6 ms·

> 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 th

> 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
> 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. While this does enable Facebook to force brands to buy advertising, it is also an user-friendly change. Nobody who I have spoken to about this thinks that "like/follow" = "I want to see everything they post" on Facebook. People like restaurants they had a nice dinner at and want to publish their support, it doesn't mean they want to see the daily special every day. Even if they "follow" you, it doesn't mean it should show up before a friend's holiday pictures today, and tomorrow there is already new content. The reality is that most facebook users do not care about the posts from pages they like/follow, even if they pressed the button some time ago. An automated filter that keeps these posts from showing up is good for the user experience. It's the same as "facebook friends" - they aren't real friends, just people you met once at a party in college. It might be interesting to see a post from them once in 10 years when they get married or move to a new country, but not their daily life. The same applies for brand pages - a like should give you once in 10 years access to their feed, but not more.
- guelo 9y ago
  I know better than The Algorithm whether I want to see every post or not. But I'm not allowed to decide that because The Algorithm isn't there to serve me it's there to serve Facebook.
  - traek 9y ago
    You can decide that whenever you want, just change your follow settings for the page to 'See First' from 'Following'.
- specialist 9y ago
  I wasn't aware that facebook does partial publishing/pushing from Pages. I'm co-admin for an org's official Page (and Group). Our bylaws require advance announcement of various things, like meetings and resolutions. We've been using our official Page just like our mail listserv, assuming all our subscribers are getting all of our announcements. Frankly, this sucks. Minimally, it violates the UX design principle of least astonishment.
  - ValentineC 9y ago
    > We've been using our official Page just like our mail listserv, assuming all our subscribers are getting all of our announcements. They will get it if they access your page directly, or subscribe to notifications from your page. It's the same with a personal profile, I believe — not everyone will receive your posts on their news feed unless you've interacted with them a fair bit.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    I'm afraid you need to use email for that, unless people have starred your page they will not be getting all your announcements.
  - radarsat1 9y ago
    I would be pretty annoyed if I was part of an organization that required me to be keeping up to date on Facebook posts, that used it as the only way to know what's going on. You should definitely have a mailing list people can sign up to. Facebook is not really an appropriate medium for that kind of thing.
baq 9y ago
...and it causes the political echo chamber problem which results in extreme polarization of whole societies based on fake perception of what the other side is doing vs what they're actually doing. terrible indeed but generates views thus revenue.
- zlynx 9y ago
  Only if you mostly have friends of one political kind, I think. I know that I get plenty of "fake news" links shared from all sides in my Facebook feed. Usually the article contents themselves are fine and quite reasonable, but the Facebook shares have some completely false click-bait headline attached.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  I find this thesis questionable. I'm a very political person and do a good bit of politicking on FB, including my group membership selections. I don't find this echo chamber effect at all, not least because there is a lot of inter-group antagonism (people who stage raids on other groups and so forth). I certainly don't get all my political ideas/news/anything from FB, but it seems more diverse than it is usually characterized as. Does it make things more polarized, I would say yes. But that is a general thing with the internet and has been true since the creation of usenet; the Internet accelerates everything including political trends. I find the best way to guard against technology's impact on cognition is to maintain time for reading things on paper, and also time free of media consumption.
tehwebguy 9y ago
> 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". Average user follows way too many pages and has too many friends all posting to see all content every day. Algorithm isn't here to milk you, it's to stop the news feed from becoming the MySpace bulletin feed (which was an effective way to post in 2007, so long as you posted 5x every hour)
- Broken_Hippo 9y ago
  I'd love to believe you. And you are likely right, the algorithm itself isn't there to milk anyone - but facebook surely acts like they want to, and they'll use that algorithm to do so if needed. I have a page for artwork. Most of the time, facebook will tell me how much better the current post is doing than so many other posts on the page (even if it doesn't seem likely). It reminds me to post after 2-3 days, because my few fans will miss me. I do art and can't actually get things done that quickly, after all. Every post has multiple prompts to boost the post, noting how others with simiilar content have boosted posts. Sometimes it tells me how many hundreds of local people will see it. Sometimes it'll be a general prompt. These even show up as notifacations, sometimes on both my personal and my artist page. Additionally, I get ads for post or page boosts in my normal feed. The algorithm is just a part of the milking.
sangnoir 9y ago
> 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. I'm not a Facebook's biggest fan, but I think this is a valid security concern (I'm assuming you used the same name as your initial account). Cloning FB accounts and impersonation is a valid threat vector for getting inside someone's network: when accepting friend-requests, most people don't double check if they are already friends with the purported requester.
- kuschku 9y ago
  I’ve got over a dozen Facebook accounts with the same name, and people frequently message the wrong one, but Facebook never tried closing any of them.
anigbrowl 9y ago
Ah, that explains a lot. I know very little about social media marketing and wondered why my attempts to launch a few pages related to art projects were drawing such little attention from my social circle. Being me I assumed it was because my art is shit and largely abandoned a project I'd spent months developing. Zucked again.

