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The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem

• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• filleokus 9y ago
  Site down for me: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FcwargQcuogJ:boffosocko.com/2017/07/11/the-facebook-algorithm-mom-problem/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=se&client=safari http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FcwargQ...
  • entelechy0 9y ago
    same
  • timsayshey 9y ago
    Not all heroes wear capes -- thank you!
    • frenchie4111 9y ago
      Someone should make a browser extension that will automatically (or provides a button to quickly) load the cached version when a site is down Edit: I just made a super simple bookmarklet that does it: http://mikelyons.org/2017/06/12/Google-Cache-Javascript-Shortcut.html http://mikelyons.org/2017/06/12/Google-Cache-Javascript-Shor...
      • elixer 9y ago
        Perhaps this is what you are looking for: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-cache-browser/kmjckhnhmegjfffjogbdefcbddmmchea?utm_source=chrome-app-launcher-info-dialog https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/google-cache-brows...
        • deleted 9y ago
          [deleted]
      • pmlnr 9y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14505739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14505739
        • frenchie4111 9y ago
          Oops, didn't see this until after I made mine. Thanks!
      • Kubuxu 9y ago
        You can also write `cache:` in front of the URL. Works in FF, probably also in Chrome.
        • frenchie4111 9y ago
          Oh sweet, works in Safari as well
        • DeltaWhy 9y ago
          Looks like this is a Google search feature - didn't work for me in FF with DuckDuckGo as default search engine, but worked when I added !g to the end.
      • msujaws 9y ago
        https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/no-more-404s/ https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/no-more-404s/
      • girst 9y ago
        This one for FireFox supports Google Cache, Archive.org and Archive.Is - https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/resurrect-pages/ https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/resurrect-pages/
• piker 9y ago
  Interesting post. I clicked thinking someone had coined a clever new "NASCAR Dad" moniker about parents who read and parrot their Facebook echo chamber at Thanksgiving, but was pleasantly surprised.
• ianhawes 9y ago
  There is a very simple solution for this issue. Create a Facebook Page for yourself as a brand, post links to your articles on that page, then share it from your personal Facebook page.
  • creaghpatr 9y ago
    It would be interesting if Facebook allowed personal users to access the brand tools that pages get (impressions, distribution, etc). This won't happen because facebook wants you to think everyone is seeing your posts. People would be livid if they knew just how low of a % of friends were actually viewing their stuff due to algorithmic meddling.
    • theseatoms 9y ago
      Interesting. At least on Twitter everything's above board when I shout into the void.
    • athenot 9y ago
      I think that's why there's been more and more images posted as video, to track viewership (FB shows the number of views on videos but not pictures).
      • creaghpatr 9y ago
        I agree, people want validation and it steers them to post a higher ratio of videos. A subtle way of altering user behavior.
  • jrochkind1 9y ago
    Do you understand enough about how the algorithm is working to be sure this solution is effective? Even if your Mom still immediately 'likes' it? What if she 'likes' your brand too, then sees all brand posts on her timeline, and still immediately likes them?
    • ianhawes 9y ago
• Beltiras 9y ago
  I like the idea of "embargo from group for n days".
• jrochkind1 9y ago
  Kind of fascinating.
• aeturnum 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure this description is wrong. My impression is facebook shows your content to a subset of friends and then classifies it based on likes received. If your mom 'like's 9/10 posts and your other friends like 3/10 posts, then 60% of your posts /are/ family content. Even if they're about mathematical theories.
  • emodendroket 9y ago
    It seems like what he is claiming is that his mom instantly clicks like on everything and so the post gets gated before his other friends ever have the opportunity to indicate whether they like it.
    • ghostly_s 9y ago
      The missing detail here of course is...maybe his posts aren't getting engagement outside of mom because his Facebook 'friends' aren't interested in them?
      • emodendroket 9y ago
        Well, that would seem to be contradicted by the observation that his friends do engage with them if he hides the posts from his mom.
        • scottmf 9y ago
          I feel like accounting for people who like everything would be one of the first things built into such an algorithm. He should try alternating the privacy settings with each post.
          • emodendroket 9y ago
            I realize there isn't an extreme level of rigor here, but it gets tiresome reading HN comments where it's just a series of increasingly extravagant hoops for the original article to jump through before the commenter is willing to accept that the findings might be valid and give any consideration to the article's implications.
