[HN Gopher] Facebook removed the news feed algorithm in an exper...
___________________________________________________________________
Facebook removed the news feed algorithm in an experiment
Author : WookieRushing
Score : 126 points
Date : 2021-10-27 17:43 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bigtechnology.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bigtechnology.substack.com)
| laylomo2 wrote:
| Imagine being able to choose your own algorithm. I'd want reverse
| chronological most of the time. And occasionally I might check
| out some of the other AI powered ones too. Imagine even having
| that choice at all.
| bluGill wrote:
| What I really want is only first part posts. If you didn't
| write the status or take the picture yourself, then I don't
| want to see it.
| lanerobertlane wrote:
| 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 not curated as they are not following that page, and
| is one of the things people are complaining about in the
| algorithm.
|
| They didn't test the algorithm vs no algorithm, they tested the
| current algorithm vs another algorithm.
| dataflow wrote:
| I can't tell if they want us to believe none of their brilliant
| minds realize this, or that they deliberately wanted a test
| that would give them an excuse to keep things as is.
| civilized wrote:
| And as Twitter shows, it's not hard to offer both options and
| let users choose.
|
| Twitter also implemented a timer so that, if you choose simple
| reverse chron, it forces you back into the ranking algorithm
| after a certain period of time.
|
| Hmm, I wonder why they'd go to the trouble to do that? Maybe
| these social networks have motivations that override user
| experience?
| sam0x17 wrote:
| FB isn't going to do anything that doesn't affect at least
| 30% of users. As always this is all about revenue.
| winternett wrote:
| Also, if the user base is conditioned to seeing things and
| posting things to serve a particular type of timeline, it's not
| easy for everyone to transition to a completely different
| method and for that method to stabilize/work quickly.
|
| When Facebook started changing their timeline and messing up
| the chronological order of posts it had a really strange effect
| on reality. Old news stories and posts were showing up for many
| months late, and they were reminding people about their pets
| that died years before as well, many people have forgotten
| that.
|
| The best option would be to abandon the ideal that one single
| news feed is best for everyone and give control back to users
| along with an option for a truly chronological time line. Thy
| should also make multiple pages that rank posts based on
| taxonomy that users can browse content that is most liked by
| everyone on the platform.
|
| The only reason why Facebook wants to be able to have singular
| time lines is so that they can push targeted ads without it
| becoming obvious to their user base, but if the taxonomy pages
| were titled and organized properly, the ads would be somewhat
| more relevant by nature, and not require them to invade
| everyone's privacy like they have been doing thus far.
| mzs wrote:
| I have _no algorithm_ again, at least until FB decides to break
| it:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29004489
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Sadly, that link is not available on mbasic, the only version
| this computer can handle.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| 100% agree. In addition, look at their metrics. When it comes
| to "meaningful social interaction", calling Uncle Joey a stupid
| ass because he posted another semi-racist Obama meme is the
| same as telling Cousin Jane you like her baby pics.
|
| I should HOPE "meaningful social interactions" go down with a
| reverse-chron, friends-only feed.
| strken wrote:
| They might do sentiment analysis, in which case you'd have to
| put thinly veiled sarcasm in your reply to Uncle Joey to be
| counted.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| Aren't those both equally meaningless? Maybe this is why I
| don't participate in social media anymore XD
| [deleted]
| saurik wrote:
| Expand your mind to "a reverse chronological list of actions
| taken by my friends"? I don't want to--and don't need to--miss
| out on my friends replying to stuff just because I don't want
| to have an opaque content filtering and recommendation
| algorithm curating my life.
| jacurtis wrote:
| > "Without a News Feed algorithm, engagement on Facebook drops
| significantly, people hide 50% more posts, content from
| Facebook Groups rises to the top, and -- surprisingly --
| Facebook makes even more money from users scrolling through the
| News Feed."
|
| Yes, it is confusing when they say they "turned off the
| algorithm" because what it sounds like is they are still using
| an algorithm here, just a far worse version of one, maybe an
| earlier version of the algorithm.