ProblemFactory 9y ago

> 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. While this does enable Facebook to force brands to buy advertising, it is also an user-friendly change. Nobody who I have spoken to about this thinks that "like/follow" = "I want to see everything they post" on Facebook. People like restaurants they had a nice dinner at and want to publish their support, it doesn't mean they want to see the daily special every day. Even if they "follow" you, it doesn't mean it should show up before a friend's holiday pictures today, and tomorrow there is already new content. The reality is that most facebook users do not care about the posts from pages they like/follow, even if they pressed the button some time ago. An automated filter that keeps these posts from showing up is good for the user experience. It's the same as "facebook friends" - they aren't real friends, just people you met once at a party in college. It might be interesting to see a post from them once in 10 years when they get married or move to a new country, but not their daily life. The same applies for brand pages - a like should give you once in 10 years access to their feed, but not more.

guelo 9y ago
I know better than The Algorithm whether I want to see every post or not. But I'm not allowed to decide that because The Algorithm isn't there to serve me it's there to serve Facebook.
- traek 9y ago
  You can decide that whenever you want, just change your follow settings for the page to 'See First' from 'Following'.
specialist 9y ago
I wasn't aware that facebook does partial publishing/pushing from Pages. I'm co-admin for an org's official Page (and Group). Our bylaws require advance announcement of various things, like meetings and resolutions. We've been using our official Page just like our mail listserv, assuming all our subscribers are getting all of our announcements. Frankly, this sucks. Minimally, it violates the UX design principle of least astonishment.
- ValentineC 9y ago
  > We've been using our official Page just like our mail listserv, assuming all our subscribers are getting all of our announcements. They will get it if they access your page directly, or subscribe to notifications from your page. It's the same with a personal profile, I believe — not everyone will receive your posts on their news feed unless you've interacted with them a fair bit.
- pjc50 9y ago
  I'm afraid you need to use email for that, unless people have starred your page they will not be getting all your announcements.
- radarsat1 9y ago
  I would be pretty annoyed if I was part of an organization that required me to be keeping up to date on Facebook posts, that used it as the only way to know what's going on. You should definitely have a mailing list people can sign up to. Facebook is not really an appropriate medium for that kind of thing.

baq 9y ago

...and it causes the political echo chamber problem which results in extreme polarization of whole societies based on fake perception of what the other side is doing vs what they're actually doing. terrible indeed but generates views thus revenue.

zlynx 9y ago
Only if you mostly have friends of one political kind, I think. I know that I get plenty of "fake news" links shared from all sides in my Facebook feed. Usually the article contents themselves are fine and quite reasonable, but the Facebook shares have some completely false click-bait headline attached.
anigbrowl 9y ago
I find this thesis questionable. I'm a very political person and do a good bit of politicking on FB, including my group membership selections. I don't find this echo chamber effect at all, not least because there is a lot of inter-group antagonism (people who stage raids on other groups and so forth). I certainly don't get all my political ideas/news/anything from FB, but it seems more diverse than it is usually characterized as. Does it make things more polarized, I would say yes. But that is a general thing with the internet and has been true since the creation of usenet; the Internet accelerates everything including political trends. I find the best way to guard against technology's impact on cognition is to maintain time for reading things on paper, and also time free of media consumption.

tehwebguy 9y ago

> 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". Average user follows way too many pages and has too many friends all posting to see all content every day. Algorithm isn't here to milk you, it's to stop the news feed from becoming the MySpace bulletin feed (which was an effective way to post in 2007, so long as you posted 5x every hour)

Broken_Hippo 9y ago
I'd love to believe you. And you are likely right, the algorithm itself isn't there to milk anyone - but facebook surely acts like they want to, and they'll use that algorithm to do so if needed. I have a page for artwork. Most of the time, facebook will tell me how much better the current post is doing than so many other posts on the page (even if it doesn't seem likely). It reminds me to post after 2-3 days, because my few fans will miss me. I do art and can't actually get things done that quickly, after all. Every post has multiple prompts to boost the post, noting how others with simiilar content have boosted posts. Sometimes it tells me how many hundreds of local people will see it. Sometimes it'll be a general prompt. These even show up as notifacations, sometimes on both my personal and my artist page. Additionally, I get ads for post or page boosts in my normal feed. The algorithm is just a part of the milking.

sangnoir 9y ago

> 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. I'm not a Facebook's biggest fan, but I think this is a valid security concern (I'm assuming you used the same name as your initial account). Cloning FB accounts and impersonation is a valid threat vector for getting inside someone's network: when accepting friend-requests, most people don't double check if they are already friends with the purported requester.

kuschku 9y ago
I’ve got over a dozen Facebook accounts with the same name, and people frequently message the wrong one, but Facebook never tried closing any of them.

anigbrowl 9y ago

Ah, that explains a lot. I know very little about social media marketing and wondered why my attempts to launch a few pages related to art projects were drawing such little attention from my social circle. Being me I assumed it was because my art is shit and largely abandoned a project I'd spent months developing. Zucked again.