• danso 9y ago
  tl;dr, as I understand it: when family members Like your Facebook content in relative quick succession, FB apparently interprets it as a signal that it is family-specific content. I didn't see any metrics but this seems plausible. I think I'm more of a fan of FB than the average web geek, probably because I used it at its phase of peak innocence (college years) and have since weaned myself off to the point of checking it on a less-than-weekly basis. I also almost never post professional work there, nor "friend" current colleagues. Moreover, I've actively avoided declaring familial relationships (though I have listed a few fake relationships just to screw with the algorithm). But wasn't the feature of making yourself a "brand page" and/or having "subscribers" (which don't count toward the 5,000 friend limit) supposed to mitigate this a bit? I guess I'm so used to keeping Facebook solely for personal content (and using Twitter for public-facing content) that I'm out of touch with the sharing mechanics. That, and anecdotal experience of how baby/wedding pics seems to be the most Liked/Shared content in my friend network.
  • bad_user 9y ago
    > But wasn't the feature of making yourself a "brand page" and/or having "subscribers" (which don't count toward the 5,000 friend limit) supposed to mitigate this a bit? If you have a page, Facebook wants to milk you, so they've got this weird algorithm that pushes your posts to only a small fraction of the page's followers, expecting you to start "promoting" them. Basically they screwed "organic reach". Oh, and about 3 days ago I created a second Facebook account with the purpose of connecting with software developers and my English-speaking friends (I'm Romanian). I did this thinking that I don't want to share semi-private pictures of family with strangers, or to spam my family and friends with programming stuff. But only 24 hours later they've disabled my account because of "security concerns", without notice and now I'm waiting on their support to reply after I've sent them my picture for validation. And another thing - the online parents group from my son's school is on WhatsApp. They tried a Facebook group, but the problem is that when important announcements happen, not all parents receive notifications, so they resorted to something that works. Facebook is freaking terrible.
    • ProblemFactory 9y ago
• mrleinad 9y ago
  I'd like Facebook to have an option to see all posts, without filtering, just as they're posted. It's not hard, it's a simple UX, but it's just not there.
  • ianhawes 9y ago
    I believe that option already exists[0]. [0] http://imgur.com/a/gg2DH http://imgur.com/a/gg2DH
    • emodendroket 9y ago
      The pace at which it updates suggests to me that it is not truly an unfiltered stream of everything new.
    • artur_makly 9y ago
      not on ios mobile
      • delecti 9y ago
        If it's anything like the Android version, it's hidden in the settings. Hamburger menu > Scroll way down to the "Feeds" section > "Most Recent"
    • r3bl 9y ago
      No, that's still from your own bubble that you see on "Top Stories", just ranked "newest first". Not the full list you've subscribed to (as in, every single page and every single friend).
    • cmg 9y ago
      It's a very temporary setting. If you click on any Facebook link (someone's profile, a page, a post page) it reverts to you "Top"
  • titanix2 9y ago
    What I want is a feed API to write my own post selection algorithm. Sadly, it's never gonna happen.
• AznHisoka 9y ago
  This is not a problem, and I certainly hope Facebook does not fix it. Why? Because it forced the OP to narrow down his audience and show the post only to those who would enjoy it. That's a much better experience than everyone trying to push everything they publish to you.
  • rigden33 9y ago
    The problem he is referring to is not that facebook narrows down the audience based off of likes. His problem is that his mom, and consequently other family members, always immediately likes his posts regardless of the content which narrows the audience down to his family members instead of the intended audience. He wants Facebook to take into account that the person liking his post is his mom before narrowing down the audience to family members.
    • AznHisoka 9y ago
      But the content is not intended for his mom, so he shouldn't have targeted it to everybody.
      • ramzyo 9y ago
        The post is intended for an audience including his mom (she interacts with his posts by liking them). The author's argument is that Facebook's algorithm is (incorrectly) assuming that her interaction is based on interest in the actual content, rather than her association with the author.
      • SamBam 9y ago
        Sure it is. He even says that he later changes the settings to his mom sees it. He wants his mom to see it, he just doesn't want Facebook to get the wrong interpretation by his mom liking it.