|
| But if posts are "rising to the top" and "they saw double the
| amount of posts from public pages they don't follow, often
| because friends commented on those pages". This still sounds
| like an algorithm is ranking posts, just in a "worse" way.
|
| Removing the algorithm to me would mean seeing posts in a
| reverse-chronological order as they happened. Everything would
| appear equally. Maybe some controls are given to users to hide
| certain types of items, such as 2nd degree pages (pages your
| friends follow and comment on, but you do not follow), group
| posts, and so on.
|
| But as soon as you re-order posts, you are using an algorithm.
| It is very disingenuous to claim you removed an algorithm when
| all you really did was replace it with a worse algorithm. Then
| justify your actions because the worse algorithm performed
| worse (wow shocking i know).
| novok wrote:
| I think it's still legit to think of what they did was
| turning off the algorithmic filtering, but did not turn off
| the algorithmic event generation. To be fair although, group
| and friend posts are things people explicitly subscribed to,
| it's only the friend comments that they didn't explicitly
| subscribe to. Which makes me think, did they do a version of
| the experiment without "people commented on X" items and see
| what happened?
|
| I think the results would be somewhat similar although,
| because group activity will still dominate. Knowing a place
| like FB although, they probably tried all the combinations to
| see what happened. I'm curious what those results are too.
| chadlavi wrote:
| it seems like they're using algorithm to mean "a more
| complicated means of calculating what to show you," and
| they're saying there is no algorithm involved when they use a
| simple means of determining what to show you. Which is of
| course also an algorithm -- when a person the user is friends
| with interacts with something, show that in the user's feed.
| But algorithm somehow means magic nowadays.
| timbit42 wrote:
| 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.
| Oddskar wrote:
| Wow. Comparing with this addon and without is pretty jarring.
| I might actually start using the newsfeed again with this
| addon.
|
| Holy cow do FB just shove a bunch of shit into the feed.
| pishpash wrote:
| Doesn't seem to work, won't filter out Sponsored posts
| despite the option being selected...
| CompuHacker wrote:
| Facebook changes the way Sponsored content is formatted on
| a moment to moment basis, sometimes in a way that breaks
| accessibility software, to foil exactly this kind of
| software, and ad-blockers.
| simooooo wrote:
| They are terrified someone might end up with an empty news feed
| for that day
| jaywalk wrote:
| It seems Facebook is so far up their own ass that they actually
| think this "no algorithm" test they did is what people are
| clamoring for.
| threeseed wrote:
| Except that it is exactly what people have been asking for:
|
| Simple reverse chronological order feed with no ranking.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Did you even read the comment I replied to? BS like "we're
| throwing this post in your feed because one of your friends
| liked/commented on it" is _not_ part of what people have
| been asking for, but that was still part of their "no
| algorithm" test.
|
| All they did was get rid of the ranking, but that's only
| part of the issue.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I am some non-zero amount interested that a Facebook
| friend of mine liked or commented on some random post.
| I'm not _as interested_ as something that they posted
| originally, but clearly non-zero interested in many of
| those.
| jaywalk wrote:
| That's perfectly fine. Me personally, I am not at all
| interested in it. But Facebook could very easily allow us
| to tailor our individual Newsfeeds to our liking, so you
| can have what you want and I can have what I want.
|
| But that's not what Facebook wants, so that's not what we
| get.
| d3vmax wrote:
| Have a chronological time series newsfeed only from friends. Once
| you have caught up show the recommended / algo posts.
|
| +
|
| Facebook should allow you to go filter and show posts using a
| calendar. Like all post from X date to Y date, from this location
| / friends. It will actually improve usage.
