithm feeds you, of course you are going to get shit recommendations. Your like data is no longer correlated with your actual preferences at all. It's an interesting experiment, but people are projecting their own fears and opinions onto the result.

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