15 ms·

A friend of mine died and I didn't know because of algorithms

580 points by emsy 9y ago

edgarvaldes 9y ago
Before any comment about "real friends" keeping in touch outside the social media, the second tweet: >A friend I've known mostly online for 15+ years died this weekend. Our friendship started on an old gaming forum, but continued on Facebook.
- gremlinsinc 9y ago
  So you can't have 'real friends' that you met online? Hell, guess my wife is imaginary then, met her in 2005 online.
  - skeleton 9y ago
    I think GP was saying that this story can be seen as evidence that a real friendship does not need face to face interaction to be valid.
    - Johnny555 9y ago
      I think the evidence in this post suggests that a real friendship needs to go beyond some curated communication system where some one else (or some algorithm) decides what you hear from each other. Otherwise you may miss significant events in each other's lives.
      - princeb 9y ago
        > curated communication system yes. curated is the keyword. fb used to be a legitimate communication system - you could write on walls, you could poke, you could do a lot of stuff with fb apps that solicits an immediate response. fb today is not the fb of 2007. I know a lot of users grew up with fb but fb did not grow up with us.
  - bfung 9y ago
    You can meet them online, however, are they truly, honestly someone you care about if you don't ever contact them outside of facebook? Or wait passively for facebook posts to broadcast messages? I assume that you met your wife in person before getting married - would you propose to her if the only way to contact and know her was through social media?
- EpicEng 9y ago
  Who she didn't reach out to for months (years?) in any sort of personal way. They weren't friends, they were acquaintances, and it's not FB's responsibility to make sure she sees every update he sends out.
  - lsaferite 9y ago
    I have lifelong friends in meatspace that I don't talk to for months at a time as well. What make the online aspect any different?
Arbalest 9y ago
I would have thought a lower frequency of posting would be an indication of a greater weighting of the content when something was posted. Of course, as far as keeping eyeballs for a long time, that's not what keeps people on the feed. Maybe because those kind of posts are more likely to get people out of the feed and onto direct messaging instead? Rather than lots of stuff (reposts and shares) to scroll fast by and thus more space for ads to also scroll by.
- hinfaits 9y ago
  That's a (self-admitted) assumption made by @Hellchick. The Facebook post in question could have been relegated off of feeds for a different reason.
  - danso 9y ago
    What reason could that be? I thought maybe there was a way for a user to post something on their profile timeline that wouldn't show up in their newsfeed, but it appears that you can only do the opposite, i.e. post something that is seen in the newsfeed but won't be attached to your profile timeline: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/facebook-now-lets-you-post-to-the-news-feed-and-not-your-timeline/ https://www.cnet.com/how-to/facebook-now-lets-you-post-to-th...
a3n 9y ago
> All because FB's algorithm presumably decided that he didn't post much, so he didn't warrant enough attention in our feeds. All because you've given Facebook responsibility for keeping in touch. One suggestion for keeping in control and in touch: a less algorithmic address list in email. "Oh, but I don't want to manage that." Well, how good is what you're using now working? Is that chance of someone outside the list serendipitously stumbling across a post really that valuable? And, sorry for her loss.
- lykr0n 9y ago
  Are you suggesting having a friends mailing list? That doesn't really work for a dynamic pool of people.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    It kind of says a lot for the influence of Facebook where suggesting that perhaps you shoot an email to a friend seems like an impractical thing to do.
    - sverige 9y ago
      Heaven forfend suggesting making a phone call, which is how I keep in touch with friends. Real friends, that is.
      - 83457 9y ago
        Are they real friends though if you only talk to them on the phone? I keep in touch with my friends in person by going to their door and knocking. Real friends that is.
        DoreenMichele 9y ago
        Pshaw. I use a psychic connection. If you can't contact them psychically, how close are you really?
        9y ago
zkms 9y ago
> All because FB's algorithm presumably decided that he didn't post much, so he didn't warrant enough attention in our feeds. This is the oddest thing to me. I would imagine that people who post rarely should be given preferential treatment and have their post included more often than if the feed was just a chronological timeline.
- praisewhitey 9y ago
  This appears to be what Twitter's "In case you missed it" is doing. I follow accounts that post maybe once a week and they're regularly featured in that section.
  - dx034 9y ago
    One of the reasons I switched from Facebook to Twitter is that their feed works much better. FB is full of videos, posts of people I follow are rarely shown. Twitter is relatively "unbiased" and shows posts mostly as they appear.
- lbotos 9y ago
  I'm gearing up for a 2018 "no social media on weekends" and I tested it this weekend. When I logged in to FB this AM, I had 10 notifications: Most were: Britt added a new photo. You have a new friend suggestion: Gloria. Tiffany updated her status. Jeff updated his status. June updated his status. Lily updated her status. These are people that I assume the algorithm thought would "suck me back in". It was really fascinating to see how the algo was stuffing my notifications to fuel that dopamine release.
  - nerfhammer 9y ago
    I notice that these re-engagement notifications tend to do an absolutely terrible job predicting which people I would care most when they post something. Maybe my Facebook posts drive people to close their Facebook window or otherwise engage with ads less, so Facebook is encouraging me to stay away.
  - perseusprime11 9y ago
huffpopo 9y ago
As far as I can tell this is a side effect of optimizing the algorithm to encourage greater usage by discouraging limited usage. Asking FB, Twitter etc. to do any different is the same as asking them to make less money.
- kelnos 9y ago
  You'd think that FB would want to pull "wayward" people in, though. If I haven't posted in a while, and then suddenly post, FB should give that post wider reach, with the hope that I get a lot of engagement, come away with a positive feeling, and then post/engage more. I just did a sort of impromptu 2.5 month posting hiatus from FB (which also included no commenting or liking), and when I returned I got a ton of likes and comments on my fist couple posts.
- trophycase 9y ago
  The thing is, these places aren't monolithic. Real people work there and are making real decisions. There is more than enough room for Facebook to be reasonable and still have plenty of pie, it's just that employees need to actually make themselves heard or make the right decisions.
kiernanmcgowan 9y ago
I guess it’s hard to run ads next to a post about a sick and dying friend.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  “Flight deals to Portland!” “Great hotel rates near the hospital! Act now!”
idooontcare 9y ago
When people understand, that facebook is programming masses psychologly ? Why do you use facebook ? Are people aware of facebook's former bosses whistleblower storys ?
electriclove 9y ago
I wish these social media sites just gave me everything in reverse chronological order and allowed me to fine tune the results..
- confounded 9y ago
  If Facebook did this, people would stop using it pretty fast!
  - shriek 9y ago
    I wouldn't say people would stop, people would stop engaging as much but I'd still find it useful. I most often use facebook with `?sk=h_chr` query string to give me the content in reverse chronological simply because that makes sense to me most.
subway 9y ago
This was not the failure of an algorithm. This was the failure of a person to keep in touch with an individual they wanted to call a friend, but couldn't be bothered to occasionally reach out to. Facebook enables this sort of behavior in that you can outsource many of your social interactions, but at the end of the day, you as an individual have chosen to outsource those interactions. I quit Facebook nearly 3 years ago, and it certainly 'cost' me some superficial relationships. At the same time, the relatively few relationships I've worked to maintain outside of Facebook feel more fulfilling and way less anxiety inducing than when I outsourced everything to FB.
- ringaroundthetx 9y ago
  But they were relying on the algorithm to do those things. You quit Facebook so you know what people say "I can't quit because my family is on there" or "I use it to keep in touch", I can relate to this because I quit it much longer ago. People THINK Facebook is keeping them in touch with people. People THINK Facebook is a more efficient way of knowing what other people are doing. People THINK Facebook ensures they will occasionally reach out to people they thought they cared about. This is a mistaken belief, and this person's PSA is making that more clear for people that need to know it. Offer solutions to people instead of badgering them.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    But they were relying on the algorithm to do those things. Which has to be the textbook definition of “not friendship.”
    - CodeWriter23 9y ago
      Yeah, training an algorithm on someone hardly qualifies as “being there” for them.
    - ncallaway 9y ago
      It may be your definition, but you're being EXTREMELY presumptive to think you get to make that definition for others. Why do you feel like you get to decide how others experience friendship?
guelo 9y ago
I've noticed I barely get any responses on Facebook anymore unless my posts have pictures. They recently added a feature where you can add a big color background to your textual posts. My guess is that they're pushing users towards creating big flashy posts so that ads can blend in better with the stuff from your friends. The Facebook feed has become an awful way for communicating with friends.
- Raticide 9y ago
  I dunno about other people, but I almost completely ignore those big background posts. I think my brain sees them as adverts/spam and just filters them out.
  - paulie_a 9y ago
    That style of post is reminiscent of Myspace. I will read a long text post and immediately skip those vapid 1 sentence "glittery"posts
    - r3bl 9y ago
