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Facebook’s algorithm change has spurred an angry, Fox News-dominated News Feed

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Re: Facebook’s algorithm change has spurred an angry, Fox News-dominated News Feed

#41

Post by gnicholas »

cowpig wrote: post #23
gnicholas wrote: post #18

> the “angry” reaction dominates many pages, with “Fox News driving the most angry reactions of anyone, with nearly double that of anyone else.” So does this mean that Fox News is dominating the news feed because of liberal people hating on it, or is it because of articles that Fox News writes that riles up their base?

I think it's healthier to avoid dividing everybody into two categories, and interpreting everything with respect to those. But to answer your question within your own worldview, it's both.

Perhaps you can enlighten me on other reasons that people would react with an angry emoji, aside from the two I described.

Also, I’m not interpreting everything with respect to two categories — I'm interpreting single study this way.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm change has spurred an angry, Fox News-dominated News Feed

#42

Post by nradov »

jaabe wrote: post #5
revskill wrote: post #3

Long time ago, my facebook newsfeed was full of my friends' sharing, it's been very useful place for us to keep friends update. But now, it's a different place. It's a place for ads, for livestream, for real "social" stuffs, but most of them is useless to me for what i use facebook for.

The Facebook news feed is dead to anyone but trolls, at least in my anecdotal experience. Facebook is only useful for its yellow pages function. Unfortunately that alone is enough to keep my social circle on Facebook. It’s just really hard to break away, because social circles consists of people with different social circles, and not everyone is going to replace Facebook with the samething, and then everyone is still…

My Facebook news feed is fine. I actively unfollow (hide all from) almost all shared third-party content (including news) so that I mostly only see original content from my friends and family.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm change has spurred an angry, Fox News-dominated News Feed

#43

Post by nlh »

Alterlife wrote: post #15

I wish it could be made illegal to optimise for engagement. “Engagement” their acceptable replacement word for what they really want to optimise for: Addiction.

It’s such a slippery slope, but you’re so right.

Chemists designed a chemical that’s optimized for engagement too — it’s called heroin!

On the other side, one could argue that just about any successful product or service, by definition, optimized for engagement (addiction). Hit TV shows, beautiful vacation spots, sex. So where do you draw the line?

Re: Facebook’s algorithm change has spurred an angry, Fox News-dominated News Feed

#44

Post by philipov »

geofft wrote: post #37
volak wrote: post #11

Fox News dominates ratings on TV so its not surprising they'd be #1 - there's also the fact this is "engagements" and not click-throughs. I'd wager good 15% of these are probably people clicking "Angry" not actually engaging. If you look at "content with the most shares" not surprisingly Reuters and Patch tops the list. OP's headline presumes any algorithm should achieve left/right balance - this is just impossible.…

I think this is the tweet: https://twitter.com/RogueNotary/status/1101179117574279168 BTW, I think it is not unreasonable to expect that different models of funding or engagement are differently represented on the left and right sides of politics. Contrary to certain views, the left and the right are not two equal, symmetric, graceful wings of a bird, keeping society in balance: they're two different worldviews and s…

That reminds me of how maps can distort information about populations because one side tends to live in smaller high-density urban centers while the other has a much lower density over a larger land area.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm change has spurred an angry, Fox News-dominated News Feed

#46

Post by matt4077 »

hgjwq wrote: post #6

If the top sites were nytimes, new yorker and bbc you would be very happy right? ;)

Those three are not the “left-wing equivalent” of Fox. See, for example, the media bias chart: https://www.adfontesmedia.com

Left equivalents of Fox are Daily Kos et al.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm change has spurred an angry, Fox News-dominated News Feed

#47

Post by jerkstate »

volak wrote: post #33
api wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the economics of course but it seems obvious to me that if real newspapers charge then propaganda and anger porn will rule discourse. If you want some more on the list for balance there are plenty of left wing Breitbarts you could add. Those are free too. BTW I think fear porn / anger porn is an appropriate term. It releases brain chemicals that can be addictive just like sex porn. This explains some of…

There are left wing Breitbarts just like there's MSNBC for TV. The issue then becomes why these are far less popular. Its not because of a FB algorithm - that's for certain. I can ask everyone in my family if they've heard of Breitbart and 99% will say yes. If I ask if they've heard of Rachael Maddow.. maybe 40%? This is despite both of them engaging heavily in anger porn

That's not really a valid comparison. Rachel Maddow is an anchor on MSNBC, which my guess is everyone has heard of. I know what Breitbart is but I don't know any of their writers by name.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm change has spurred an angry, Fox News-dominated News Feed

#48

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

Alterlife wrote: post #15

I wish it could be made illegal to optimise for engagement. “Engagement” their acceptable replacement word for what they really want to optimise for: Addiction.

The problem is that it's also a replacement word for "users genuinely like the thing and want to keep using it". It troubles me when people use it as a smokescreen for adding addictive elements, but I don't think the solution is to say nobody can make their platform fun.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm change has spurred an angry, Fox News-dominated News Feed

#49

Post by geofft »

philipov wrote: post #44
geofft wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the tweet: https://twitter.com/RogueNotary/status/1101179117574279168 BTW, I think it is not unreasonable to expect that different models of funding or engagement are differently represented on the left and right sides of politics. Contrary to certain views, the left and the right are not two equal, symmetric, graceful wings of a bird, keeping society in balance: they're two different worldviews and s…

That reminds me of how maps can distort information about populations because one side tends to live in smaller high-density urban centers while the other has a much lower density over a larger land area.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2016/ is a pretty good example of that. A version of the fourth map on that page ("Here is a map of US counties...") is hanging somewhere in the West Wing; one of the ones at the bottom is perhaps more accurate.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm change has spurred an angry, Fox News-dominated News Feed

#50

Post by koboll »

volak wrote: post #11

Fox News dominates ratings on TV so its not surprising they'd be #1 - there's also the fact this is "engagements" and not click-throughs. I'd wager good 15% of these are probably people clicking "Angry" not actually engaging. If you look at "content with the most shares" not surprisingly Reuters and Patch tops the list. OP's headline presumes any algorithm should achieve left/right balance - this is just impossible.…

>I'd wager good 15% of these are probably people clicking "Angry" not actually engaging.

Only 15%? I'd guess it's way, way more. Like 90%.

News today is primarily headline-driven. You don't have to sit down and watch the evening newscast anymore, you can just scroll through Facebook and see headlines and comments, which almost always drop context and nuance in a way that's engineered to make people upset.

In a way, it's probably the most irresponsible aspect of journalism today. The media's ethical priorities are incredibly outdated: if a writer makes a mistake twelve paragraphs into a fifteen paragraph article, it's a major problem requiring a correction. But if an editor appends a headline that actively misleads 100x as many people, no one has any problem with it.

The news, in this way, probably misinforms as much as it informs. This is why you get the wildly divergent realities on the right and the left. There's simply no professional awareness of the unbelievably damaging power of headlines that--from a consequentialist perspective--are frequently abject lies.

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