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I'm having trouble seeing how the scenario you describe is 'unhealthy'. The behaviour to drive clickbait into people's feeds you describe is essentially the sam

I'm having trouble seeing how the scenario you describe is 'unhealthy'. The behaviour to drive clickbait into people's feeds you describe is essentially the same kind of thing as email spam: using a loophole to drive the cost of reach as near to zero as possible in the hopes you'll make it up on the few suckers who click. If this isn't good for the user, how is it unhealthy for them to curb it? And while I'd rather they be paying me to have my eyeballs available to them, driving up the cost of my eyeballs still benefits me even if I do not monetarily profit from it. A business doesn't have an inherent right to exist. If it exists because it annoys people in a particularly profitable way I don't know where this sympathy is coming from.

downandout 10y ago
I'm having trouble seeing how the scenario you describe is 'unhealthy' I wasn't referring to killing clickbait as being unhealthy. I was referring to the practice of implementing policies that kill businesses because FB isn't getting their cut. There have been several much less cut-and-dry situations - for example, the drastically reduced organic reach of Facebook page posts for small businesses.
- stormbrew 10y ago
  Right, but why is that unhealthy? If the cost of advertising on facebook is zero or near it, users suffer very badly (as on any platform). Someone has to force the cost up to make the platform livable, and the only party that realistically can in this transaction is facebook. Like, I get why other things named in this thread are unhealthy. Particularly twitter pulling the rug out from app developers (which facebook also did, and I think was also relatively unambiguously unhealthy). I am not saying that all control of a platform is necessarily healthy, but you seem to be saying that it is unhealthy because it made an action that most see as undesirable unprofitable (thus causing businesses to fail). Thus, you seem to believe that these businesses have some kind of inherent right to succeed on the good graces of another business allowing them to. I'm asking you to explain how that's in the public good.
  - downandout 10y ago
    It's unhealthy when they allow it for a long time, benefit from it, and then pull the rug out from under them once they believe it is in their financial best interest to do so. It's exactly the same as your Twitter and Facebook developer examples. Developers were monetizing the Twitter platform until Twitter pulled the rug out. Facebook has similarly neutered their API to the point where it is nearly useless, and many businesses were crushed in the wake of the changes. You seem to be saying that it's only unhealthy when developers are affected, but that isn't the case. Developers have no "inherent right to succeed on the good graces of another business allowing them to" either, yet you see that as unhealthy. Publishers and developers are just users of the system, getting crushed when Facebook doesn't believe it's getting a big enough cut. I would also argue that Facebook actively blocking the sharing of external content that its users choose to share with each other simply because they aren't getting their cut is different than the affected businesses believing they have an "inherent right to succeed on the good graces of another business". Businesses that don't directly do anything on Facebook will be affected by this, because if their visitors wish to share their content, they will likely attempt to share it through Facebook.
    - NoodleIncident 10y ago
      It doesn't affect users though, it affects pages. Articles shared by users as a post don't seem to be affected, it just ranks pages that consistently post clickbait lower.
      - downandout 10y ago
        Its not just pages. The blog post said that links to domains that tend to publish clickbait will rank lower. In other words, if an article I share that happens to reside on a domain that they have classified as a clickbait source, most of my friends won't see it even though I went to the effort of sharing it and wanted them to see it.

downandout 10y ago

I'm having trouble seeing how the scenario you describe is 'unhealthy' I wasn't referring to killing clickbait as being unhealthy. I was referring to the practice of implementing policies that kill businesses because FB isn't getting their cut. There have been several much less cut-and-dry situations - for example, the drastically reduced organic reach of Facebook page posts for small businesses.

stormbrew 10y ago
Right, but why is that unhealthy? If the cost of advertising on facebook is zero or near it, users suffer very badly (as on any platform). Someone has to force the cost up to make the platform livable, and the only party that realistically can in this transaction is facebook. Like, I get why other things named in this thread are unhealthy. Particularly twitter pulling the rug out from app developers (which facebook also did, and I think was also relatively unambiguously unhealthy). I am not saying that all control of a platform is necessarily healthy, but you seem to be saying that it is unhealthy because it made an action that most see as undesirable unprofitable (thus causing businesses to fail). Thus, you seem to believe that these businesses have some kind of inherent right to succeed on the good graces of another business allowing them to. I'm asking you to explain how that's in the public good.
- downandout 10y ago
  It's unhealthy when they allow it for a long time, benefit from it, and then pull the rug out from under them once they believe it is in their financial best interest to do so. It's exactly the same as your Twitter and Facebook developer examples. Developers were monetizing the Twitter platform until Twitter pulled the rug out. Facebook has similarly neutered their API to the point where it is nearly useless, and many businesses were crushed in the wake of the changes. You seem to be saying that it's only unhealthy when developers are affected, but that isn't the case. Developers have no "inherent right to succeed on the good graces of another business allowing them to" either, yet you see that as unhealthy. Publishers and developers are just users of the system, getting crushed when Facebook doesn't believe it's getting a big enough cut. I would also argue that Facebook actively blocking the sharing of external content that its users choose to share with each other simply because they aren't getting their cut is different than the affected businesses believing they have an "inherent right to succeed on the good graces of another business". Businesses that don't directly do anything on Facebook will be affected by this, because if their visitors wish to share their content, they will likely attempt to share it through Facebook.
  - NoodleIncident 10y ago
    It doesn't affect users though, it affects pages. Articles shared by users as a post don't seem to be affected, it just ranks pages that consistently post clickbait lower.
    - downandout 10y ago
      Its not just pages. The blog post said that links to domains that tend to publish clickbait will rank lower. In other words, if an article I share that happens to reside on a domain that they have classified as a clickbait source, most of my friends won't see it even though I went to the effort of sharing it and wanted them to see it.