  • detaro 9y ago
    How do you know his mom did not enjoy seeing what her son is up to, even if she doesn't understand much of it?
• paulcnichols 9y ago
  Honestly, if FB was just me and my mom I'd probably get more value out of the site. Smaller radius is better IMO.
  • Anderkent 9y ago
    Remove other friends then?
    • thex10 9y ago
      I did this. One day I just decided to make my Facebook account family only - removed hundreds of "friends". It worked great for me. I don't idly check it so often (because there are fewer updates), but I still get to see what people I care about are up to.
  • chickenfries 9y ago
    Pruning my friends improved my experience, but they grow back over time as people rediscover you or you make new acquaintances. I wonder if you could make a game or website that forced you to prune your facebook friends down, perhaps by looking at your social graph and telling you that you haven't messaged with a person in x years or something, or that you've never even "liked" something they posted. Some heuristics to determine who you really wouldn't miss. The problem with unfriending is that Facebook's UI makes it almost impossible to do in batches, and it feels kind of rude to "unfriend" someone, even though I personally wouldn't care if someone I don't talk to unfriended me.
    • delecti 9y ago
      Here's a trick to constantly pruning down your friends list. Don't worry about pruning down your whole list, just check the people who have birthdays every day you log in. I just checked; there was a single friend who had a birthday today, and I haven't had any contact with her in years. That makes for a nice easy prune. Of course the downsides are that you risk disappointing someone who obsessively checks their friend count on their birthday, and that it only really works if you log in every day.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• _greim_ 9y ago
  > Facebook, despite the fact that they know she’s my mom, doesn’t take this fact into account in their algorithm. Wouldn't it also be possible to analyze the content of the post to determine if it's family-related? It seems like with a math or technical post, that should be easy for FB to do.
  • isoskeles 9y ago
    What if mom is a mathematician?
    • wutbrodo 9y ago
      Why would that imply that the rest of the family would want to c it? The suggestion here isn't hiding it from mom, it's avoiding interpreting a click from mom as "this is something primarily family cares about."
• mamon 9y ago
  You are obviously giving Facebook to much information to act upon. Some suggestions: 1. Don't use Facebook :) 2. If you use it don't tag your family members as such. Or your close friends as FB "close friends" 3. Never tag anyone in photos 4. Never set "relationship status" 5. Never add info about where do you live, work, etc. 6. Having separate public profile for your company/work related stuff is probably a good idea. 7. Never post anything you wouldn't want to see in CNN news :)
  • tjr 9y ago
    See also: https://stallman.org/facebook-presence.html https://stallman.org/facebook-presence.html
• 45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
  Facebook is disgusting. * Delete your account * Convince your mother to delete her account
  • dang 9y ago
    Would you please not post unsubstantive comments here? If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do.
    • 45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
      Im sorry dang. its become a bit of a dirty habit to throw shade on FB whenever it comes up. I hate it with a passion. My goal is to get as many people to question their usage of FB and if it really enhances their lives. Ill try to be more constructive with my comments.
      • behohippy 9y ago
        Network effect, and entrenched enemy are an issue here. You'd have to build something much better than Facebook to start eating away at that monster and disrupt the network. I loved Google+ and Mastodon but they're not 10x better.
      • rconti 9y ago
        Judged by this thread, I enjoy Facebook posts far more than your comments. Ergo, in my opinion, Facebook is the signal and your posts are the noise. I know it's not fair to compare a couple of 'activist' comments to an entire social network, but I felt it was worth pointing out that this style of "content" is more destructive to many audiences than Facebook is.
• roundupReady 9y ago
  I want Mark Zuckerberg put in a cage, and I want him to die there. Join me on Reddit to discuss this issue. https://www.reddit.com/r/nsa/comments/6muq9o/i_want_mark_zuckerberg_put_in_a_cage_and_i_want/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nsa/comments/6muq9o/i_want_mark_zuc...
