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Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

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Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#51

Post by james_pm »

james_pm wrote: post #3

Wonderful. Journalism is just a game to the Chicago Tribune. "Because if 1 of 3 Facebook posts isn’t going to be surfaced by the algorithm to a significant degree, that would change how we play the game."

It;'s pretty clear to me that, yes, while it's a turn of phrase, they are clearly intensely focused on metrics like shares. He talks of "misses" and "strike outs" in other places.

It's no wonder that the mainstream has been adopting more and more of the tactics of content farms with clickbait headlines and articles that are more about generating outrage and "shares" than anything else.

A "great" article is defined by how many shares it gets. It's no wonder that high quality, long form, real journalism is slowly fading away. It doesn't pay to do any of that when the only money left is chasing FB shares all the way to the bottom.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#52

Post by diminish »

At some point, a Google search or a Facebook timeline will be covered 100% with very smart, personal, native ads next to your organic search result or your mom saying you "Happy Birthday".

Because, Quarter after quarter post-IPO management (at Facebook, Google and others) are denting the returns and eating into ROI margins across worldwide industries and services of an endless spectrum by converting free organic "reach" or "impressions" or "time spent" into advertiser ones. At some point GOOG and FB will stabilize at some market capitalization, defined by their ability to maintain a steady revenue stream from advertisers.

[-] http://www.adweek.com/digital/how-brands-and-agencies-are-fi...

Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#53

Post by marcosdumay »

jpalomaki wrote: post #15
ivanbakel wrote: post #4

It's interesting to see how Facebook is taking increasing control of news and publicity on its service. In a sense, we're long past the point of questioning whether it's ethical, since they've obviously been influencing content for a long while, but this is one of the strongest arguments for FOSS alternatives like Mastodon. Hopefully, if this continues, big businesses will push the shift to open instances for a more…

Facebook is likely trying to maximize the time people spend on browsing their feed. Surface too many "boring" news articles in a row and user might go away. Put a nice mixture of news, goofy stuff, updates from friends, some fake news to provoke action and user remains. Hundreds of millions of people stare the news feed on weekly basis and interact with it. This creates a spectacular opportunity for employing machine…

Assuming they aren't selling this "boring" evaluation (or submitting to any other kind of pressure for making suboptimal decisions), keeping users reading their feed is still not necessarily what users want.

Facebook is doing what maximizes revenue, but there's no evidence that is the same thing that will encourage users to keep using it in the long term.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#54

Post by callinyouin »

This is just a thought, but perhaps this is due to an internal effort at FB to filter out "fake news". The changes in their algorithm might be showing some unintended consequences, or maybe the stories from the Tribune that are getting killed really are of dubious quality (I'm not a reader, so I really don't know). The timing of the Tribune's downward trend in post reach would seem to fit this narrative at any rate.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#55

Post by inetknght »

logicallee wrote: post #31
dickbasedregex wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left FB ~4 years ago. One of the straws that broke the camel for me was that it was obvious FB was "curating" my feed for me. Without notifying or consulting me. Posts from friends wouldn't show in my feed and vice versa. The privacy issues were bad enough but when I couldn't trust the platform to fulfill the only need I had for it, I walked. I'm far better for it.

Given that you were frustrated by not seeing all of your friends' posts and their not seeing all of yours, how are you better for it now that you see 0.0% of your friends' posts of any kind and now that you can now share your own content with only 0.5% of them (personally or through email etc)?

What makes you think I see 0.0% of my friends' posts? What you're actually saying is that people who have left facebook see 0.0% of stuff on Facebook.

That's not a problem.

Friends will share important stuff outside of Facebook because that's how friendship works.

And there are many other platforms where things can be shared too. People can post the same or similar things to multiple platforms quite easily these days.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#56

Post by inetknght »

twelvedogs wrote: post #36
logicallee wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that you were frustrated by not seeing all of your friends' posts and their not seeing all of yours, how are you better for it now that you see 0.0% of your friends' posts of any kind and now that you can now share your own content with only 0.5% of them (personally or through email etc)?

i'm in this situation as well, i've moved to a slack group with my work friends and direct messaging with others, facebook was just a shitty way to talk to people i don't really care about where my posts were spirited away almost immediately 0.5% is being generous, i had almost no interaction with people i cared about while i was on there and i'm glad i've switched to other platforms where they aren't as interested i…

FYI Slack could easily do the same thing. And indeed, being a closed system, what protection do you have against it?

Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#57

Post by kevin_b_er »

smt88 wrote: post #6
bhhaskin wrote: post #2

I find it fascinating that media companies like news papers have completely tied their success to a 3rd party platform like Facebook. They have essentially given all of the publishing power to Facebook. AMP is another one that comes to mind.

They didn't do it willingly. Facebook drew the news readers away from the publishers, and the publishers had to follow the readers.

Then they're not publishers anymore. Facebook decides what can be seen, and thus facebook is now the publisher.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#58

Post by carrier_lost »

losteverything wrote: post #32

Can someone please give me perspective? Does the newspaper increase/decrease revenue with better surfacing? If so, how much? Or conversely, if they don't bother tracking this (& spend $ on a human resource ) will there be any appreciable decrease in revenue. Or is this one person asking the world, "hey, have you also seen this?"

Newspapers sell ads based on impressions. Similarly, reporters want more readers to see their work.

Better Facebook surfacing = more clickthroughs to newspaper content.

More clickthroughs = more readers, more ad impressions.

More readers also = greater pool of potential conversion to print subscribers, email newsletter signups, etc.

Better surfacing also = greater brand awareness.

So yes there are both quantifiable revenue benefits + less quantifiable but still important journalism & marketing benefits.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#59

Post by VLM »

logicallee wrote: post #31
dickbasedregex wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left FB ~4 years ago. One of the straws that broke the camel for me was that it was obvious FB was "curating" my feed for me. Without notifying or consulting me. Posts from friends wouldn't show in my feed and vice versa. The privacy issues were bad enough but when I couldn't trust the platform to fulfill the only need I had for it, I walked. I'm far better for it.

Given that you were frustrated by not seeing all of your friends' posts and their not seeing all of yours, how are you better for it now that you see 0.0% of your friends' posts of any kind and now that you can now share your own content with only 0.5% of them (personally or through email etc)?

To answer your question, the only thing worse in practice than no news, is fake news.

There are relationship negatives to censored personal news. My wife was tangentially involved in a family feud where facebook randomly promoted or hid various attacks and defenses and apologies of the two major factions. Its just not a platform useful for social interaction anymore. The censorship of the family feud and the resulting weird interpersonal drama reminds me of some incidents in the meme-war on facebook leading up to the election of Trump which is interesting.

Superficially it sounds awful to have family drama increased by hiding half the posts, much like playing a board game where half the moves are deleted sounds terrible. However, for a short period of time, until the users are completely alienated, FB made money by increasing the depth and length of that family feud by increasing readership during the height of the feud. In the long run people won't use FB at all, of course.

Re: Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

#60

Post by douche »

I miss the days when Facebook (and Twitter) just had a chronological timeline. At this point, I only see posts from my actual friends if I've set up notifications for their new posts. If this curation is supposed to make me stay on Facebook more, I don't think it's working, because the same post will stay at the top of the feed for six or eight hours, which makes me less likely to check it.
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