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> Do you honestly believe the world is better off with this, than if facebook did something else? Obviously the world is better off without insane political no

> Do you honestly believe the world is better off with this, than if facebook did something else? Obviously the world is better off without insane political nonsense. Just like it's better off, obviously, without gambling or alcohol, and a whole lot of other stuff... I wish these things could be dealt away with somehow. I'm trying to avoid the normative question of whether it's good or bad. The people who are most vociferously arguing it's bad are the institutions (like Vice) that stand to lose economically from changes in the Newsfeed recommender. > the only way to get clicks... only way to properly do collaborative filtering Facebook has probably had hundreds of highly educated and outside-the-box thinking people looking at the Newsfeed. Someone there has thought of and probably tried every approach to improve the quality of their recommendations using the metrics they are interested in. They probably thought of every possible metric to be interested in, and pathologically optimized the metrics they're interested in, long before advertising was the primary way they made money. As an example, Facebook got rid of those automatic game posts. Those posted generated absolutely monumental levels of engagement and powered a huge economic engine (Zynga). Facebook got rid of them. Zynga was pissed, and while nobody cried a tear for them, you could certainly imagine some ViceVille.com talking about how bad it is for free to play Facebook game publishers that this automatic game posting thing went away. Where are all the people talking about how getting rid of automatic game posts puts Facebook users into an entertainment bubble, cutting them off from a vast ecosystem of light entertainment? Some (really blowhard) people could seriously argue that. I don't mean to be a blowhard. But if it just comes down to, 'Vice is cool, Zynga drools,' well then there's not much to talk about.

Houshalter 10y ago
>Obviously the world is better off without insane political nonsense. Then we agree? Filter bubbles are bad? The world would be better off if Facebook changed? >Facebook has probably had hundreds of highly educated and outside-the-box thinking people looking at the Newsfeed. Someone there has thought of and probably tried every approach to improve the quality of their recommendations using the metrics they are interested in. They probably thought of every possible metric to be interested in, and pathologically optimized the metrics they're interested in, long before advertising was the primary way they made money. I'm aware of how optimized it is, but it's built on bad principles. They use a variety of metrics to measure "engagement", including likes, shares, time spent reading a post, comments, hides, etc. But none of these metrics are perfect, and so optimizing for them leads to bad outcomes. The only objectively perfect measure would be to actually ask individuals what articles they want to see more of, or less of, after they read them. To my knowledge they don't do that I think your games analogy is perfect. Facebook games generated huge amounts of engagement and ad money, just like clickbait garbage is doing now. But it was having a negative effect on society, with countless people becoming addicted to clicking cows, and some losing vast amounts of money to their addiction. Facebook chose to sacrifice it for the public good (and their image), and I think they did the right thing.

Houshalter 10y ago

>Obviously the world is better off without insane political nonsense. Then we agree? Filter bubbles are bad? The world would be better off if Facebook changed? >Facebook has probably had hundreds of highly educated and outside-the-box thinking people looking at the Newsfeed. Someone there has thought of and probably tried every approach to improve the quality of their recommendations using the metrics they are interested in. They probably thought of every possible metric to be interested in, and pathologically optimized the metrics they're interested in, long before advertising was the primary way they made money. I'm aware of how optimized it is, but it's built on bad principles. They use a variety of metrics to measure "engagement", including likes, shares, time spent reading a post, comments, hides, etc. But none of these metrics are perfect, and so optimizing for them leads to bad outcomes. The only objectively perfect measure would be to actually ask individuals what articles they want to see more of, or less of, after they read them. To my knowledge they don't do that I think your games analogy is perfect. Facebook games generated huge amounts of engagement and ad money, just like clickbait garbage is doing now. But it was having a negative effect on society, with countless people becoming addicted to clicking cows, and some losing vast amounts of money to their addiction. Facebook chose to sacrifice it for the public good (and their image), and I think they did the right thing.