      Today I have published a post on my Facebook page. It was my two book recommendations of the books I've read in 2017. The covers were added as images to a post, and there were four paragraphs of text, first one explaining what I'm doing, second and third one a really short reviews of the books, and the fourth one asking my followers to recommend books in the comments. Knowing that it won't reach anyone, I have also purchased an ad (3 euros, one day), targeting fans of the page and their friends. Organically, it reached 149 people (smaller posts reach 3-5x as much on average). It reached 1,471 by a paid promotion. Number of people who liked, commented, or even clicked to see all four paragraphs is 45. My point is: you're a minority. And people who post like that get punished greatly by their algorithm. My ad was even postponed for like 30 minutes because images contained "too much text for an ad" until I clicked on "manual review" because I saw in their help pages that they let book covers slide.
      - paulie_a 9y ago
imh 9y ago
I'm thinking about this as less of a newsfeed thing and more as pub/sub maybe being a bad model for keeping in touch with friends. Especially when it's curated pub/sub.
conductr 9y ago
Before social media how long would it have taken to find out this loose of a connection had passed away? My guess is months to years if ever.
- stuartcw 9y ago
  Before social media people religiously read the local obituaries column in the local newspaper and called their friends if someone they both knew had died. Families would call all the close contacts and relatives to make sure that they knew. For several years after my father died in 1985 people called our house to speak to him. Most were not close acquaintances but some were still pretty shocked to hear of his death.
  - CodeWriter23 9y ago
    Before social media, when someone died, you went through your address book and called everyone you knew who knew that person. And everyone you called would do the same.
  - cbr 9y ago
    > Families would call all the close contacts and relatives to make sure that they knew. I think people generally still do this? When my mother died a few years ago we took turns calling her relatives and close friends. We wanted them to hear the news verbally.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  The information was transmitted. It was never received. And therein lies the difference.
  - conductr 9y ago
    It was received though, right? I mean the person passed away this weekend, it’s now Monday and they know. It just didn’t happen in real time like the person expected hence the tweets. Still much better than the obituary world of yesteryear. You could then also say the info was transmitted but the rate of receival probably low.
DoreenMichele 9y ago
It seems like "a good friend is in serious health trouble" warrants top billing on any feed. I have had a lot of online friends, though not through Facebook, which I mostly don't use. But I can agree with this logic. I would also be horrified to learn that an internet friend had died or had been hospitalized without me getting the memo, even though they posted about it. I think this is a reasonable assertion, regardless of what people here think about whether or not this was a "real" friendship.
- hirsin 9y ago
  This is something that's been on my mind as well, and I think an issue to take seriously by those at the levers. A friend recently took his life, and his FB account was deleted so I can't verify anything, but I can't help but wonder. Was there anything he had posted that I didn't see, that could have told someone (me) how he felt? It was loneliness apparently, and took all by surprise - how much did Facebook play a role in that? I'd do anything to have been there for him - I'd be devastated if an algorithm had prioritized my alt-right classmate's latest infowars share over a quiet plea for help because it generated more engagement.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    If it is any comfort, people who are suicidal typically have pretty serious problems, often including brain wonkiness. I am sometimes suicidal. I have extremely good support. My adult sons don't leave me alone when I am suicidal, because most suicides occur while alone, so simply having company is a deterrent. But they also don't bother to try to reason with me because I am not rational at such times. There is no convincing me that my warped perception of my life is completely unrealistic. Rebutting my crazy statements with facts to the contrary makes zero difference. I'm sorry for your loss. And I agree that this is something social media has an obligation to do better on.
    - hirsin 9y ago
      I appreciate the kind words. Yes, it's certainly not social media's sole fault, and as others have said down thread, there have always been other ways of keeping in touch. I certainly don't blame Facebook for not showing me anything that may have been posted - more, they're in a position to do so much good for the world, and I hope they can do that instead of optimizing for clicks.
ekianjo 9y ago
Quick fix: don't rely on Facebook to be in touch with your friends.
- touristtam 9y ago
  Easier said than done.
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    To do it, you just have to try. Once you are off Facebook you are back to having a proactive experience towards friends instead of simply browsing feeds and clicking "Like!" icons.
danso 9y ago
How does the OP know that she actually peruses FB for all of her new feed's content? https://twitter.com/Hellchick/status/942864030649036800 https://twitter.com/Hellchick/status/942864030649036800 > Now, I'm a meticulous FB feed peruser. I always set it to Most Recent and browse until I see the stuff I saw last time. I keep up. Despite her claim here, it's possible that she missed her friend's post because her surveillance of her own feed is likely to be imperfect, especially if she has a non-trivial number of friends. edit: I bring this up because, ostensibly, the whole point of FB's (or any social network's) "most important" algorithm is to mitigate the problem of how "most recent" can be too overwhelming to consume if you have a non-trivial number of friends. If OP has a lot of friends, such that there are a few dozen new items per day on her newsfeed, even if she were meticulously reading her feed, daily, there's no guarantee that she didn't miss the post because of imperfectly skimming them. That no one else in her social circle noticed isn't much proof since, as a mutual friend admits, they don't know how many of them are active on FB: https://twitter.com/FRENDEN/status/942918637576441857 https://twitter.com/FRENDEN/status/942918637576441857 That said, I swear I've seen FB's algorithm point out users who have posted for the first time in a long while. This kind of notification/signal presumably would not be part of a "Most Recent" timeline: https://www.quora.com/Why-am-I-getting-notifications-on-Facebook-that-X-a-friend-has-posted-for-the-first-time-in-a-while https://www.quora.com/Why-am-I-getting-notifications-on-Face...
- u801e 9y ago
  On another slightly related note, has anyone else noticed that Facebook will reset the feed's sort setting to "Top Stories" no matter how many times it's set to "Most Recent"?
  - danso 9y ago
    Seems to have been a common complaint over the years: https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=10152230374684250 https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=1015223... https://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/how-permanently-set-your-facebook-feed-show-most-recent-instead-top-stories https://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/how-permane... > In the desktop view of Facebook, there's an option to change from "Top Stories" to "Most Recent", but Facebook only maintains that setting for about 24 hours and then it automatically reverts back to Top Stories.
InclinedPlane 9y ago
Think of facebook like an organism subject to evolutionary pressures. The evolutionary pressures that matter to facebook are maintaining "engagement" and through that ad revenue. Note that what matters to FB isn't engagement between you and your friends, just between you and it. So it doesn't matter to them how poor the algorithm is. The only thing that matters is how many minutes or hours a day you spend on the site.
StanislavPetrov 9y ago
One of many reasons you shouldn't depend on algorithms or facebook to keep you informed and aware of anything, let alone life and death issues. The unwillingness and/or inability for people to access, process and understand information is endemic in our society and one of the core reasons we are in such bad shape on so many levels.
sandov 9y ago
I've always fantasized about people switching from FB to an easy-to-use RSS platform. Kinda like Mastodon, but bloggy/facebookey instead of a twitter clone, and obviously: chronological feeds. I'm sorry for her loss.
EpicEng 9y ago
I guess... I don't really care. If the FB feed is the only way you "stay in touch" with someone, you're not friends. At best you're acquaintances. This person makes no attempt to speak to her "friend" for who knows how long and is now outraged that she didn't see one of his posts. Yeesh, get over yourself. If she actually cared she would have been in touch in other, more personal ways.
- dang 9y ago
  > I don't really care. [...] Yeesh, get over yourself. If she actually cared Please don't post uncivil comments here. Instead, read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site to heart so we can all have at least one semi-decent place on the internet. Edit: it looks like we've had to ask you this multiple times before. We eventually ban accounts that ignore these requests, so would you please fix this?
  - jeandejean 9y ago
    I don't see what's uncivil here, there are no insults. And you speak as if you were an admin, but you obviously aren't.
    - dang 9y ago
      I'm an admin; sorry that wasn't clear. It's uncivil because (a) it's uncharitable about a painful situation and (b) "Yeesh, get over yourself" is a swipe.
paulie_a 9y ago
I have a question about Facebook, they seem to spend tremendous effort to create engagement. Arguably at the detriment to society. Why are the ads so terribly targeted? They are an ad company with immense data collection and at the end of the day the ads are equivalent to a niche cable network
- 1_2__4 9y ago
  Because ad targeting is so the advertiser can show you want they want you to buy, rather than what you want to buy. No part of the process is oriented towards finding what you want and giving it to you. It’s for finding out who you are so they can exploit you.
  - 549362-30499 9y ago
    I don't think that distinction is meaningful. The digital ad market is frighteningly sophisticated and coldly logical. You are shown ads for things that optimize what you're likely to buy/click multiplied by how much the ad buyer makes when someone actually does buy or click. Talk to anyone on the buy side of the ad market - these ads work. They really do show you the things that you want to buy, even if those things surprise you.
    - pishpash 9y ago
      They work over what baseline? I think they are all treading water, and have to buy ads because competitors do.