• andreasgonewild 9y ago
  It's simple really, just stop participating in that evil experiment. From the outside, you look like morons; talking to opposite sides of an algorithm while interpreting what comes out as reality. It's been proven over and over again that consuming that crap makes everyone feel bad and hate each other. There are plenty of alternatives, but this one is mine: https://github.com/andreas-gone-wild/snackis https://github.com/andreas-gone-wild/snackis
  • wutbrodo 9y ago
    > It's been proven over and over again that consuming crap like this makes everyone feel bad and hate each other. Consuming posts about theoretical math? Because that's them only content that the article talks about. I'd love to see the research that claims this.
    • andreasgonewild 9y ago
      I was rather thinking about consuming bullshit lies about other peoples fabulous lives, algorithmically arranged for maximum impact. But yes, bragging about the size of your intellect falls in the same basket. Google it if you desperately need authority to back up common sense. Most of the stuff people post on Facebook just wouldn't be posted in a less twisted medium, and we would all be better off. I know I'm growing tired of watching adults, companies and even authorities do anything for a few like-clicks. It's sick and corrupting, and it needs to stop.
      • wutbrodo 9y ago
        If you think that posting things that interest you is bragging about your intellect, I think that says a lot more about deep-seated problems you may have than it does about Facebook. The thing is, I agree with you that many people's Facebook usage probably isn't particularly good for their psyche, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible to use it healthily (at its core, it's just a communications medium) and the assumption that articles about theoretical math is "bragging about the size of your intellect" is honestly just pathetic.
      • 9y ago
• pmlnr 9y ago
  Yesterday I sent one of my friends a link to an old - 4.5 years old, from 2013 dec - entry he wrote as a Facebook note. There were 70+ likes, 30+ commenters and 110 comments on it. He added a new comment yesterday - I only saw it, because I randomly decided to read through the comments. Those who commented on it should have received a notification - well, in the end, 2 people got something. This is how you effectively kill conversation - which dazzles me, because keeping conversations running = engagement, which is supposed to be one of the end goals. I get the "need" of a filter bubble, even though I'd simple let people choke on the amount of crap they'd get if follow would actually mean get everything - they may learn not to like things without thinking. But not sending notifications at all? Why? Why is that good?
  • hutattedonmyarm 9y ago
    On the other hand, I get more (and less relevant) notifications the less I’m active. $friendINeverTalkTo has commented on $PostByPageIDontFollow is NOT something I want to get notified about. Neither is XYZ has uploaded a photo
    • SapphireSun 9y ago
      My guess is the point of those notifications is that it gives them an excuse to add points to the addictive little red number. It's not because they think you'll actually care.
      • realusername 9y ago
        I saw that as well. If you click on of this useless notification, they invent a new one around 30mins later which would not have existed otherwise.
      • pmlnr 9y ago
        If this is true that would be the last nail in the coffin. It goes against everything that site, in theory, used to stand for.
• erikb 9y ago
  I also have a problem with social media in general, especially with following people instead of institutions/groups. Usually what 99.9% of people like is totally not what I like. So if you base the content I should consume on the assumptions that I like what my connections liked you are nearly going the opposite direction of what I want. PS: Maybe some of you have the experience of having an active following. I notice that many social networks like Twitter, FB, Youtube, allow comments. But almost never does the content creator/sharer actually react to comments. Some may use comments in future content, but some don't react at all. Are these people not even reading the comments? Why are people commenting when it's so obvious that it's just going down a black hole? For instance, on Twitter a share with additional text is nearly the same amount of work than a comment. And it's obvious that you reach more people by share-commenting rather than simply writing your comment underneath the content. So why do people do that? And why does Twitter has the option to comment even?
• amonadisamonoid 9y ago
  I don't see this as a problem. I'd see Facebook knowing that your mum (mom? potarto?) liked your Lie Algebra post because she loves you like the 6lb baby when you were born as a big problem and the amber light signaling the fast approach of the corporate-owned AI singularity.
• rainhacker 9y ago
  I feel it's not limited to family. Empirically I've noticed liking of a post factors in how much someone likes the poster then just the contents of a post.
• smrtinsert 9y ago
  Beyond a 'mom' problem, this seems like a highly plausible cause for the incredibly silo-ed content on Facebook.
• anotheryou 9y ago
  Any proof of this happening? And does it utilize the user-provided relationship data or just group people?