|
| Miss the old photo sharing days.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| This would make them hugely less profitable, and therefore
| would never happen.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| but, as the post points out, you get lots of stuff people don't
| like (like group posts, or people abusing public figures, or
| arguments)
|
| so whilst in theory it sounds good, in practice, not so much
| timbit42 wrote:
| FBPurity is a browser plugin that lets you hide the junk you
| don't want to see on FB, set the newsfeed to chronological. I
| have mine set to only show what my friends post, but not the
| things they like or share or comment on.
| mrweasel wrote:
| The last year or so I was on Facebook I had basically hidden or
| otherwise removed anything that wasn't posted by a friend
| directly. It would take me around five minutes or less to
| scroll through everything once a week.
|
| The problem is that if Facebook implemented this site wide
| engagement would drop dramatically. No one really posts to
| Facebook anymore, people love it when you do, because it's
| actually kinda novel.
| bluGill wrote:
| I've started doing that, but the problem is facebook will
| prefer to hide thing my friends are doing and showing me more
| of the garbage others are sharing. Hiding everything someone
| shares makes things better, but I've been doing that for a
| month and still see tons of posts that people have shared.
| (some people share 40 things per day, they need to get a
| life)
|
| Facebook doesn't actually hide things when you make them show
| none from X. I see many of those things after I hide all
| them.
| tantalor wrote:
| The article seems to miss the point of the experiment. It wasn't
| an actual proposal to turn off the news feed for everybody. The
| purpose was to validate the news feed, which it did. So FB did
| not "give up". The experiment was a success.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I'm under the impression that people are getting irrationally
| afraid of "algorithms". Like if some evil AI is controlling
| people mind.
|
| People wants to read the stuff they are interested in. No
| algorithm is forcing people to watch fox news for instance.
|
| That being said, FB should give the option to disable the news
| feed algorithm (or to have several version to choose from maybe),
| if that makes people happy.
| dmix wrote:
| Twitter finally returned the option to make the feed
| chronological again and I'm starting to like Twitter a lot more
| again. It was way more political and contentious with the smart
| feed on.
|
| FB should explore these options more. It sounds like there has
| to be more done here than just turning off the smart feed
| entirely.
| kace91 wrote:
| >People wants to read the stuff they are interested in. No
| algorithm is forcing people to watch fox news for instance.
|
| I think a mistake is thinking of people as static sets of
| tastes and interests. No one is going to be fed news that are a
| big deviation from their current worldview, but small deltas
| pile up over time.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Algorithms are tuned by human beings that are motivated by
| profit. Algorithms are not computer magic that show people
| "stuff they are interested in", they're designed to put
| companies' partners' content in front of eyeballs for money for
| long periods of time.
| kilna wrote:
| "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.
| gfosco wrote:
| Data wins arguments. One of my least favorite Facebook quotes.
| Bad data wins arguments, too.
|
| The misdirection term here is 'news feed ranking algorithm'...
| and what that means in the experiment versus what you might think
| that means, huge difference. e.g. I think most would assume the
| algorithm is responsible for showing you an unknown post that a
| friend merely liked, but it's right there in the article as still
| happening.
|
| The results and how people used it don't at all say to me that
| they enjoyed it less, it shows explicit care & intention to
| curate their own feed by hiding what they don't like.. which is
| how it should be. If they find the group posts too overwhelming,
| they can mute/unfollow/leave, or other methods of grouping posts
| can be explored.
|
| But look, they did this one bad science experiment, and now it's
| taken as fact and becomes folklore.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| Given they made MORE money in this experiment, I suspect the
| decision to roll it back was more nuanced than a naive analysis
| and bad science experiment.
| gfosco wrote:
| The goal wasn't more money, there are more variables
| involved. One way to look at it might be, short-term more
| money vs long-term total narrative control.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| 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 subject more.
|
| its not really rocket science, or indeed anything overly
| complex.
| mikem170 wrote:
| 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,
| like you said, effectively putting everyone in echo
| chambers.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > so it showed users brand new different material, or
| opposing material
|
| Brand new, yes, facebook is biased to new stuff. Its just
| there is a high incentive to repost old shit, because
| spammers know its effective.