      - 549362-30499 9y ago
        They work in the sense that you can predictably purchase customers and users. I don't know what you mean by treading water. People who buy these ads do it because it's profitable, not because they trying to keep up with some competition.
- richforrester 9y ago
  Because company [X] thinks the target for product [Y] is [Z]. That's my guess anyway. And I work in (and/or closely with) marketing. .edit: Come to think of it, I want to elaborate on that. Think about search engine optimisation. It's in a similar vein. "A guy walks into a bar, bars, pub, tavern, pulic house, irish pub, drinks, beer, acolhol, bar stool" etc. My point is; people that are trying to sell 1 thing, might focus on reaching AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE, over focussing on getting the right (but smaller) audience.
syntheticnature 9y ago
I've never missed someone I'd consider even a distant friend passing via FB -- a few acquaintances, though I usually found out within a week. That said, I have experienced FB hiding something bad in someone's life for an extended period -- a relative I'm not directly linked to passing, cancer diagnosis, someone's dog getting very sick and having to be euthanized, etc. Again, I found out, but not fast enough, even with friends that were in the second ring out from my very closest friends.
pgrote 9y ago
A week or so ago Facebook removed the ticker feature they had in the bottom right corner. This is how I worked around the predetermined algorithm showing me what Facebook thinks I wanted to see. It allowed me to keep up with people I wanted to without Facebook intervening. Now that it is gone, the value of Facebook to me is near zero. Even if I saw MOST RECENT, posts are missing. When I come back it's switched back to TOP STORIES. I have no idea why companies decide to make users work hard for what they want.
- carlivar 9y ago
  Users? You're the product. Advertisers are the users.
  - bschwindHN 9y ago
    Ahh there it is.
  - hunter2_ 9y ago
    More typically than in response to someone saying "user," I see this in response to somebody erroneously saying "customer" or similar. I think "the user" is pretty valid, but "the used" makes for a good smirk.
    - carlivar 9y ago
      Yeah I got that wrong. I mixed up users with customers. Thank you for pointing it out.
    - astrodust 9y ago
      There's only two industries that describe their customers as users: Software and drug dealers.
  - kruczek 9y ago
    God, I hate that phrase. I mean, I know that's the intended reason for it - to make it outrageous. But it's also stupidly incorrect. Facebook is not "producing" people who are using it, it is producing specific representation of data about their users. And I do not believe whatever data Facebook has can be considered equal to actual people.
omarforgotpwd 9y ago
Advertisers don't want to put their ads next to a post about someone dying.
- arduanika 9y ago
  ^ this.
Myrmornis 9y ago
I was quite un-cooly positive about Facebook for the first 15 years or so, but recently it has become extremely apparent that the algorithms are getting in the way of what I'm trying to do (communicate with a predictable set of friends).
sixdimensional 9y ago
Very sorry for her loss as well.. and her pain in not knowing... It's interesting from a social science perspective to have the expectation of the system / algorithms that it would have notified you of a friend's passing. This is an expectation that the model understands what is important to the user - something I doubt the model is optimized around completely. Before Facebook, I think not knowing would be even more common than we realize - unless you had frequent contact with your friend. In a world disconnected, no email, no Internet, maybe only a telephone, or even further back, a telegram, or even less - it might be many, many times much less likely you would find such a thing out. Going back to the times of villages with no electronic technology at all, communication would have been only through immediate knowledge, written / recorded information or word of mouth. I used to work for a website that tried to digitize obituaries, to serve as a replacement for the newspaper, way before that was really a "thing". It never really took off, because, the people who wanted to publish death notices in newspapers just kept doing that. Most people who wanted to read them preferred holding a newspaper than reading a website (although, it did help disseminate information quickly). Eventually, newspapers simply published the obituaries and death notices online themselves, and it all went to a big aggregator of obituary postings (or got indexed by Google), and then it was no longer much of a thing. The most interesting thing, for me, having worked in this area, was seeing how users have taken to Facebook as a sort of memorial to those who have passed, help spread the news, etc. But with the conflux of marketing and so much personal news... I'm not surprised that this information slipped through the cracks. I recall a book on this topic - "Bowling Alone"[1] published in 2001, before social networks. The excerpt from Amazon.com - "Once we bowled in leagues, usually after work—but no longer. This seemingly small phenomenon symbolizes a significant social change that Robert Putnam has identified in this brilliant volume, which The Economist hailed as 'a prodigious achievement.' Drawing on vast new data that reveal Americans’ changing behavior, Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from one another and how social structures—whether they be PTA, church, or political parties—have disintegrated. Until the publication of this groundbreaking work, no one had so deftly diagnosed the harm that these broken bonds have wreaked on our physical and civic health, nor had anyone exalted their fundamental power in creating a society that is happy, healthy, and safe. Like defining works from the past, such as The Lonely Crowd and The Affluent Society, and like the works of C. Wright Mills and Betty Friedan, Putnam’s Bowling Alone has identified a central crisis at the heart of our society and suggests what we can do." Even with Facebook/social media, I wonder if the same thing is still true, or if we have begun to heal the broken bonds of our disconnected nature the book identified. [1] ISBN-10: 0743203046
toomanybeersies 9y ago
There's another story buried in the Twitter conversation: > Pretty sure this is what killed my friend @shanecomix by proxy. I and numerous other friends of his never saw his GoFundMe campaign for insulin. He died $50 shy of his goal. I'm very sorry for your loss, especially complicated by such esoterica. Why exactly does somebody need to start a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for life-critical medicine?
- firstplacelast 9y ago
  In America, we hate poor people. I mean, none of us say it. In fact, most of us state the opposite. However, a good chunk of us vote for politicians and work for companies that exacerbate the problems of the poor.
  - lwansbrough 9y ago
    There’s a difference between hating them hen poor, and being self-interested. That being said, the effects are often the same. And self-interest is an acceptable excuse for people that want to ignore their impact on those around them.
    - disordinary 9y ago
      There does seem to be a culture where poor people are dismissed as being lazy when often that's the opposite of true.
    - rndgermandude 9y ago
      I rarely (actually never I think) heard anybody complain that "I have to pay for somebody else's healthcare?! Socialism sucks" where I live. In the US however that seems to be a different matter for a lot of people. This - to me - goes beyond mere self-interest... It's essentially stating that one is fine with other people suffering and dying just because they are too poor to pay the ridiculous health care premiums in the US or find an employer who does that for them.
      - 9y ago
pelario 9y ago
From all the reasons to claim that "the Internet is broken", I think the worst is that most services today apparently do one thing; but in reality do a different one. And if you want it to do what "is supposed to do", it is extremely laborious, or literally impossible. The facebook feed is one example. Recent changes in google search, another.
txt 9y ago
Today I got an email from a female friend of mine who passed away 4 years ago. Apparently they used her facebook info (email, display name) with the subject being 'Fwd for 'my facebook display name' followed by terrible spam .. Ohhhhh how I long for the days that we weren't hooked on social media.
foobaw 9y ago
I doubt FB will change how their feed works because of this publicized incident. Perhaps Zuck will make a post about how they'll try and improve because they care about people. I know a lot of people that work at Facebook and they're all highly intelligent. It's a great place to work at but incidents like this makes me question if their talent is all being put to good use. The algorithm has definitely a lot more "machine" learning to do to prevent these incidents from happening again. Close friend, related to death and health, gofundme campaign all scream that the statuses should've been shown. (if FB can be so good at showing relevant ads, why can it show relevant feed)
kercker 9y ago
Algorithms can have their downside. Sometimes I miss some important emails just because the emails are classified as spam and moved into spam folder.
- k3a 9y ago
  That is not the same. You can always check the Spam folder. But you can't see posts which FB decided not to show you!
111_1_111 9y ago
0% chance I'm going to read a story that is formatted as a series of tweets.
msmith10101 9y ago
Reading something like this: I feel like TWTR users need to find a better product.
ClassyJacket 9y ago
I would assume because they live in a third world country such as the United States.
- sbuttgereit 9y ago
  Or perhaps a country with a national medical program? https://www.gofundme.com/StephenSykes https://www.gofundme.com/StephenSykes "Unfortunatey, the cost of the drug is above the NHS funding threshold. It is not therefore available on prescription and the Consultants have told us that we will need to raise the funds required to purchase the treatment that Stephen needs to give him the real prospect of becoming well again."
  - azernik 9y ago
    Insulin is a much cheaper intervention than that.
  - deleted 9y ago
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  - deleted 9y ago
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  - kalleboo 9y ago
    Every healthcare system rationalizes spending. The US system lets low income people die because they can't afford something as basic as insulin. The NHS rationalizes on £90,000 recently-out-of-trial cancer treatments.
  - stordoff 9y ago
