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While it appears as though your question is framed to get the answer that a non-profit could do Facebook's task better, there are other options. The core questi

While it appears as though your question is framed to get the answer that a non-profit could do Facebook's task better, there are other options. The core question is: is a social network compatible with news? There are other for-profit models that can work. A simple variation is not to use algorithmic presentation of the news feed at all and allow users to select the news they want to see, and to show all the news about the topic in the feed. This method has its own issues. For example, I run a bunch of of newsfeeds about entrepreneurs, (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos etc) on LinkedIn and fairly often I get people complaining that they don't want to see negative news about the entrepreneur -- they only want to see positive news. They describe themselves as fans. I tell them that the won't understand the subject if they don't expose themselves to news they don't like. But think about that on Facebook - this negative news does not get shared, and there's no proper way to say, "this is negative but interesting", the best you've got is the "angry" emoticon. And you only see what Facebook want you to see. They turned off the option to view your feed by most recent items, not because it was difficult to follow, but because it made more money for them. So there are ways to fix these issues, but the cost is that you lose some readers and you lose some money. But for those who remain the experience is better - they are getting informed, not entertained. In its entire life Facebook has always put greed before user experience, so there's no way any of this will change.

zdkl 10y ago
> The core question is: is a social network compatible with news? I understand the value of this question but it's not the core of the problem as I understand. Consider the progression of facebook as a platform. I hope my lack of eloquence won't hurt my point too much, not a native english speaker. Facebook was a valuable service when keeping track of one's social circle was still an analogic problem. Since we the public saw the value in digitizing the 'book keeping' of socialisation, we invested time into the platform to constitute a social group, architected as we saw fit. This at least was the experience of the early days of facebook for me and people I know. I imagine you share it to some degree. Compare that function to what the same company is pushing now. Their business is still acquiring user's time but they now have pivoted enough that the social book keeping aspect is quite secondary to most of the business layer of the company as far as I can tell. I have no business analysing whether focusing on information diffusion control is a good strategy for Facebook the company, I have no idea. The point that concerns me is that the users are now chained along because of time invested in the past. We as users should insist on having the social book keeping available as a low level (open source/GPL/WTFPL) platform on top of which one could choose to enhance that experience as is the business of information outlets. I have no issue with companies choosing profit over UX, but we the public should protest in some form or other while we still more or less have a choice.
ambicapter 10y ago
Facebook needs to add the :thinking_face: emoji to its range of reactions.

zdkl 10y ago

> The core question is: is a social network compatible with news? I understand the value of this question but it's not the core of the problem as I understand. Consider the progression of facebook as a platform. I hope my lack of eloquence won't hurt my point too much, not a native english speaker. Facebook was a valuable service when keeping track of one's social circle was still an analogic problem. Since we the public saw the value in digitizing the 'book keeping' of socialisation, we invested time into the platform to constitute a social group, architected as we saw fit. This at least was the experience of the early days of facebook for me and people I know. I imagine you share it to some degree. Compare that function to what the same company is pushing now. Their business is still acquiring user's time but they now have pivoted enough that the social book keeping aspect is quite secondary to most of the business layer of the company as far as I can tell. I have no business analysing whether focusing on information diffusion control is a good strategy for Facebook the company, I have no idea. The point that concerns me is that the users are now chained along because of time invested in the past. We as users should insist on having the social book keeping available as a low level (open source/GPL/WTFPL) platform on top of which one could choose to enhance that experience as is the business of information outlets. I have no issue with companies choosing profit over UX, but we the public should protest in some form or other while we still more or less have a choice.

ambicapter 10y ago

Facebook needs to add the :thinking_face: emoji to its range of reactions.