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• rickpmg 9y ago
  >.. shame on Facebook for torturing them for the exposure when I was originally targeting maybe 10 other colleagues to begin with. Seems like the facebook algorithm is actually working for the users by in effect blocking insipid idiots from posting their crap trying to game the system. You don't 'target' colleagues.. colleagues are people you work with and respect.. not try to spam.
  • pmlnr 9y ago
    Geez. Target in this case: stuff that will most probably interest that specific group of people. How about reading the authors' publications before making assumptions next time?
    • rickpmg 9y ago
      He's clearly on a mission to be 'known'... he spends an awful lot of time and effort worrying about how his posts rank and perform... to me, that's disingenuous. >Could you fix this algorithm problem please? I’m sure I’m not the only son or daughter to suffer from it. He's asking facebook to fix his mom? The algorithm isn't broken.
• ryanbrunner 9y ago
  I find a lot of sites feel like they're overtuning their recommendation engines, to the detriment of using the site. YouTube is particularly bad for this - given the years of history and somewhat regular viewing of the site, I feel like it should have a relatively good idea of what I'm interested in. Instead, the YouTube homepage seems myopically focused on the last 5-10 videos I watched.
  • Dylan16807 9y ago
    Trying youtube music recently made that abundantly clear, with an awful awful playlist extrapolated from something like 4 recent songs.
  • avar 9y ago
    This is because they're not trying to give you stuff you'd generally like given your entire history. The recommendation feature powers the part of YouTube that auto-plays the upcoming video. So e.g. if I go and view Russian dashcam videos they're going to automatically play more of them, even though I've shown no prior interest in that topic. Having two systems for recommendations would introduce a lot of UI complexity, so I can see why they didn't go for that, and why the recommendations are consequently tuned for people who are actively watching videos on some topic right now.
    • idyllei 9y ago
      I imagine it would be possible (though difficult) to autoplay videos which are related to each other and gradually converge to something that would interest the viewer. For example, Russian dash cams to Russia at night to the Russian sleep experiment creepypasta, to horror games to video games in general, if that is what the user tends to watch. I know this has graph theory written all over it and the shortest-distance problem has wreaked havoc for centuries, but I think with enough resources Google/YouTube could find a good compromise in this situation.
    • icebraining 9y ago
      Having two systems for recommendations would introduce a lot of UI complexity, Do you mean, in terms of implementation or for the user? Because as the later, I think the two are already conceptually different (homepage vs next video), so I don't see how just feeding it different videos would make it more complex.
• haterswillhate 9y ago
  Facebook blocking users .. who try do excatly what facebook does ? Well, facebook. That sucks. You sell my privacy to anybody.. and I cant even send messages.
• carapace 9y ago
  I've said it before and I'll say it again, FB users are a kind of digital peasant or serf. To me it feels like we're seeing the genesis of the divide between Morlocks and Eloi.
  • dredmorbius 9y ago
    "Digital Sharecropping" is Nicholas Carr's term. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/connecticut-tax-inequality-cities/532623/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/connect... http://www.roughtype.com/?p=634 http://www.roughtype.com/?p=634
    • carapace 9y ago
      Cogent, cheers. Personally I find the power differential more disturbing than the economic aspect (which is still pretty disturbing.) FB (and Google and Amazon and ...) have enormous power with only the crudest of checks, an their users cannot fully understand how that power works and affects them.
• EGreg 9y ago
  Simple solution: hide post from family :)
  • isubkhankulov 9y ago
    this. facebook has targeting tools, the OP must not have used them?
    • detaro 9y ago
      He describes his solution using said targeting tools in the post and you think he "must not have used them"?
• mullingitover 9y ago
  I generally hold facebook in contempt for the forced filtering that they subject me to. Making the 'sort posts chronologically' flag come unstuck is a dirty hack that they should be ashamed of.
• compiler-guy 9y ago
  For every social media site XX: Question: "Why does XX do things this way?" Answer: "Because it increases engagement." Why does the Facebook algorithm do this? Because it increases clicks. Why does Youtube use autoplay? Because it increases watch time. For every single social media site.
  • Nition 9y ago
    This article is about how while Facebook's intention is to increase engagement, it backfires in this specific case because the algorithm takes his mother's Like and interprets that as "this post will get the most engagement from family" when actually it was more targeted to outsiders.