    If I'm reading the papers correctly, PD-1 inhibition for Hodgkin's Lymphoma appears to be a particularly early treatment[0]. I doubt "the cost of the drug is above the NHS funding threshold" is a wholly accurate statement, as factors beyond just cost of treatment are involved (the NHS/NICE will approved costly treatments if they are effective and the only available treatment). I'm struggling to find the NICE report (assuming there is one), as the drug in question is not named. [0] See, e.g., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5210230/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5210230/ from January 2017: "[M]ajor issues such as timing and sequencing, treatment duration and synergistic combinatory approaches remain to be resolved. Furthermore, long-term efficacy outcomes and potential development of late toxicities in lymphoma patients are still poorly defined."
renegadesensei 9y ago
I had a similar experience a few years ago. https://righteousruminations.blogspot.jp/2015/06/hating-facebook.html https://righteousruminations.blogspot.jp/2015/06/hating-face...
973015077 9y ago
973015077 9y ago
Wapo
grondilu 9y ago
TL,DR: A Facebook user died and his online friends were not notified because he did not post much so Facebook presumably assumed it was not worth notifying them.
ben_jones 9y ago
So we've given our "Make sure my friends aren't dead" check to Facebook, and we're blaming Facebook? Isn't this our fault? Isn't the rational thing to take back the rights we've given to Facebook?
- mclightning 9y ago
  I am astounded that this comment is not receiving more upvotes and comments! I can't believe we are taking someone seriously for blaming Facebook for not telling them their friend has died. If you care about someone, call them, be present in their life every once in a while. Caring is a proactive act!
  - jmcqk6 9y ago
    The key value proposition of facebook to me is that it makes those types of connections easier to scale up. Do I really need to call 200 people a month to see what they're up to and how they're doing? It's much better to have a constant feed of information that you can interact with as you can and want. But it doesn't provide that value any more. It shows me ads and posts from a handle of the hundreds of people I'm friends with. So you're right that caring is a proactive act, but that doesn't invalidate that initial value proposition at all.
sixstringtheory 9y ago
This post reeks of entitlement. The time the author spent writing this would have been better spent actively cultivating another relationship than complaining that something didn’t perfectly spoonfeed them life experiences.
bdreadz 9y ago
Why isn't there a setting that you can just choose to see everything in chronological order. That's fine if you want to default people to the algorithm feed. It's just such a simple thing to add.
NightlyDev 9y ago
A Facebook user who thinks Facebook is ment for keeping in touch? I wonder how people can avoid noticing what Facebook has become after all this time and still use it.
acjohnson55 9y ago
I've had this experience a few times, when a friend has popped into mind and I looked them up only to find old posts eulogizing them. It adds an extra gut punch not being able to actually mourn with other people because you didn't find out in time. The reality is that Facebook doesn't assume your Friends are your friends. It assumes you want to keep interacting with the same people you most recently interacted with. It also assumes you want to see things you're likely to Like or comment on. On the whole, this probably leads to them more reliably providing that dopamine hit when users check in, at the cost of being useful for actually staying in touch.
edgartaor 9y ago
It's possible to create a Facebook client using the API and get a feed the way you want?
- k3a 9y ago
  No, that's not practically possible. And even if it were, FB could stop or change/restrict it any time.
kapad 9y ago
The news feed is terrible. On Facebook or on Twitter. I don't like unfollowing people, but I have on occasion unfollowed people that post too often. For some reason, Facebook thinks I need to see all of these posts, and drowns out other stuff in my news feed. I've missed congratulating friends on getting married, having a kid, getting a degree or sending my condolences on the death of a loved one. It's terrible, that these people who post less often, but post only the bigger things in their lives get drowned out by Facebook's algorithms. I'd infact want it the other way around. The folks who post often should simply be treated as fillers. Finally there's the bugs in facebook that randomly causes my feed to refresh. And on these refreshes, I'm shown an entirely new/different feed. Maybe Facebook thought they showed me a post, but the bug and auto page refreshes caused me to miss that certain post.
- corobo 9y ago
  That refresh you describe is the only thing that’s made me angry at a website (technology) rather than a website’s content It was the straw that uninstalled the camel’s app for me too, the app would refresh itself whenever you switch to something else and come back I’m almost positive Facebook thinks I’ve successfully seen the post because it completely vanishes from then on and I have to visit the person/page’s profile to see it again
  - TheKarateKid 9y ago
    What's just as frustrating is that this issue has existed for a few years now. I've submitted a few bug reports/feedback regarding it in detail, but Facebook listening to user feedback/bug reports is about as likely as Apple/Microsoft listening to anything their users have to say via an online submission.
- thirdsun 9y ago
  If I understand you correctly you're suggesting to simply hide someone else's posts. However wouldn't that potentially lead to the very same outcome, as in missing an important event? What if Facebook decided the marriage of your frequent poster friend was the one post that had to disappear?
Molaxx 9y ago
Blaming Facebook in this is really weird. You didn't know about it because you weren't really friends. You were acquainted, yes, but you didn't actually keep in touch. If it weren't for Facebook you'd never consider him a friend, just some guy you knew. I'm sorry this seems insesnsitive, but Facebook isn't reality, and it's a company trying to make money. It should be accountable for the damage it does for society, but it can't be accountable for the way we manage our friendships. That part is our responsibility as humans.
- iMarv 9y ago
  I think it is not as binary as this. I too have friends that I do not see often, but what makes them friends to me is that no matter for how long we do not meet, as soon as we meet our relationship is the same as the last time we met. Friends are not always those who you meet every day, but those that give you the feeling of happiness when you have them around, at least for me.
- RickS 9y ago
  > If it weren't for Facebook you'd never consider him a friend, just some guy you knew. If you re-read the post, this is inaccurate. The friendship began elsewhere. >Facebook isn't reality, and it's a company trying to make money It is a company whose value proposition (to non advertisers) is its being reflective of or enhancing reality. This as opposed to, say, warcraft. >it can't be accountable for the way we manage our friendships Managing friendships is exactly facebook's purpose. If it claims to be the best way to manage a friendship, and bad things happen as a result of presumptions the company makes in the course of managing said friendship, it's sane to associate facebook's tooling around friendship management with the actual management of friendships. If I sign up for facebook under the pretense of "see what happens to my friends", and then sort by recency, if recent things that happen to my friends do not appear, that is, IMO, a legitimate grievance. Facebook might not owe this user anything, but that doesn't mean they can't wish for better service. A person missed the death of their friend because they were second guessed by an algorithm that has gradually torn control from the hands of users and downgraded reality and chronology to foster "engagement". That sucks.
  - 9y ago
TekMol 9y ago
This is in line with my Facebook experience. I only post every few weeks on FB, sometimes only every few months. And FB treats me as a second class citizen. My posts often don't even appear in the default feed of my friends. They do appear when my friends switch to 'Most Recent'. But most recent is pretty much unbearable for friends with many friends because it shows every tiny thing like 'Mike is interested in an event' and stuff.
anm89 9y ago
So facebook should just open source their algorithms and let every technical decision be made by public vote? If you don't like their algorithms, or their platform, or the fact they are monetizing you, then get off of facebook. Facebook is not responsible for organizing your relationships for you. It doesn't owe you anything. There is not even a specific ask here. It's just whining because they know it is the easiest way to rile up a mob for blog traffic.
jeandejean 9y ago
Sorry for your loss but... Wake up! Facebook doesn't owe you the prioritization of information flow you wish. It's like TV: you must watch tons of crap, commercials etc. and often you miss important information...
- touristtam 9y ago
  Maybe FB doesn't, but the newsfeed display has significantly changed over the years, that expectation based on initial experience aren't matched anymore to the current format. For a significant portion of the user base, this seems to be detrimental to the experience, and one might argue to the engagement sought after by this company.
rocho 9y ago
Utterly ridiculous. The feed cannot show every possible post, otherwise it would be a mess rather than a feed. I really dislike Facebook, but blaming it in this case doesn't even make sense.
bprasanna 9y ago
One day FB will say AI has taken over the algorithms without anyone's notice!
ocfx 9y ago
Algorithms are going to be the new boogeyman.
Toast_25 9y ago
A little birdy told me you can see tweets chronologically in lists. I've yet to try it out though.
ap3 9y ago
Hopefully posts like these encourage us to reach out to our friends in actual real life way, not just through social media likes or mentions
taylodl 9y ago
The irony is FB isn't a very good way for staying in touch with your friends, not when they suppress posts about the most important events going on in their lives. If that's the case then what's the point of social media? What function is actually being served?
- k3a 9y ago
  Ads are being served and FB makes money from advertisers. It's good that some people are slowly starting to see that...
hateful 9y ago
I posted this article on Facebook and received 0 responses. My wife, who has me in "close friends" and on "show first" frequently misses my posts.
k3a 9y ago
People shouldn't rely on these services for anything important. FB is primarily ad serving business and entertainment website. It doesn't make our life better, it also takes away our time and reduces productivity. :(

