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Xfb here, no one inside the company knows exactly how newsfeed works either. The infrastructure and all of the components involved in generating and rendering n

Xfb here, no one inside the company knows exactly how newsfeed works either. The infrastructure and all of the components involved in generating and rendering newsfeed at this point (and for a while) have been far too large for any single person to understand. It's generally accepted as a mystery, even to those working on components of newafeed. I worked on a component of newsfeed for a while, and yet had no clue how the rest of the system worked despite trying. That's the level of complexity involved here.

fweespeech 11y ago
That honestly sounds like mismanagement. Even if its too hard to understand the minutiae, there should be a chart/graph/something somewhere that shows what all the components are intended to do.
- pc86 11y ago
  Understanding what the disparate pieces are and even how they talk to each other will not tell you how it actually works, unless you understand how each individual component works. And: > The infrastructure and all of the components involved in generating and rendering newsfeed at this point (and for a while) have been far too large for any single person to understand.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    That’s just mismanagement still. Each component should have a clearly and strictly defined way to interact with other components, which you should have in nice diagrams. Tack the diagrams together, and you get a full definition of how the newsfeed interacts and which piece does what. If that is not possible, then you have a very badly managed company, not even Healthcare.gov was that mismanaged.
    - askafriend 11y ago
      Yes those diagrams exist, but you've got to remember that these components are constantly changing as well as new components being added and others being removed all the time. It's a beast and perhaps I was a little liberal with my assertion that "NO ONE" understands it. It's possible to understand at a high level: eg "...and then the posts get filtered through this ranking component" But then that ranking component can change week over week so if you thought you understood all of the ranking mechanics last week, then you probably have some catching up to do this week. There's also a lot of people working on this so stuff changes fast and often. Think about all of Facebook's different products vyying for attention in the feed. Think of all the PMs with agendas who want their product in the feed in certain ways.
      - earl_gray 11y ago
        Sounds like they need to develop a news feed news feed to keep them fed with all the latest news about their news feed development. Plus side: if it works well, they can just replace their current unspeakable Lovecraftian horror of a system with the meta feed they develop. A new dawn for all.
      - fweespeech 11y ago
        > There's also a lot of people working on this so stuff changes fast and often. Think about all of Facebook's different products vyying for attention in the feed. Think of all the PMs with agendas who want their product in the feed in certain ways. If you can't maintain a complete understanding of the process, you are playing a guessing game. This isn't some special magical FB-centric problem.
    - sullyj3 11y ago
      This is why facebook is about to go bankrupt.
    - johnmaguire2013 11y ago
      And yet Healthcare.gov has had far more downtime and other issues than Facebook so...
      - kuschku 11y ago
        Well, their aim is to create a system that’s completely compliant to spec. Facebook, as the greatgrandparent mentioned, isn’t even trying to.
  - deleted 11y ago
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- ethanbond 11y ago
  Nah man, move fast and break things, remember? Like actually break them.
- modarts 11y ago
  It sounds like terrible product management in general.
deleted 11y ago
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wtetzner 11y ago
Honestly, it doesn't seem to work particularly well. It seems like the kind of thing they could just reimplement without fear of "breaking" anything, since there isn't really anything to break. A much simpler algorithm would probably be preferred by many users anyway.

fweespeech 11y ago

That honestly sounds like mismanagement. Even if its too hard to understand the minutiae, there should be a chart/graph/something somewhere that shows what all the components are intended to do.

pc86 11y ago
Understanding what the disparate pieces are and even how they talk to each other will not tell you how it actually works, unless you understand how each individual component works. And: > The infrastructure and all of the components involved in generating and rendering newsfeed at this point (and for a while) have been far too large for any single person to understand.
- kuschku 11y ago
  That’s just mismanagement still. Each component should have a clearly and strictly defined way to interact with other components, which you should have in nice diagrams. Tack the diagrams together, and you get a full definition of how the newsfeed interacts and which piece does what. If that is not possible, then you have a very badly managed company, not even Healthcare.gov was that mismanaged.
  - askafriend 11y ago
    Yes those diagrams exist, but you've got to remember that these components are constantly changing as well as new components being added and others being removed all the time. It's a beast and perhaps I was a little liberal with my assertion that "NO ONE" understands it. It's possible to understand at a high level: eg "...and then the posts get filtered through this ranking component" But then that ranking component can change week over week so if you thought you understood all of the ranking mechanics last week, then you probably have some catching up to do this week. There's also a lot of people working on this so stuff changes fast and often. Think about all of Facebook's different products vyying for attention in the feed. Think of all the PMs with agendas who want their product in the feed in certain ways.
    - earl_gray 11y ago
      Sounds like they need to develop a news feed news feed to keep them fed with all the latest news about their news feed development. Plus side: if it works well, they can just replace their current unspeakable Lovecraftian horror of a system with the meta feed they develop. A new dawn for all.
    - fweespeech 11y ago
      > There's also a lot of people working on this so stuff changes fast and often. Think about all of Facebook's different products vyying for attention in the feed. Think of all the PMs with agendas who want their product in the feed in certain ways. If you can't maintain a complete understanding of the process, you are playing a guessing game. This isn't some special magical FB-centric problem.
  - sullyj3 11y ago
    This is why facebook is about to go bankrupt.
  - johnmaguire2013 11y ago
    And yet Healthcare.gov has had far more downtime and other issues than Facebook so...
    - kuschku 11y ago
      Well, their aim is to create a system that’s completely compliant to spec. Facebook, as the greatgrandparent mentioned, isn’t even trying to.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
ethanbond 11y ago
Nah man, move fast and break things, remember? Like actually break them.
modarts 11y ago
It sounds like terrible product management in general.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

wtetzner 11y ago

Honestly, it doesn't seem to work particularly well. It seems like the kind of thing they could just reimplement without fear of "breaking" anything, since there isn't really anything to break. A much simpler algorithm would probably be preferred by many users anyway.