8 ms·
When You Fall in Love, This Is What Facebook Sees (2014)
- mcv 10y agoCourtship over Facebook is so unromantic. In my day, we used email, SMS and phone.
- calibration263 10y agoDon't forget AIM!
- chinathrow 10y ago(2014)
- FloatingGhost 10y agooh, people actually post on eachother's timelines? I didn't think that was even a thing
- mrswag 10y agoThe graphics are misleading, the Y axis is stretched to make the change look big.
- Jommi 10y agothis is such a classic way.
- hacker_9 10y agofake news!
- grzm 10y ago"Fake news" seems to mean different things to different people. What do you mean by it? That it's not important? That it's just entertainment? That it's false? That it's propaganda? That the person posting it here is doing so for some nefarious reason? Something else?
- 1337biz 10y agoI would say he uses it like everyone else - for any news/source they don't agree with.
- emodendroket 10y agoIf it's significant then what's wrong with using a scale that reflects that, even if the numbers are small in absolute terms?
- mnarayan01 10y agoIn this case at least, they're going from a peak of ~1.66 posts/day to a valley of ~1.54. As an aggregate that looks like a compelling pattern, but consider it on an individual level: we're talking about one post every ten days. Initially looking at the graph made me think the difference was way greater than a post every ten days, so I'd agree with the GP that it is misleading; I was mislead.
- emodendroket 10y agoYeah, but if one post every ten days really is predictive, then showing it at a larger scale isn't helpful.
- mnarayan01 10y agoLooking at the graph, it seems like we're talking about ~16.5 posts in the ten days before a relationship versions versus ~15.7 in the ten days after. In the context of an individual, Facebook might be able to combine this with a bunch of other data to make guesses about people entering relationships, but a quick look at the graph makes it look like they could do it from just this one piece of data. FWIW, I think people are often too quick to dismiss graphs as misleading due to the y-scale and I do think the graph is interesting. That said, I think a lot depends on the context, and being directly below "When You [emphasis added] Fall in Love, This Is What Facebook Sees" makes this seem misleading.
- andrewclunn 10y agoWhat about private messages? I mean we know Facebook tracks those too. Do they just not want to admit as much publicly?
- diggan 10y agoThey admit looking at those as well, in the original post they posted on Facebook[1]: "Relationships start with a period of courtship: on Facebook, messages are exchanged, profiles are visited, posts are shared on each other's timelines." They didn't produce any graphs of the amount of messages exchanged though. [1] https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/the-formation-of-love/10152064609253859 https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/the-for...
- amelius 10y agoSo facebook has an incentive to keep you out of a relationship, it seems.
- vitro 10y agoLonely people tend to hang our more on social media, I guess. Lonely people are also better consumers.
- cmdrfred 10y agoImagine the firms that would fail if all the pretext and games of dating and sex went away. How many less exotic and luxury cars would be sold? Designer clothes, body spray, make-up, hunks of carbon attached to gold bands? Culture would be dramatically different.
- CaptSpify 10y agoI've been wondering what our society will look like once androids look and act comparable to humans. The prevalence of online porn has likely changed social norms drastically in ways I can't imagine, but I'd guess realistic androids even more so.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- donquichotte 10y agoThis is from 2014. I'm not sure whether that is a selection bias, but very few of my friends "share timeline posts" with their partners (or future partners, or anyone really) nowadays.
- rando444 10y agoI think they just worded it poorly, but what I think they mean is just any posts that involve both people. So this would include photos where both people are tagged, mentioning the other person, posting on the other person's wall, and things like that.
- akgerber 10y agoMany of those same people probably also don't post their relationship status on Facebook.
- mikebay 10y agoFacebook,CIA and NSA is laughing your photos and posts while they track your talks/walking/driving kilometres. Facebook / CIA / NSA - big no thanks!
- ploggingdev 10y agoWhen I see posts like these, they creep me out. Another reminder that Facebook and all other online services, ad companies know way too much about their users and can deduce more information about you (in truly creative ways) than you imagined would be possible. When I show these posts to people who resemble the average internet user, they just don't care. This is something that is saddening and baffling for me. I think it's just that most people don't understand why this is an issue to begin with and people need to be made aware of what is going on. The easiest way to start would be to discuss privacy issues with your closest family and friends. Worth mentioning RMS' blog post: https://stallman.org/facebook.html https://stallman.org/facebook.html
- skarap 10y ago"When someone wants to do X they start showing pattern A" is bad enough, but "when you show someone pattern A, they will be 30% more likely to want to do X" is the true disaster. And it is going to happen [more often].
- bryanrasmussen 10y agoWhen you show somebody how much Facebook knows about them they will be 30% more likely to quit Facebook.
- CaptSpify 10y agosource?
- bryanrasmussen 10y agoWell the source is really me being snarky, but there is this http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2423713/Facebook-users-committing-virtual-identity-suicide-quitting-site-droves-privacy-addiction-fears.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2423713/Faceb... which as the source of any authoritative figure would be laughable given the small sample size, but maybe something to build on.