580 points by emsy 9y ago

Before any comment about "real friends" keeping in touch outside the social media, the second tweet: >A friend I've known mostly online for 15+ years died this weekend. Our friendship started on an old gaming forum, but continued on Facebook.

gremlinsinc 9y ago
So you can't have 'real friends' that you met online? Hell, guess my wife is imaginary then, met her in 2005 online.
- skeleton 9y ago
  I think GP was saying that this story can be seen as evidence that a real friendship does not need face to face interaction to be valid.
  - Johnny555 9y ago
    I think the evidence in this post suggests that a real friendship needs to go beyond some curated communication system where some one else (or some algorithm) decides what you hear from each other. Otherwise you may miss significant events in each other's lives.
    - princeb 9y ago
      > curated communication system yes. curated is the keyword. fb used to be a legitimate communication system - you could write on walls, you could poke, you could do a lot of stuff with fb apps that solicits an immediate response. fb today is not the fb of 2007. I know a lot of users grew up with fb but fb did not grow up with us.
- bfung 9y ago
  You can meet them online, however, are they truly, honestly someone you care about if you don't ever contact them outside of facebook? Or wait passively for facebook posts to broadcast messages? I assume that you met your wife in person before getting married - would you propose to her if the only way to contact and know her was through social media?
EpicEng 9y ago
Who she didn't reach out to for months (years?) in any sort of personal way. They weren't friends, they were acquaintances, and it's not FB's responsibility to make sure she sees every update he sends out.
- lsaferite 9y ago
  I have lifelong friends in meatspace that I don't talk to for months at a time as well. What make the online aspect any different?