    • Bakary 9y ago
      For all we know the author's experience is a fringe case and Facebook's policy in this instance is successful.
      • Nition 9y ago
        For sure. I just thought it sounded like compiler-guy hadn't quite understood what the article was claiming.
        • compiler-guy 9y ago
          I understood it very well. The issue is that his case is an edge case and facebook likely doesn't care--the algorithm creates more engagement than it destroys.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• muzammil 9y ago
  dsf
• kromem 9y ago
  Facebook also has a serious problem in that its news feed is a content recommendation engine with only positive reinforcement but no negative reinforcement. So you end up with a ton of false positives even when actively interacting with the content, and their system doesn't even know how wrong it is. And should you really not like some content, the solution is unfriending the poster, rather than simply matching against that type of content (political, religious, etc). The fact there isn't a private dislike button (that no one sees you clicked other than Facebook), is remarkable at this point. It's either woefully obtuse, or intentional so that a feed of false positives better hides moderately targeted ads.
  • alttab 9y ago
    You can hide individual posts, posts similar to it, and posts from individual groups or people. That solution doesn't require defriending or unliking a page. Facebook uses this feedback when recommending content
  • objclxt 9y ago
    I'm not sure I'd call it woefully obtuse, at least on the web (which is what I primarily use it for). See an example here: http://imgur.com/a/3Tjb7 http://imgur.com/a/3Tjb7 ...note that I can choose to dislike the post itself, or hide the entire source or app if I prefer.
  • pfd1986 9y ago
    Is that also true to HN, since most users can't downvote?
    • Tenobrus 9y ago
      Not really? It's a very different system, there's no plausible way to have a "private" downvote when the "recommendation system" here is entirely crowdsourced rather than personalized. I suppose the hide button is sort of an equivalent, but I don't think the systems are really comparable.
  • dghughes 9y ago
    That's like YouTube lord help you if you click on a video you don't like by mistake you'll never see the end of it in the recommended section. It's to the point now where I just log out so I can see what's available rather than a continuous feedback of what I already watched.
• siliconc0w 9y ago
  I feel like these are just shitty models. A good recommendation model would get features like "is_mom" and learn that "is_mom" is a shitty predictor of relevance. Similarly with Amazon, products should have some sort of 'elasticity' score where it should learn that recommendations of inelastic products is a waste of screen real-estate. I mean, I doubt the model is giving a high % to most of those recommends - it's likely more a business/UX issue in that they've decided it's worth showing you low-probability recommends instead of a cleaner page (or something more useful). Youtube, on the hand, seems to be precision tuned to get you to watch easy to digest crap. You consume the crap voraciously but are generally left unfulfilled. This is a more difficult problem where you're rewarding naive views rather than a more difficult to discern 'intrinsic value' metric. As a 'long term' business play the model should probably weight more intellectually challenging content just like fast food restaurants should probably figure out how to sell healthier food because by pedaling crap you're only meeting consumer's immediate needs, not their long term ones.
  • soperj 9y ago
    I feel like Youtube's algorithm is horrible. My kids were listening to kids songs on it, and there's an advertisement for a Son Of Sam podcast.
• firasd 9y ago
  Even aside from complicated questions like the Newsfeed algorithm, when a friend started hitting Like on nearly every post of mine I appreciated their caring but mentally discounted the meaning of their Like in terms of being a reaction to the content of my post. It's like "Like Inflation". So the algo should probably do the same about indiscriminate likes...
• warcher 9y ago
  Unrelated but worse problem: top of feed livelock. If you're below the fold, cause, I dunno, you got shit to do, you are only going to get viewed by heavy scrollers, which overly favors (IMHO, as somebody with shit to do) folks who get on the thread first. Even a one-dimensional "rank by number of uplikes" filter still doesn't calculate your likes/views ratio, which is what you'd actually care about.
  • warcher 9y ago
    This is probably not a facebook problem, as facebook serves you content based on.... god only knows what. But HN? Reddit? Tweeter? Rampant. Real bad for engagement, as anybody looking at a post with more than a few comments knows not to even bother. Gots to get that engagement, you know?
• arikrak 9y ago
  I haven't found Facebook to be very good at recommending things. They often don't seem to be able to tell what people are interested in, and they don't really let users control who they're posting to. For example, they should make it easier to just post to people who live in the same city...