|
| Opposing material? no, that requires comprehensive
| understanding of the context of the share, the content of
| the material and the target audience's overton window.
|
| > let users find their own material and/or build their
| own feeds.
|
| virtually nobody does this, or indeed wants to do it.
| What's more its very rare that anyone is any good at it
| (hence why people don't subscribe to news wire services)
|
| also, the research emphatically underscores this. People
| hunt more, and are less engaged. its more effort.
| selwynii wrote:
| 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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Chronological feeds are how you end up with news teams
| spamming posts every three minutes_
|
| They do this anyway.
| saghm wrote:
| > 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
|
| Or you just stop following the spammy ones
| threeseed wrote:
| But then like the article says you are spending all your
| time curating the experience.
|
| People don't want Facebook to be a chore.
| godshatter wrote:
| > 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.
|
| These were people who had already been sorted into echo
| chambers. Turning off the algorithm sent data to them
| they had already learned to hide. I'd be interested to
| see how this same experiment fared with completely new
| user. Maybe we'll run across a new tribe in the Amazon or
| something so we can try this out.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Opaque ML algorithm can't tip off the press to misdeeds
| the same way a disgruntled editor can.
| s17n wrote:
| You can say that explicit curation and intention is the way
| things "should be" as much as you like, but all the evidence
| suggests that most people strongly prefer automated curation.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| It depends what you mean by "prefer." I would prefer straight
| chronological even if I spend less time on it and click like
| fewer times.
| zepto wrote:
| Smokers strongly prefer cigarettes.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I think the trouble is trying to have it both ways: excusing
| the existence of a curation algorithm because "people prefer
| it" [0] while _also_ refusing to take all the
| responsibilities normally associated with a publisher who
| curates and delivers content.
|
| [0] Never mind the more obvious problem that "people prefer
| it" is not a great excuse for intentionally makinga product
| as addictive as possible.
| mikem170 wrote:
| Giving users the option to toggle the algorithm on/off would
| be nice.
| ringworld wrote:
| It used to be that way. Then they started "forgetting"
| everyone's setting to turn it off (go back to the original
| reverse time based feed), then they took the option away.
| After purchasing Instagram they did the same exact thing,
| FB engineering specifically removed the feature on their
| platforms.
| munk-a wrote:
| Not all automated curation is built equal and boiling it down
| to just one thing really confuses things. I absolutely adore
| YouTube's automated curation since the primary goal there is
| just to steer me to things I'll find interesting - the ads
| are present on all content and so YT just wants to keep me on
| the platform for as long as possible.
|
| When it comes to Facebook it always feels like I'm being
| steered towards topics that yield monetizable verbiage. If a
| friend likes an upcoming concert I'll definitely hear about
| it loud and clear - while as an upcoming picnic or personal
| project being planned is less likely to float to the top.
| azinman2 wrote:
| YTs recommendations are infamous for getting people
| radicalized, into conspiracy theories, and filled with
| misinformation.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| YT continues to push Jordan Peterson videos on me even
| though I've downvoted them many times. Other friends
| report the same thing.
|
| I think the algorithm has figured out that if it can get
| people into JP, there's a chance they go down into more
| extreme rabbit holes and thus become super-engaged. So
| it's worth it for the algorithm to keep trying to push JP
| even on people who don't seem interested at first.
| tcgv wrote:
| I used to get a lot of "Jordan Peterson" recommendations
| too. A bit off topic, but I really don't like his take on
| many subjects. I can see that he's truly articulated and
| it seems he mostly wins arguments by carefully crafting
| his phrases and forcing his view to less skilled
| communicators rather than by following a reasonable line
| of thought. I'm glad I don't receive recommendations of
| his videos anymore.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I'm highly skeptical of those claims. This seems mostly
| like wild claims from legacy media that doesn't want you
| to watch streaming video.
|
| Yes, I'm familiar with the relevant studies.