Arbalest 9y ago

I would have thought a lower frequency of posting would be an indication of a greater weighting of the content when something was posted. Of course, as far as keeping eyeballs for a long time, that's not what keeps people on the feed. Maybe because those kind of posts are more likely to get people out of the feed and onto direct messaging instead? Rather than lots of stuff (reposts and shares) to scroll fast by and thus more space for ads to also scroll by.

hinfaits 9y ago
That's a (self-admitted) assumption made by @Hellchick. The Facebook post in question could have been relegated off of feeds for a different reason.
- danso 9y ago
  What reason could that be? I thought maybe there was a way for a user to post something on their profile timeline that wouldn't show up in their newsfeed, but it appears that you can only do the opposite, i.e. post something that is seen in the newsfeed but won't be attached to your profile timeline: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/facebook-now-lets-you-post-to-the-news-feed-and-not-your-timeline/ https://www.cnet.com/how-to/facebook-now-lets-you-post-to-th...

a3n 9y ago

> All because FB's algorithm presumably decided that he didn't post much, so he didn't warrant enough attention in our feeds. All because you've given Facebook responsibility for keeping in touch. One suggestion for keeping in control and in touch: a less algorithmic address list in email. "Oh, but I don't want to manage that." Well, how good is what you're using now working? Is that chance of someone outside the list serendipitously stumbling across a post really that valuable? And, sorry for her loss.

lykr0n 9y ago
Are you suggesting having a friends mailing list? That doesn't really work for a dynamic pool of people.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  It kind of says a lot for the influence of Facebook where suggesting that perhaps you shoot an email to a friend seems like an impractical thing to do.
  - sverige 9y ago
    Heaven forfend suggesting making a phone call, which is how I keep in touch with friends. Real friends, that is.
    - 83457 9y ago
      Are they real friends though if you only talk to them on the phone? I keep in touch with my friends in person by going to their door and knocking. Real friends that is.
      - DoreenMichele 9y ago
        Pshaw. I use a psychic connection. If you can't contact them psychically, how close are you really?
      - 9y ago

zkms 9y ago

> All because FB's algorithm presumably decided that he didn't post much, so he didn't warrant enough attention in our feeds. This is the oddest thing to me. I would imagine that people who post rarely should be given preferential treatment and have their post included more often than if the feed was just a chronological timeline.

praisewhitey 9y ago
This appears to be what Twitter's "In case you missed it" is doing. I follow accounts that post maybe once a week and they're regularly featured in that section.
- dx034 9y ago
  One of the reasons I switched from Facebook to Twitter is that their feed works much better. FB is full of videos, posts of people I follow are rarely shown. Twitter is relatively "unbiased" and shows posts mostly as they appear.
lbotos 9y ago
I'm gearing up for a 2018 "no social media on weekends" and I tested it this weekend. When I logged in to FB this AM, I had 10 notifications: Most were: Britt added a new photo. You have a new friend suggestion: Gloria. Tiffany updated her status. Jeff updated his status. June updated his status. Lily updated her status. These are people that I assume the algorithm thought would "suck me back in". It was really fascinating to see how the algo was stuffing my notifications to fuel that dopamine release.
- nerfhammer 9y ago
  I notice that these re-engagement notifications tend to do an absolutely terrible job predicting which people I would care most when they post something. Maybe my Facebook posts drive people to close their Facebook window or otherwise engage with ads less, so Facebook is encouraging me to stay away.
- perseusprime11 9y ago

huffpopo 9y ago

As far as I can tell this is a side effect of optimizing the algorithm to encourage greater usage by discouraging limited usage. Asking FB, Twitter etc. to do any different is the same as asking them to make less money.

kelnos 9y ago
You'd think that FB would want to pull "wayward" people in, though. If I haven't posted in a while, and then suddenly post, FB should give that post wider reach, with the hope that I get a lot of engagement, come away with a positive feeling, and then post/engage more. I just did a sort of impromptu 2.5 month posting hiatus from FB (which also included no commenting or liking), and when I returned I got a ton of likes and comments on my fist couple posts.
trophycase 9y ago
The thing is, these places aren't monolithic. Real people work there and are making real decisions. There is more than enough room for Facebook to be reasonable and still have plenty of pie, it's just that employees need to actually make themselves heard or make the right decisions.

kiernanmcgowan 9y ago

I guess it’s hard to run ads next to a post about a sick and dying friend.

Spooky23 9y ago
“Flight deals to Portland!” “Great hotel rates near the hospital! Act now!”

idooontcare 9y ago

When people understand, that facebook is programming masses psychologly ? Why do you use facebook ? Are people aware of facebook's former bosses whistleblower storys ?

electriclove 9y ago

I wish these social media sites just gave me everything in reverse chronological order and allowed me to fine tune the results..

confounded 9y ago
If Facebook did this, people would stop using it pretty fast!
- shriek 9y ago
  I wouldn't say people would stop, people would stop engaging as much but I'd still find it useful. I most often use facebook with `?sk=h_chr` query string to give me the content in reverse chronological simply because that makes sense to me most.

subway 9y ago

This was not the failure of an algorithm. This was the failure of a person to keep in touch with an individual they wanted to call a friend, but couldn't be bothered to occasionally reach out to. Facebook enables this sort of behavior in that you can outsource many of your social interactions, but at the end of the day, you as an individual have chosen to outsource those interactions. I quit Facebook nearly 3 years ago, and it certainly 'cost' me some superficial relationships. At the same time, the relatively few relationships I've worked to maintain outside of Facebook feel more fulfilling and way less anxiety inducing than when I outsourced everything to FB.

ringaroundthetx 9y ago
But they were relying on the algorithm to do those things. You quit Facebook so you know what people say "I can't quit because my family is on there" or "I use it to keep in touch", I can relate to this because I quit it much longer ago. People THINK Facebook is keeping them in touch with people. People THINK Facebook is a more efficient way of knowing what other people are doing. People THINK Facebook ensures they will occasionally reach out to people they thought they cared about. This is a mistaken belief, and this person's PSA is making that more clear for people that need to know it. Offer solutions to people instead of badgering them.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  But they were relying on the algorithm to do those things. Which has to be the textbook definition of “not friendship.”
  - CodeWriter23 9y ago
    Yeah, training an algorithm on someone hardly qualifies as “being there” for them.
  - ncallaway 9y ago
    It may be your definition, but you're being EXTREMELY presumptive to think you get to make that definition for others. Why do you feel like you get to decide how others experience friendship?

guelo 9y ago

I've noticed I barely get any responses on Facebook anymore unless my posts have pictures. They recently added a feature where you can add a big color background to your textual posts. My guess is that they're pushing users towards creating big flashy posts so that ads can blend in better with the stuff from your friends. The Facebook feed has become an awful way for communicating with friends.