- grzm 10y agoFor reference, previously on HN 3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7250009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7250009
- jkraker 10y agoHere's the full series run by Facebook (2014): https://www.facebook.com/data/posts/10152217010993415 https://www.facebook.com/data/posts/10152217010993415
- carlmcqueen 10y ago1.61-1.65 down to 1.4 something? What is the actual average amount of posts made a day, shared to the timeline? small scale Y axis make it look quite large, but that doesn't seem a seismic shift.
- cbr 10y ago"We only considered couples who declared an anniversary date (as opposed to just changing their relationship status)" Seems like a strange choice; most dating couples I know don't seem to set an anniversary date.
- timpattinson 10y agoMany of my facebook friends (n~400, ~19 years old) are in a 'relationship' with their friends as a joke. Enough to skew any results.
- scottmf 10y agoI'm sure FB can distinguish between real and joke relationships with high accuracy.
- jostmey 10y agoSo facebook, which needs us to spend as much time on the website as possible to maintain advertising revenue, has the perverse incentive of keeping everyone single. So this could be the answer to the Fermi Paradox
- rando444 10y agoYou seem to be mis-interpreting.. or inferring data that is not there. All this is showing is that prior to being in a relationship there is a lot of online activity between two people, and less after being in a relationship. Presumably because prior to being in a relationship, you are spending more time communicating at a distance, and when in a relationship you tend to spend more of your time physically together rather than communicating online. This data says nothing about how much these people are using the website in general.
- moovacha 10y agoPardon the crassness but this statistic as well as the study behind is is utterly useless.
- thereasons 10y ago"the kind of sophistry HN spouts"
- dang 10y agoWe've banned this account and numerous others for serial trolling. Please stop creating accounts to violate the HN guidelines with. In addition to the problem with posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments, it's not ok to create large batches of accounts for a comment or two each. This is a community, and users here should have some consistent identity for each other to relate to. Otherwise we might as well have no usernames at all, which would be a very different site. (Anonymity is of course fine.) We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13284669 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13284669 and marked it off-topic.
- mSparks 10y agoplease take your life somewhere else.
- golergka 10y agoThree full months of courtship? Really?
- nacc 10y agoJust to be pedantic: Each of the data points is an average of many users (and potentially have huge errorbars they do not show). Therefore for single individuals, this result may not be very predictive. In fact, given that the distribution of number of posts likely follows power law, the average is hugely influenced by a small number of heavy facebook users. I would say this figure summaries more about top facebook users rather than the majority of users. So when "you" (an average facebook user) fall in love, this is probably not what facebook sees.
- jmount 10y agoI thought the same thing (and wrote a bit about it: http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2014/02/the-gap-between-data-mining-and-predictive-models/ http://www.win-vector.com/blog/2014/02/the-gap-between-data-... ).
- dhimes 10y agoSomewhat related, my son showed me a program from Britain called "Black Mirror" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror) The shows are an hour or so long, and it's not a series with a long-running plot, but each episode is separate (à la The Twilight Zone). We watched one called "Nosedive" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive), which was set in a future dystopia where everybody was socially rated and that rating was visible to others. Remember the almost-startup from last year, Peeple.com? Yikes!
- rdiddly 10y agoGiven the dubious statistical significance and the fact that predicting who's "courting" each other is really pretty easy, this article seems like a "the suit is back" adverticle for Facebook, touting its predictive abilities to advertisers like Jared, Netflix, Bed Bath & Beyond etc.
- gcr 10y agoOriginal link should have been to Facebook's blog, https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/the-formation-of-love/10152064609253859 https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-science/the-for...
- jondubois 10y agoIt sounds like Facebook has a vested interest in keeping people single and to break up existing couples. I do think that relationships these days are more fleeting than they used to be. I think that Facebook (Instagram, particularly) tends to encourage this type of behaviour. Constantly being exposed to other couples' luxurious lifestyles and holiday trips is not particularly good for relationships (particularly new relationships). I do think that most people these days tend to value earning potential and physical appearance far more than personality when it comes to finding a match and I think that social media is probably responsible for much of this.
- untog 10y ago> So basically, Facebook has a vested interest in keeping people single and to break up existing couples. Not really. Married couples (particularly those with a baby) are incredibly valuable advertising targets. > I do think that most people these days tend to value earning potential and physical appearance far more than personality There is absolutely nothing new about this.
- jondubois 10y ago>> There is absolutely nothing new about this. Not new, but it's getting worse.
- askafriend 10y agoI care about earning potential and physical appearance. Why shouldn't I? I also happen to care about many other things in a potential relationship but those things you mentioned are definitely high up there for me. Who are you to tell me what value system I should have? All of this is independent of social media, by the way.
- misingnoglic 10y agoI don't think you're deducing the right thing here.
- ajkjk 10y agoI think I'd like to see a law that requires all companies to share all information they have on you in an easily understandable format. I think that'd be a great start. Any saved derived information, like what kind of person they think you are, or what they think you'd be likely to buy, must also be shared. Basically a dump of all their databases under your user ID.
- angryasian 10y agoI'm surprised Facebook hasn't specifically monetized this type of behavior. It seems to me that this is a very clear signal of intent and can be monetized.
- NIL8 10y agoI'm curious to know if this type of data could be used to track infidelity. I'm thinking further than domestic trouble and more towards blackmail, espionage, etc. I can see how this type of information could be useful for the wrong reasons.