| svachalek wrote:
| I've had a Google account for... 15+ years? and have
| never really interacted on YouTube, in large part because
| I don't want to give Google my data. Just recently though
| I've been getting more into hobbyist boardgaming and
| wanted to help out some of the little guys in this niche
| by giving them some likes and subscribes.
|
| So, now it's feeding me incel videos. Maybe this just is
| giving me more info than I want about people who play
| board games. But wow, Google.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Which studies are funded by legacy media? There are
| undoubted way more that are not.
|
| I've been fed all kinds of UFO and other strange videos
| by YT myself.
| cmorgan31 wrote:
| Which legacy media is not making a streaming migration
| effort currently with enough sway to manipulate the
| narrative? I'm not aware of any major players not moving
| to svod or avod in the US.
| threeseed wrote:
| It literally happens to me every week.
|
| It's easy to tell that it's happening because you will
| see obscure, random news/opinions channels with high view
| counts. Something you can only get when you at some point
| have been promoted by Youtube.
| munk-a wrote:
| YT recommendations are always something I'm at least
| modestly interested in - even if I wouldn't know to
| independently search for. I think YT is following the
| model clearly demanded by current American ethics that
| suggests that the only thing worse than talking about
| what a nice guy hitler was is stopping someone else from
| talking about what a nice guy hitler was.
|
| I do think that at some point YT, FB and everyone else
| (google even!) will have to reckon with radicalization -
| but I still think that YT's recommendations are quite a
| bit more valuable than FB.
| threeseed wrote:
| Youtube's algorithm for me is a perfect example of what a
| poor ranking algorithm looks like.
|
| I subscribe to a number of mainstream, local news feeds
| as well as our government's daily COVID updates. And
| ocassionally I will do a Google search for random terms.
| And yet somehow at least a few times a week I will be
| recommended some obscure news source often indeed with
| conspiracy or some ultra-right wing edge.
|
| I very much sympathise with the challenge that Facebook's
| data scientists have to deal with. Incredible hard
| problem to solve.
| bentcorner wrote:
| I wonder how much wagging the dog FB has ended up doing to
| everyday activities? Do people give more weight to doing
| things that have a better opportunity for more FB
| engagement? (Thinking more on this I don't think FB is the
| sole culprit here)
| moron4hire wrote:
| YT's curation keeps trying to shunt me off into
| neoconservative conspiracy theory videos, which I never
| click on, but occasionally auto play if I've left the
| window in the background. About all I can figure I've done
| is watch some videos about military-themed multiplayer
| video games. I don't actually _play_ these games, but
| sometimes the commentary is funny.
|
| Facebook kept trying to sell me an Oculus Quest weeks after
| I had already bought one ("look at the metrics! 95% of
| people who saw the ad also bought the headset", "you're
| reading the graph backwards").
|
| To me, it lays bare the myth of advertising analytics. All
| this data, all this tracking, and none of it is actually
| all that useful for the stated purpose. Makes one wonder if
| it's really all for fleecing advertisers or if it's to keep
| totalitarian regimes happy.
| jaywalk wrote:
| You can go into your YouTube watch history and delete
| videos that you don't want influencing your
| recommendations. I do this all the time because if I
| watch something out of the ordinary, my recommendations
| will be bombarded with similar stuff that I don't want to
| see. I just wanted to see that one video with the dog
| doing funny things, damn it!
| [deleted]
| xg15 wrote:
| > _all the evidence suggests that most people strongly prefer
| automated curation._
|
| What evidence would that be?
|
| I don't think having to actively force a feature on your
| audience is a good sign that they prefer it.
| [deleted]
| specialist wrote:
| The fiction of rational choice usually makes at least a
| performative nod towards informed consumers, actual choices,
| clear results, and consent. Which of those prerequistites
| does Facebook fulfill?
| 345344f34f wrote:
| Give them a choice to enable or turn it off then, like
| Twitter did. Debate OVER.
| 345344f34f wrote:
| One of my most frustrating experiences in tech when advocating
| for the consumer are data scientists that attempt to
| misrepresent the data. Meanwhile you have a company CEO at all
| hands telling people to "trust the data"
|
| What the fuck?? How can data be trusted when the people
| responsible for its custody are not truthful about what the
| data represents??????