Raticide 9y ago
I dunno about other people, but I almost completely ignore those big background posts. I think my brain sees them as adverts/spam and just filters them out.
- paulie_a 9y ago
  That style of post is reminiscent of Myspace. I will read a long text post and immediately skip those vapid 1 sentence "glittery"posts
  - r3bl 9y ago
    Today I have published a post on my Facebook page. It was my two book recommendations of the books I've read in 2017. The covers were added as images to a post, and there were four paragraphs of text, first one explaining what I'm doing, second and third one a really short reviews of the books, and the fourth one asking my followers to recommend books in the comments. Knowing that it won't reach anyone, I have also purchased an ad (3 euros, one day), targeting fans of the page and their friends. Organically, it reached 149 people (smaller posts reach 3-5x as much on average). It reached 1,471 by a paid promotion. Number of people who liked, commented, or even clicked to see all four paragraphs is 45. My point is: you're a minority. And people who post like that get punished greatly by their algorithm. My ad was even postponed for like 30 minutes because images contained "too much text for an ad" until I clicked on "manual review" because I saw in their help pages that they let book covers slide.
    - paulie_a 9y ago

imh 9y ago

I'm thinking about this as less of a newsfeed thing and more as pub/sub maybe being a bad model for keeping in touch with friends. Especially when it's curated pub/sub.

conductr 9y ago

Before social media how long would it have taken to find out this loose of a connection had passed away? My guess is months to years if ever.

stuartcw 9y ago
Before social media people religiously read the local obituaries column in the local newspaper and called their friends if someone they both knew had died. Families would call all the close contacts and relatives to make sure that they knew. For several years after my father died in 1985 people called our house to speak to him. Most were not close acquaintances but some were still pretty shocked to hear of his death.
- CodeWriter23 9y ago
  Before social media, when someone died, you went through your address book and called everyone you knew who knew that person. And everyone you called would do the same.
- cbr 9y ago
  > Families would call all the close contacts and relatives to make sure that they knew. I think people generally still do this? When my mother died a few years ago we took turns calling her relatives and close friends. We wanted them to hear the news verbally.
dredmorbius 9y ago
The information was transmitted. It was never received. And therein lies the difference.
- conductr 9y ago
  It was received though, right? I mean the person passed away this weekend, it’s now Monday and they know. It just didn’t happen in real time like the person expected hence the tweets. Still much better than the obituary world of yesteryear. You could then also say the info was transmitted but the rate of receival probably low.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

It seems like "a good friend is in serious health trouble" warrants top billing on any feed. I have had a lot of online friends, though not through Facebook, which I mostly don't use. But I can agree with this logic. I would also be horrified to learn that an internet friend had died or had been hospitalized without me getting the memo, even though they posted about it. I think this is a reasonable assertion, regardless of what people here think about whether or not this was a "real" friendship.

hirsin 9y ago
This is something that's been on my mind as well, and I think an issue to take seriously by those at the levers. A friend recently took his life, and his FB account was deleted so I can't verify anything, but I can't help but wonder. Was there anything he had posted that I didn't see, that could have told someone (me) how he felt? It was loneliness apparently, and took all by surprise - how much did Facebook play a role in that? I'd do anything to have been there for him - I'd be devastated if an algorithm had prioritized my alt-right classmate's latest infowars share over a quiet plea for help because it generated more engagement.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  If it is any comfort, people who are suicidal typically have pretty serious problems, often including brain wonkiness. I am sometimes suicidal. I have extremely good support. My adult sons don't leave me alone when I am suicidal, because most suicides occur while alone, so simply having company is a deterrent. But they also don't bother to try to reason with me because I am not rational at such times. There is no convincing me that my warped perception of my life is completely unrealistic. Rebutting my crazy statements with facts to the contrary makes zero difference. I'm sorry for your loss. And I agree that this is something social media has an obligation to do better on.
  - hirsin 9y ago
    I appreciate the kind words. Yes, it's certainly not social media's sole fault, and as others have said down thread, there have always been other ways of keeping in touch. I certainly don't blame Facebook for not showing me anything that may have been posted - more, they're in a position to do so much good for the world, and I hope they can do that instead of optimizing for clicks.

ekianjo 9y ago

Quick fix: don't rely on Facebook to be in touch with your friends.

touristtam 9y ago
Easier said than done.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  To do it, you just have to try. Once you are off Facebook you are back to having a proactive experience towards friends instead of simply browsing feeds and clicking "Like!" icons.

danso 9y ago

How does the OP know that she actually peruses FB for all of her new feed's content? https://twitter.com/Hellchick/status/942864030649036800 https://twitter.com/Hellchick/status/942864030649036800 > Now, I'm a meticulous FB feed peruser. I always set it to Most Recent and browse until I see the stuff I saw last time. I keep up. Despite her claim here, it's possible that she missed her friend's post because her surveillance of her own feed is likely to be imperfect, especially if she has a non-trivial number of friends. edit: I bring this up because, ostensibly, the whole point of FB's (or any social network's) "most important" algorithm is to mitigate the problem of how "most recent" can be too overwhelming to consume if you have a non-trivial number of friends. If OP has a lot of friends, such that there are a few dozen new items per day on her newsfeed, even if she were meticulously reading her feed, daily, there's no guarantee that she didn't miss the post because of imperfectly skimming them. That no one else in her social circle noticed isn't much proof since, as a mutual friend admits, they don't know how many of them are active on FB: https://twitter.com/FRENDEN/status/942918637576441857 https://twitter.com/FRENDEN/status/942918637576441857 That said, I swear I've seen FB's algorithm point out users who have posted for the first time in a long while. This kind of notification/signal presumably would not be part of a "Most Recent" timeline: https://www.quora.com/Why-am-I-getting-notifications-on-Facebook-that-X-a-friend-has-posted-for-the-first-time-in-a-while https://www.quora.com/Why-am-I-getting-notifications-on-Face...

u801e 9y ago
On another slightly related note, has anyone else noticed that Facebook will reset the feed's sort setting to "Top Stories" no matter how many times it's set to "Most Recent"?
- danso 9y ago
  Seems to have been a common complaint over the years: https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=10152230374684250 https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=1015223... https://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/how-permanently-set-your-facebook-feed-show-most-recent-instead-top-stories https://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/how-permane... > In the desktop view of Facebook, there's an option to change from "Top Stories" to "Most Recent", but Facebook only maintains that setting for about 24 hours and then it automatically reverts back to Top Stories.

InclinedPlane 9y ago

Think of facebook like an organism subject to evolutionary pressures. The evolutionary pressures that matter to facebook are maintaining "engagement" and through that ad revenue. Note that what matters to FB isn't engagement between you and your friends, just between you and it. So it doesn't matter to them how poor the algorithm is. The only thing that matters is how many minutes or hours a day you spend on the site.

StanislavPetrov 9y ago

One of many reasons you shouldn't depend on algorithms or facebook to keep you informed and aware of anything, let alone life and death issues. The unwillingness and/or inability for people to access, process and understand information is endemic in our society and one of the core reasons we are in such bad shape on so many levels.

sandov 9y ago

I've always fantasized about people switching from FB to an easy-to-use RSS platform. Kinda like Mastodon, but bloggy/facebookey instead of a twitter clone, and obviously: chronological feeds. I'm sorry for her loss.

