Live data from Hacker News

Facebook News Feed change hides news, hurts nation

sfchronicle.com

21–25 of 25 posts

Re: Facebook News Feed change hides news, hurts nation

#22
post #2

We really just need RSS. Everyone on Facebook should get an RSS feed and you just subscribe to who you want to follow. News publishers already have feeds. So you can mix in as you like to get NYTimes right next to Uncle Jim’s fakenews. There’s no algorithm, just based on publishing order. Maybe mix in some flags that let you see if others have disliked things with that same URI. We need more protocols and less platfo…

An algorithm is desperately needed though. Sources have varying publishing rates and quality. Aggregating across them and culling is crucial. For the most part I've thrown up my hands and delegated this job to hacker news and Reddit subscriptions, but it's still not well personalized.

I don't think we need an "algorithm" just better RSS readers that let us filter things easily.

Or ideally more effort put into feeds by sources, so we get better curation of the feeds to start with.

Re: Facebook News Feed change hides news, hurts nation

#23

I want to go to Facebook to keep connected with friends and family, not to see cringy memes and clickbait 'news' articles. Zuckerberg made the right decision to focus on users instead of publishers, and I think these changes will change Facebook for the better.

I have to say that this is almost completely the opposite of what I want from Facebook, given that "cringe memes and clickbait" is an orthogonal issue. To me, great value lies in the opportunity for people to organize into smaller communities and post various things about those communities, be they political or not, and at the same time being able to receive feedback (in the form of comments). Unfortunately, the sad truth is that this is the only platform for such an activity for most of those communities.

Re: Facebook News Feed change hides news, hurts nation

#24
post #2

We really just need RSS. Everyone on Facebook should get an RSS feed and you just subscribe to who you want to follow. News publishers already have feeds. So you can mix in as you like to get NYTimes right next to Uncle Jim’s fakenews. There’s no algorithm, just based on publishing order. Maybe mix in some flags that let you see if others have disliked things with that same URI. We need more protocols and less platfo…

Even though I like RSS and use it daily, I think it cannot act as a replacement, since Facebook, as a platform, allows two-way communication between parties (e.g. when someone or some group shares a post, people can give feedback on it).

Re: Facebook News Feed change hides news, hurts nation

#25
post #23

I want to go to Facebook to keep connected with friends and family, not to see cringy memes and clickbait 'news' articles. Zuckerberg made the right decision to focus on users instead of publishers, and I think these changes will change Facebook for the better.

I have to say that this is almost completely the opposite of what I want from Facebook, given that "cringe memes and clickbait" is an orthogonal issue. To me, great value lies in the opportunity for people to organize into smaller communities and post various things about those communities, be they political or not, and at the same time being able to receive feedback (in the form of comments). Unfortunately, the sad…

I'd say those two are compatible. For me what matters is getting updates from friends, family, and groups I care about. If my feed was limited to that, the new articles would instantly be less clickbaitey or cringey.
Post reply on HN