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| > Congress may strip Facebook's legal protections for the content
| it amplifies.
|
| How so?
| Hokusai wrote:
| > Even though the researcher kept the "integrity pass" in place,
| or the first layer of the algorithm that sorts for integrity
| ahead of engagement, they said that "integrity bad metrics still
| shot through the roof."
|
| Not very interesting without understanding these algorithms.
| "Integrity pass" seems a good marketing name, but, at least this
| article, does not explain how it works. It would be like
| reviewing the Boing 737 Max and only knowing MCAS as "that thingy
| that makes the plane easy to fly" instead of
| http://www.b737.org.uk/mcas.htm
| [deleted]
| 14 wrote:
| 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.
| amelius wrote:
| Please give me the damn option to turn off the news feed.
| rob_c wrote:
| I dread that even if it were stripped from Facebook tomorrow the
| damage is done and cat out the bag, another platform would just
| copy and rise to the top of the pile that is "social" media...
| fsflover wrote:
| Not if the other platform is decentralized and doesn't rely on
| advertising money.
| aahortwwy wrote:
| The damage is done by the psychological manipulation used to
| keep people engaged with the platform, not the centralization
| and advertising.
|
| Platforms that eschew psychological manipulation don't grow
| as large. That is the proverbial cat.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Not if the other platform is decentralized...
|
| Like all of the other decentralized social media platforms
| that most people just don't care about? I'd argue that social
| media has become so polarized that, no matter their views,
| most people will want some sort of centralized body setting
| rules that act in their (the user's) interests.
|
| >... and doesn't rely on advertising money.
|
| People have widely adopted social media because they're not
| charged anything (aside from their privacy being invaded) to
| use it. How is such a platform staying online without
| charging users or using advertiser money?
| fsflover wrote:
| > centralized body setting rules that act in their (the
| user's) interests.
|
| Not sure it's possible. Only if you (or your friend) are
| the admin, you will like the rules.
|
| > How is such a platform staying online without charging
| users or using advertiser money?
|
| It's much more secure and reliable (long-term) to have a
| sustainable small server for friends than to rely on a huge
| anti-user for-profit company. One could also create a paid
| service. For example, I am using a paid email-provider.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| 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.
| fsflover wrote:
| 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).
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| 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).
| fsflover wrote:
| > I've looked at Twitter and went "how is something so
| basic in functionality not an open standard?".
|
| Mastodon (Activity Pub) is basically the open standard
| you are looking for here.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| I know, and I've seen it. A lot of the major publishers
| like CNN are loosely mirrored and far less consistent.
|
| With enough man power, you can recreate anything, but
| without a strong userbase, well...
|
| And don't even get me started on a name like "Mastodon",
| lol.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > 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/
| fsflover wrote:
| Thank you, I stand corrected. Still, a good step in the
| right direction.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| >How is such a platform staying online without charging
| users or using advertiser money?
|
| The resources required to provide the world with the
| valuable parts of these services are small enough to be
| funded through non-profits or benefit corporations. I'd
| gladly donate my time and money to a 501c3 facebook killer.
| vmception wrote:
| But if it was centralized, convenient, had shareholders and
| an advertising budget to get peoples attention faster than
| the decentralized one, then they'll suck up the advertising
| money.
|
| People are exchanging time for money. They will do this.
| darepublic wrote:
| Title seems like Facebook bashing but the article is more even
| keel. Suggest that "Then it gave up" be removed from the post
| title
| metalliqaz wrote:
| For the most part it's correct, they emded the experiment.
