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> As of Wednesday, the company has once again changed its trending algorithms. Personal preferences are now out of the equation. "Facebook will no longer be per

by _rpd 10y ago

> As of Wednesday, the company has once again changed its trending algorithms. Personal preferences are now out of the equation. "Facebook will no longer be personalized based on someone's interests," Facebook says in a press release. "Everyone in the same region will see the same topics." For now, a region is considered a country, so everyone in the U.S. should see the same topics. Facebook dropping personalization of news. I'm really surprised.

politician 10y ago
You shouldn't be surprised. It makes it a whole lot easier to implement a whitelist for news sources (e.g. the current mainstream group hurt by blogs) without having to deal with the cognitive dissonance caused by personalization conflicts. For example, suppose my preferences indicate that I think WaPo is basically a marketing outlet for Amazon at this point. If the powers that be tell Facebook that WaPo produces "Real News", then it's harder for Facebook to show me "Real News" if my preferences say that I think they're full of it.
Fiahil 10y ago
Considering the complete failure it was, it would have taken tremendous amount of internal politics, and/or really poor product management, to not amend the "trending news" feature. The surprising thing, for me, is the amount of time they required to change it. It's not like they don't have enough of smart people capable of working on this..
EekSnakePond 10y ago
This is being done to create unified narratives across spaces for future political goals as a way to nullify the narratives of those who rely on personalized ads. Bet you dollars to donuts those regions will look eerily similar to known voting districts.
- facetube 10y ago
  They do. And a company called Cambridge Analytica helped the Trump campaign exploit these clusters. http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/the-british-data-crunchers-who-say-they-helped-donald-trump-to-win/ http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/the-british-data-cruncher...
the_watcher 10y ago
Only partially, unless you consider trending topics to be the entirety of Facebook's news. Presumably, News Feed content and "news" will still be informed by their preferences algorithm, right? When you consider that the majority of their engagement almost certainly continues to come from the News Feed, this seems more like an effort to simply add in a source of news that is not influenced by any kind of self-selection effect.
- _rpd 10y ago
  You're right, it is just trending. Here is the press release this article is based on ... http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/01/continuing-our-updates-to-trending/ http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/01/continuing-our-updates-t...
Applejinx 10y ago
They've figured out that Cambridge Analytica used it as an exploit to swing the Presidential election in the USA, and they're panicking (rightly): https://antidotezine.com/2017/01/22/trump-knows-you/ https://antidotezine.com/2017/01/22/trump-knows-you/
- knowaveragejoe 10y ago
  Yeesh. I've seen the company discussed but hadn't really looked into what they were doing differently than other data-driven campaigns in recent years: > Trump’s conspicuous contradictions and his oft-criticized habit of staking out multiple positions on a single issue result in a gigantic number of resulting messaging options that creates a huge advantage for a firm like Cambridge Analytica: for every voter, a different message. Mathematician Cathy O’Neil had already observed in August that “Trump is like a machine learning algorithm” that adjusts to public reactions. “Pretty much every message that Trump put out was data-driven,” Alexander Nix explained to Das Magazin. On the day of the third presidential debate between Trump and Clinton, Trump’s team blasted out 175,000 distinct test variations on his arguments, mostly via Facebook. The messages varied mostly in their microscopic details, in order to communicate optimally with their recipients: different titles, colors, subtitles, with different images or videos. The granularity of this message tailoring digs all the way down to tiny target groups, Nix told Das Magazin. “We can target specific towns or apartment buildings. Even individual people.” > In the Miami neighborhood of Little Haiti, Trump’s campaign regaled residents with messages about the failures of the Clinton Foundation after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, in order to dissuade them from turning out for Clinton. This was one of the goals: to get potential but wavering Clinton voters—skeptical leftists, African-Americans, young women—to stay home. To “suppress” their votes, as one Trump campaign staffer bluntly put it. In these so-called dark posts (paid Facebook ads which appear in the timelines only of users with a particular suitable personality profile), African-Americans, for example, were shown the nineties-era video of Hillary Clinton referring to black youth as “super predators.”
  - leereeves 10y ago
    In 2008 and 2012, Obama pioneered the use of A/B testing to refine campaign messages. "175,000 distinct test variations" sounds like a more ambitious effort at the same strategy. And targeting relevant information at wavering voters seems like a common strategy in 2016. House of Cards had both fictional Presidential candidates doing something similar in their fictional election, and Bloomberg once wrote "[Hillary's] campaign is looking to build on the digital engagement strategy devised by the Obama team, customizing the messages e-mailed to the estimated 8.6 million people on its list to make them as personal as possible."
jakebasile 10y ago
Unfortunately this means I can prepare to see lots of articles about vapid celebrity gossip and sports. I actually found the personalized trending stuff moderately interesting, but now it'll just register as a dead zone once that stuff trickles in.
- andybak 10y ago
  Personalized news sounds like a wonderful thing but it's a very dangerous weapon that is hard to wield purely for good.
SmellyGeekBoy 10y ago
Trending Topics was personalised? That really surprises me. Mine is always all celebrity gossip from UK tabloid newspapers, which I have zero interest in. I suppose the good news is that their profiling algorithm has completely the wrong idea about me.

by _rpd 10y ago

politician 10y ago

You shouldn't be surprised. It makes it a whole lot easier to implement a whitelist for news sources (e.g. the current mainstream group hurt by blogs) without having to deal with the cognitive dissonance caused by personalization conflicts. For example, suppose my preferences indicate that I think WaPo is basically a marketing outlet for Amazon at this point. If the powers that be tell Facebook that WaPo produces "Real News", then it's harder for Facebook to show me "Real News" if my preferences say that I think they're full of it.

