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Facebook removed the news feed algorithm in an experiment

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Re: Facebook removed the news feed algorithm in an experiment

#51

Post by selwynii »

mikem170 wrote: post #26
KaiserPro wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

given that the algorithm is never going to be as effective as an editorial department, I don't understand the "total narrative control" argument. Facebook and instagram are social phase locked loops. Open a new instagram account, search for content that you like, like them, then what how it shove more/similar stuff into your feed. Now pivot to a different subject, only like that, and watch how your feed moves to that…

Putting users into echo chambers is not narrative control? They could have made the algorithm so it showed users brand new different material, or opposing material, or more details, or related material from friends instead of corporations, or from people geographically nearby, or chronological, or let users find their own material and/or build their own feeds. Instead of any of that they show them similar material, l…

But people don't like new material.

The top comment mentions people hiding posts from pages they don't follow - alternatively, that's called showing brand new content you haven't seen before.

Opposing material suggests a binary, sure that makes some sense in a US centric political spectrum, but what's the opposing viewpoint to my friends photo from hiking last weekend?

Geographically nearby could mean my neighbor 5 doors down who I don't know anything about and am not friends with. Do you think, if she were a privacy-concerned individual like many people on HN are, she'd be happy to know I saw her post about her new flowers?

It's less narrative control and more human condition - if anything I'm glad they tried this experiment. Chronological feeds are how you end up with news teams spamming posts every three minutes, and you having to hit the hide button every time.

Re: Facebook removed the news feed algorithm in an experiment

#52

Post by timbit42 »

lanerobertlane wrote: post #32

When people argue against the 'news feed algorithm' they mean anything other than a reverse chronological feed of posts from the people they follow. status updates, and interactions between people/pages you both follow. This article mentions that they turned the news feed off but people were still hiding posts from pages they don't follow, which friends had commented on. These shouldn't appear in a news feed that is…

FBPurity is a browser plugin that lets you decide what to see on FB. You can decide to only see what friends post and not what they like, share, or comment on, etc.

Re: Facebook removed the news feed algorithm in an experiment

#53

Post by simooooo »

lanerobertlane wrote: post #32

When people argue against the 'news feed algorithm' they mean anything other than a reverse chronological feed of posts from the people they follow. status updates, and interactions between people/pages you both follow. This article mentions that they turned the news feed off but people were still hiding posts from pages they don't follow, which friends had commented on. These shouldn't appear in a news feed that is…

They are terrified someone might end up with an empty news feed for that day

Re: Facebook removed the news feed algorithm in an experiment

#54

Post by Zak »

Zak wrote: post #37
asimpletune wrote: post #12

I don’t remember what Facebook had instead of a news feed in 2008, but I do remember thinking Facebook was so cool then. When messenger came out, it was amazing. It was totally normal then to message random people who you thought were cool and just have a conversation. I would even get random chats from Facebook employees. It just seemed so different then than now. I’m just trying to piece together the evolution of F…

According to Wikipedia, Facebook had a news feed in 2008; it was added in 2006, before which it was necessary to view a user's profile to see their posts. The switch to an algorithmically generated, rather than chronological feed started in 2011. Facebook's decline, for me was not due to the feed being algorithmic. I think it got better around that time; showing original content from people I like to interact with fi…

I repeated the count with a chronological feed, which is possible to get in a desktop browser with facebook.com/?sk=h_chr

Shared third-party content: 16

Original text: 5

Promoting own event: 4

Original image/video: 11

Directly-posted image of third-party content: 0

Page promoting product: 1

Page promoting media: 5

Group activity: 8

What would really make Facebook better for me is an algorithm that prefers original content. It might not be enough if that was something I could enable myself because what gets interaction from others affects what people post.

Re: Facebook removed the news feed algorithm in an experiment

#56

Post by kilna »

"Their findings: Without a News Feed algorithm, [...] Facebook makes even more money from users scrolling through the News Feed."

The obvious conclusion one can draw is that the product is primarily engineered to control users' information intake, and only secondarily to make money.

Re: Facebook removed the news feed algorithm in an experiment

#57

Post by pipeline_peak »

fsflover wrote: post #49
pipeline_peak wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A new social media platform taking off through ad revenue is enough of a lottery, let alone through a paid service. Even if it’s as low as $1 a month, you’re not gonna get average users to join a new social media platform in the name of politics. People want to connect with their friends, that’s all they ever wanted out of these sites.

I suggest that only some servers are paid. Others can be run by yourself or your friends. And they can federate. It definitely works with email, even though a large part of the network is from Google. All we need is a federated protocol (which AFAIK is already even required by GDPR).

That is true, I’ve looked at Twitter and went “how is something so basic in functionality not an open standard?”.

Although it’s not always as intuitive as email. IRC could’ve extended into something like Discord had it not been so programmer centric.

Either way, these people have us by the balls over already established syndication capabilities like RSS, just weighted in their direction(s).

Re: Facebook removed the news feed algorithm in an experiment

#58

Post by dane-pgp »

fsflover wrote: post #49
pipeline_peak wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A new social media platform taking off through ad revenue is enough of a lottery, let alone through a paid service. Even if it’s as low as $1 a month, you’re not gonna get average users to join a new social media platform in the name of politics. People want to connect with their friends, that’s all they ever wanted out of these sites.

I suggest that only some servers are paid. Others can be run by yourself or your friends. And they can federate. It definitely works with email, even though a large part of the network is from Google. All we need is a federated protocol (which AFAIK is already even required by GDPR).

> a federated protocol (which AFAIK is already even required by GDPR).

You might be thinking of the GDPR's Right to Data Portability[0] which includes "the right to transmit those data to another controller ... by automated means".

This should require Facebook to synch the posts you make on their website to another account you hold on a Fediverse node, but unfortunately it doesn't require Facebook to synch content that you can see (but didn't produce) from their website to that node.

[0] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/

Re: Facebook removed the news feed algorithm in an experiment

#59

Post by 14 »

Facebook is getting ever more desperate to get clicks and interactions. More and more of my notifications that will say they just happened or happened 20 minutes ago then I click it and find it was a post from the day before. How stupid since most of the time it is a repeat post I have already purposely passed on.

Re: Facebook removed the news feed algorithm in an experiment

#60

Post by PragmaticPulp »

jfengel wrote: post #45
asimpletune wrote: post #12

I don’t remember what Facebook had instead of a news feed in 2008, but I do remember thinking Facebook was so cool then. When messenger came out, it was amazing. It was totally normal then to message random people who you thought were cool and just have a conversation. I would even get random chats from Facebook employees. It just seemed so different then than now. I’m just trying to piece together the evolution of F…

I shudder to think about a system where random people could message me. On Quora, I just turned off that feature. Almost every single message I got was "hi", from somebody who was trying to either sell me crypto or catfish me. Maybe there's a period when a new open messaging system opens you up to just fun new people, but when it grows, spammers and scammers will follow. Glad you enjoyed Facebook before everybody got…

> I shudder to think about a system where random people could message me.

Do you not have a phone number that anyone can call? Or an e-mail address that anyone can send to? Or have you used a platform like IRC that allows users anyone to send you direct messages?

> Glad you enjoyed Facebook before everybody got to enjoy Facebook, but most people never saw it like that

Facebook messenger isn't overrun by spammers. I've only used the messenger a handful of times but IIRC it wasn't hard to tell the difference between messages from friends and requests from people I wasn't friends with.

Spam detection also isn't terribly difficult at scale. Spammers need to message thousands or more accounts to even have a chance at converting someone, which is so far away from the normal use patterns of a real user that it's easy to flag.

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