| However, it would probably communicate better to say "Then had
| to turn back." That probably conveys what happened, in that the
| "bad" stuff that we attribute to the algorithm still managed to
| grow without it, and normal engagement went down.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| That would be editorialising, since that's in the actual
| article.
|
| > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is
| misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: I don't mind being downvoted, but I would really like to
| know why that's the case so I can improve how I contribute to
| the forum.
| gfosco wrote:
| I'm with you, seems like the title should've stayed. If the
| framing was a problem, it should be prefixed by who is making
| the claim.
| bob229 wrote:
| Stop using this cancerous app. Problem solved
| starchild_3001 wrote:
| This is hilarious (what Facebook calls meaningful!). I know
| people where back and forth comments with them are a lot less
| than meaningful or desired.
|
| "Meaningful Social Interactions -- the back and forth comments
| between friends that Facebook optimizes for."
| jeffybefffy519 wrote:
| This article seems very misleading and honestly doesnt really
| analyse Facebooks actual experiment (which seems pretty flawed as
| other HN posts have already pointed out). Pretty disappointing.
| asimpletune wrote:
| 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 Facebook,
| feeds, and then when I stopped caring. Like, I don't think the
| feed was always like this. At one point there was nothing, sure,
| but there was also at one point a reverse chronically sorted log
| of what your friends were doing I think? That was the best. By
| the time my parents were on I think there was a few years of
| overlap before I just forgot about it.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| They had the news feed back then too, although it looked very
| differently. The two major differences between fb and myspace
| was the forced layout and that you didn't have to browse the
| site to see if there were updates on friends walls.
|
| The major difference is what people are posting, and how
| tangentially related to your network, the posts on your
| newsfeed are.
|
| Back then celebrities and news media weren't part of the
| platform, so you didn't really have these major intersections
| in the graph. I also believe that you had to re-share in order
| to push a post into a node that isn't directly connected to the
| posts author. Today a like is enough.
|
| The reason why facebook is uncool now, is a mix between who the
| active users are, and how much room and focus facebook puts on
| links to newssite and posts by people who aren't your friends.
| sdrinf wrote:
| For the record, the turning point was 2016, when basically
| every single sleeper cell "friend" was activated by mass
| agitprop, leading to a frenzy of political activity, and in the
| process suffocating everything else valuable of human
| attention.
| tunesmith wrote:
| Yeah, and you could see it coming. I remember joking pre-2016
| about the upcoming election, wondering how many of my friends
| would start unfriending each other. I had no idea how big a
| change was actually coming.
|
| I wonder why it didn't happen in 2012. I remember ACA
| arguments on Facebook but while they were contentious, they
| were generally value-driven and not based off of batshit
| lies.
| Macha wrote:
| Politicians are generally an older crowd. Obama got a lot
| of credit in 2008 for twitter use, wherein that use was
| basically tweeting campaign statements and updates.
|
| It was probably 2016 by the time that politicians realised
| they could use social media to whip up such strong feelings
| to maybe benefit their campaigns.
|
| People certainly disagreed with each other online in 2012
| (I remember reddit had subreddits dedicated to complaining
| about how much pro Ron Paul content was posted in the
| mainstream subreddits), but I think it's the active
| engagement of the politicians themselves that turbo charged
| this.
| saghm wrote:
| > I wonder why it didn't happen in 2012. I remember ACA
| arguments on Facebook but while they were contentious, they
| were generally value-driven and not based off of batshit
| lies
|
| Both candidates in 2012 went out of their way to maintain
| civility to each other publicly. I think when a candidate
| treats their opponent with respect, the followers tend to
| follow mostly in suit, but if they don't, it kind of just
| opens the floodgates, and once that happens, there's no
| going back.
| RNCTX wrote:
| > Both candidates in 2012 went out of their way to
| maintain civility to each other publicly.
|
| When George W. Bush was running for governor of Texas
| against Ann Richards in the late 90s (before anyone but
| us was on the internet), Karl Rove distributed printed
| pamphlets, particularly in churches in East Texas among
| evangelicals, talking about her secret lesbian lover.