• pdevine 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure they're using a machine learning algorithm, and it's determining the way to handle your post. Can someone who understands the ML algorithms better than I explain how this would interact with the feature weights? I'd be curious as to how we think that would play out.
• robbles 9y ago
  I'm not a machine learning expert, but isn't this an easily solved problem? Similar to TF/IDF, where you mitigate common words by dividing by their overall frequency, you should be able to divide the weight of any particular "like" by the frequency of likes between the two people. That way a genuine expression of interest by an acquaintance is weighted far higher than a relative or close friend that reflexively likes everything you post.
• chjohasbrouck 9y ago
  Some proof or data to back up the article's claim would be great. I'm not really buying it. If moms auto-like every post, then how is that a relevant signal? Everyone has a mom. That would mean every post is getting penalized in the same way (which effectively means no posts are getting penalized). And if circumventing this was as simple as excluding his mom, wouldn't the effect be even greater if he excluded all non-technical friends and family? Which pretty much just means you're posting this for the greater public, which presumably a lot of users of Facebook's API already do. Since his intention is for his content to be seen by the greater public, then... go ahead and tell the API that? It's a great angle for an article, and it's very shareable, but he provides no data (even though he seems like someone who would have all of the data).
  • saym 9y ago
    Have you ever had a post that ended up being liked by an odd subset of your Facebook friends? I certainly have had posts, that for some reason, only my high school friends end up liking. I know this is only another anecdote and real data would be preferable. But I'm convinced that the described behavior absolutely happens.
• viraptor 9y ago
  I find this interesting: So much talk about the technical solutions both in the post and in the comments here. Yet, it doesn't seem like he asked his mom not to like his tech posts. If that's the goal - why not start there?
• harry8 9y ago
  Dump facebook, it's sucks for basically everything. Ring your mom, tell her she's awesome and you love her. Wish I could ring mine... Post a blog post to a real blog under your control. If you want a colleague to see it, email the link and ask for feedback. There solved. It's a good algo too.
  • Sleeep 9y ago
    Um, the author does post to their blog as well: >For quite a while now, I’ve been publishing most of my content to my personal website first and syndicating copies of it to social media silos like Twitter, Instagram, Google+, and Facebook. Within the Indieweb community this process is known as POSSE an acronym for Post on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. YMMV on if Facebook sucks for you, your experience is probably the exception. Personally, I find it very valuable despite it's many flaws. It has made making new friends a lot easier (and I absolutely needed local friends after I relocated). I've used it to reconnect with a couple childhood friends which has been absolutely amazing and I'm super grateful for that. Also, my mother is very toxic and abusive so I'd really rather not call her, however, I can acknowledge that my experience calling my mother is probably the exception. Additional values comes with being "Facebook friends" with my mom, it reduces her need to pick up the phone and harass me.
• iplaw 9y ago
  No joke. My mom is the first person to LIKE anything that I post -- and then make an inappropriate comment on it. I have added all of my family to a family group. I'll see if I can post to friends/publically and exclude an entire group of contacts.
• type0 9y ago
  > I’d love to hear from others who’ve seen a similar effect and love their mothers (or other close loved ones) enough to not cut them out of their Facebook lives. I think the bigger issue is family members, friends and relatives who do cut out their non-fb using closed ones by ignoring all other methods of telecommunication. "Oh, you didn't knew we planned a wedding, too bad you're not on fb!"
• jondubois 9y ago
  It's a more general problem than that. Maybe Facebook should penalise posts written by popular authors, celebrities or recognizable brands to offset the popularity (rich-get-richer) factor and select only for quality.
• husamia 9y ago
  our interests are different based on our daily interactions outside of facebook. How would an algorithm define that?
• minademian 9y ago
  Had an aha moment reading this post. It makes sense now. This sentence mirrors my own recent experience: "These kinds of things are ones which I would relay to them via phone or in person and not post about publicly."
• SadWebDeveloper 9y ago
  Offtopic: It always baffles me when people "suggest" better ways to customize their "internet feed" because they don't realize how much information the "system" need to know about you (or those persons close to you) in order to make it useful and when confronted/informed about it, they explicitly denied such permission because it undermines their privacy.