Fiahil 10y ago

Considering the complete failure it was, it would have taken tremendous amount of internal politics, and/or really poor product management, to not amend the "trending news" feature. The surprising thing, for me, is the amount of time they required to change it. It's not like they don't have enough of smart people capable of working on this..

EekSnakePond 10y ago

This is being done to create unified narratives across spaces for future political goals as a way to nullify the narratives of those who rely on personalized ads. Bet you dollars to donuts those regions will look eerily similar to known voting districts.

facetube 10y ago
They do. And a company called Cambridge Analytica helped the Trump campaign exploit these clusters. http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/the-british-data-crunchers-who-say-they-helped-donald-trump-to-win/ http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/the-british-data-cruncher...

the_watcher 10y ago

Only partially, unless you consider trending topics to be the entirety of Facebook's news. Presumably, News Feed content and "news" will still be informed by their preferences algorithm, right? When you consider that the majority of their engagement almost certainly continues to come from the News Feed, this seems more like an effort to simply add in a source of news that is not influenced by any kind of self-selection effect.

_rpd 10y ago
You're right, it is just trending. Here is the press release this article is based on ... http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/01/continuing-our-updates-to-trending/ http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/01/continuing-our-updates-t...

Applejinx 10y ago

They've figured out that Cambridge Analytica used it as an exploit to swing the Presidential election in the USA, and they're panicking (rightly): https://antidotezine.com/2017/01/22/trump-knows-you/ https://antidotezine.com/2017/01/22/trump-knows-you/

knowaveragejoe 10y ago
Yeesh. I've seen the company discussed but hadn't really looked into what they were doing differently than other data-driven campaigns in recent years: > Trump’s conspicuous contradictions and his oft-criticized habit of staking out multiple positions on a single issue result in a gigantic number of resulting messaging options that creates a huge advantage for a firm like Cambridge Analytica: for every voter, a different message. Mathematician Cathy O’Neil had already observed in August that “Trump is like a machine learning algorithm” that adjusts to public reactions. “Pretty much every message that Trump put out was data-driven,” Alexander Nix explained to Das Magazin. On the day of the third presidential debate between Trump and Clinton, Trump’s team blasted out 175,000 distinct test variations on his arguments, mostly via Facebook. The messages varied mostly in their microscopic details, in order to communicate optimally with their recipients: different titles, colors, subtitles, with different images or videos. The granularity of this message tailoring digs all the way down to tiny target groups, Nix told Das Magazin. “We can target specific towns or apartment buildings. Even individual people.” > In the Miami neighborhood of Little Haiti, Trump’s campaign regaled residents with messages about the failures of the Clinton Foundation after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, in order to dissuade them from turning out for Clinton. This was one of the goals: to get potential but wavering Clinton voters—skeptical leftists, African-Americans, young women—to stay home. To “suppress” their votes, as one Trump campaign staffer bluntly put it. In these so-called dark posts (paid Facebook ads which appear in the timelines only of users with a particular suitable personality profile), African-Americans, for example, were shown the nineties-era video of Hillary Clinton referring to black youth as “super predators.”
- leereeves 10y ago
  In 2008 and 2012, Obama pioneered the use of A/B testing to refine campaign messages. "175,000 distinct test variations" sounds like a more ambitious effort at the same strategy. And targeting relevant information at wavering voters seems like a common strategy in 2016. House of Cards had both fictional Presidential candidates doing something similar in their fictional election, and Bloomberg once wrote "[Hillary's] campaign is looking to build on the digital engagement strategy devised by the Obama team, customizing the messages e-mailed to the estimated 8.6 million people on its list to make them as personal as possible."

jakebasile 10y ago

Unfortunately this means I can prepare to see lots of articles about vapid celebrity gossip and sports. I actually found the personalized trending stuff moderately interesting, but now it'll just register as a dead zone once that stuff trickles in.

andybak 10y ago
Personalized news sounds like a wonderful thing but it's a very dangerous weapon that is hard to wield purely for good.

SmellyGeekBoy 10y ago

Trending Topics was personalised? That really surprises me. Mine is always all celebrity gossip from UK tabloid newspapers, which I have zero interest in. I suppose the good news is that their profiling algorithm has completely the wrong idea about me.