| She's not a lesbian.
|
| And of course when Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 she
| invented (or paid someone else to invent, more
| accurately) this ridiculous Russian conspiracy narrative
| that persists because press outlets affiliated with her
| party continue to amplify it.
|
| In 2000, the aforementioned GW Bush's party had the chief
| justice of the SCOTUS (who incidentally got that job
| despite living in an AZ neighborhood back in the 60s deed
| restricted to whites only and organizing a sort of
| election day mob that would physically confront non-white
| voters standing in line to vote) stop counting ballots to
| ensure that Bush won.
|
| Before Reagan appointed Rehnquist chief justice, when he
| was campaigning against Carter in 1979/80, he was giving
| speeches at notorious lynching sites around the former
| confederate states and talking about the "oppression of
| the IRS" (this was shortly after the IRS had stripped Bob
| Jones University of its non-profit status during Carter's
| tenure for refusing to admit black students).
|
| Civility is anomaly, not the trend.
|
| I'm all for criticizing Facebook for what Facebook does
| wrong but it's just a mirror, it doesn't have any
| original content on it. The same can be said of political
| candidates. If their message lacks resonance with what
| would-be voters believe already, no one will repeat it.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Spammers took over!
| jfengel wrote:
| 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 to enjoy Facebook, but most people never saw it
| like that.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > 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.
| jfengel wrote:
| Yeah, I have a phone number, and I don't pick it up if I
| don't recognize it. I don't know you, I probably don't want
| random communication from you.
|
| I am pleased with the state of spam detection for things
| that implement it. Google does a good job, both on my phone
| (Pixel) and my email. Quora does not, and I resent it; it
| makes the site worse, so I turned it off.
|
| If Facebook were letting strangers talk to me, I'd probably
| stop using it.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| You just need a high enough barrier to entry or real
| consequences to deter malicious behavior. Spam & scams work
| because there's no downside; if they had to pay a fee to open
| an account every time they get banned for spam they'll move
| on very quickly.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Maybe we were just younger and had friends who did cooler
| things?
| fullshark wrote:
| Definitely part of it, also we were more naive and willing to
| share more of our lives online. It's why youth social
| networks seem alive and others seem to be decaying.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| The younger cooler people aren't on Facebook
| Zak wrote:
| 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 first is a
| positive experience. What's not positive is showing me most
| things other than original content from my friends.
|
| I'm not sure why the change happened, but at some point it did.
| Most of what I see posted on Facebook now is not original
| content from my friends. I mostly don't want to see third-party
| content. The share button was there long before I noticed this
| trend, but people are using it a lot more. I just went and
| cataloged 50 algorithmically-chosen posts. Here's the
| distribution:
|
| Shared third-party post or link: 24
|
| Original text: 9
|
| Original image: 9
|
| Directly-posted image of third-party content: 3
|
| Promotion of a physical product by a page I follow: 2
|
| Promotion of media by a page I follow: 2
|
| Promoting own event: 1
| xg15 wrote:
| I have the strong suspicion that Facebook often decides first
| that it wants to show me some post, then does some graph-
| walking and invents a "reason" after the fact why that post
| was somehow related to my friends list.
|
| At least that would explain why a video that some friend of a
| friend watched 3 days ago is suddenly at the top of my
| newsfeed.
| Zak wrote:
| 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.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| Before I deleted Facebook, I remember specifically around
| 2014-15 was when things started to change significantly on
| newsfeeds. It was less about keeping up with friends and more
| about advertisements.
| 0x0 wrote:
| There used to be a secret url param to only show friends posts,
| no pages or groups. It was heavenly.
| timbit42 wrote:
| FBPurity is a browser plugin that lets you do those things.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Would want something that works on my phone and not having to
| deal with the mobile browser. I would say a great majority of
| Facebook usage is via phone and via the official Facebook
| app.
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