EpicEng 9y ago

I guess... I don't really care. If the FB feed is the only way you "stay in touch" with someone, you're not friends. At best you're acquaintances. This person makes no attempt to speak to her "friend" for who knows how long and is now outraged that she didn't see one of his posts. Yeesh, get over yourself. If she actually cared she would have been in touch in other, more personal ways.

dang 9y ago
> I don't really care. [...] Yeesh, get over yourself. If she actually cared Please don't post uncivil comments here. Instead, read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site to heart so we can all have at least one semi-decent place on the internet. Edit: it looks like we've had to ask you this multiple times before. We eventually ban accounts that ignore these requests, so would you please fix this?
- jeandejean 9y ago
  I don't see what's uncivil here, there are no insults. And you speak as if you were an admin, but you obviously aren't.
  - dang 9y ago
    I'm an admin; sorry that wasn't clear. It's uncivil because (a) it's uncharitable about a painful situation and (b) "Yeesh, get over yourself" is a swipe.

paulie_a 9y ago

I have a question about Facebook, they seem to spend tremendous effort to create engagement. Arguably at the detriment to society. Why are the ads so terribly targeted? They are an ad company with immense data collection and at the end of the day the ads are equivalent to a niche cable network

1_2__4 9y ago
Because ad targeting is so the advertiser can show you want they want you to buy, rather than what you want to buy. No part of the process is oriented towards finding what you want and giving it to you. It’s for finding out who you are so they can exploit you.
- 549362-30499 9y ago
  I don't think that distinction is meaningful. The digital ad market is frighteningly sophisticated and coldly logical. You are shown ads for things that optimize what you're likely to buy/click multiplied by how much the ad buyer makes when someone actually does buy or click. Talk to anyone on the buy side of the ad market - these ads work. They really do show you the things that you want to buy, even if those things surprise you.
  - pishpash 9y ago
    They work over what baseline? I think they are all treading water, and have to buy ads because competitors do.
    - 549362-30499 9y ago
      They work in the sense that you can predictably purchase customers and users. I don't know what you mean by treading water. People who buy these ads do it because it's profitable, not because they trying to keep up with some competition.
richforrester 9y ago
Because company [X] thinks the target for product [Y] is [Z]. That's my guess anyway. And I work in (and/or closely with) marketing. .edit: Come to think of it, I want to elaborate on that. Think about search engine optimisation. It's in a similar vein. "A guy walks into a bar, bars, pub, tavern, pulic house, irish pub, drinks, beer, acolhol, bar stool" etc. My point is; people that are trying to sell 1 thing, might focus on reaching AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE, over focussing on getting the right (but smaller) audience.

syntheticnature 9y ago

I've never missed someone I'd consider even a distant friend passing via FB -- a few acquaintances, though I usually found out within a week. That said, I have experienced FB hiding something bad in someone's life for an extended period -- a relative I'm not directly linked to passing, cancer diagnosis, someone's dog getting very sick and having to be euthanized, etc. Again, I found out, but not fast enough, even with friends that were in the second ring out from my very closest friends.

pgrote 9y ago

A week or so ago Facebook removed the ticker feature they had in the bottom right corner. This is how I worked around the predetermined algorithm showing me what Facebook thinks I wanted to see. It allowed me to keep up with people I wanted to without Facebook intervening. Now that it is gone, the value of Facebook to me is near zero. Even if I saw MOST RECENT, posts are missing. When I come back it's switched back to TOP STORIES. I have no idea why companies decide to make users work hard for what they want.

carlivar 9y ago
Users? You're the product. Advertisers are the users.
- bschwindHN 9y ago
  Ahh there it is.
- hunter2_ 9y ago
  More typically than in response to someone saying "user," I see this in response to somebody erroneously saying "customer" or similar. I think "the user" is pretty valid, but "the used" makes for a good smirk.
  - carlivar 9y ago
    Yeah I got that wrong. I mixed up users with customers. Thank you for pointing it out.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    There's only two industries that describe their customers as users: Software and drug dealers.
- kruczek 9y ago
  God, I hate that phrase. I mean, I know that's the intended reason for it - to make it outrageous. But it's also stupidly incorrect. Facebook is not "producing" people who are using it, it is producing specific representation of data about their users. And I do not believe whatever data Facebook has can be considered equal to actual people.

omarforgotpwd 9y ago

Advertisers don't want to put their ads next to a post about someone dying.

arduanika 9y ago
^ this.

Myrmornis 9y ago

I was quite un-cooly positive about Facebook for the first 15 years or so, but recently it has become extremely apparent that the algorithms are getting in the way of what I'm trying to do (communicate with a predictable set of friends).

sixdimensional 9y ago

Very sorry for her loss as well.. and her pain in not knowing... It's interesting from a social science perspective to have the expectation of the system / algorithms that it would have notified you of a friend's passing. This is an expectation that the model understands what is important to the user - something I doubt the model is optimized around completely. Before Facebook, I think not knowing would be even more common than we realize - unless you had frequent contact with your friend. In a world disconnected, no email, no Internet, maybe only a telephone, or even further back, a telegram, or even less - it might be many, many times much less likely you would find such a thing out. Going back to the times of villages with no electronic technology at all, communication would have been only through immediate knowledge, written / recorded information or word of mouth. I used to work for a website that tried to digitize obituaries, to serve as a replacement for the newspaper, way before that was really a "thing". It never really took off, because, the people who wanted to publish death notices in newspapers just kept doing that. Most people who wanted to read them preferred holding a newspaper than reading a website (although, it did help disseminate information quickly). Eventually, newspapers simply published the obituaries and death notices online themselves, and it all went to a big aggregator of obituary postings (or got indexed by Google), and then it was no longer much of a thing. The most interesting thing, for me, having worked in this area, was seeing how users have taken to Facebook as a sort of memorial to those who have passed, help spread the news, etc. But with the conflux of marketing and so much personal news... I'm not surprised that this information slipped through the cracks. I recall a book on this topic - "Bowling Alone"[1] published in 2001, before social networks. The excerpt from Amazon.com - "Once we bowled in leagues, usually after work—but no longer. This seemingly small phenomenon symbolizes a significant social change that Robert Putnam has identified in this brilliant volume, which The Economist hailed as 'a prodigious achievement.' Drawing on vast new data that reveal Americans’ changing behavior, Putnam shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from one another and how social structures—whether they be PTA, church, or political parties—have disintegrated. Until the publication of this groundbreaking work, no one had so deftly diagnosed the harm that these broken bonds have wreaked on our physical and civic health, nor had anyone exalted their fundamental power in creating a society that is happy, healthy, and safe. Like defining works from the past, such as The Lonely Crowd and The Affluent Society, and like the works of C. Wright Mills and Betty Friedan, Putnam’s Bowling Alone has identified a central crisis at the heart of our society and suggests what we can do." Even with Facebook/social media, I wonder if the same thing is still true, or if we have begun to heal the broken bonds of our disconnected nature the book identified. [1] ISBN-10: 0743203046

toomanybeersies 9y ago

There's another story buried in the Twitter conversation: > Pretty sure this is what killed my friend @shanecomix by proxy. I and numerous other friends of his never saw his GoFundMe campaign for insulin. He died $50 shy of his goal. I'm very sorry for your loss, especially complicated by such esoterica. Why exactly does somebody need to start a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for life-critical medicine?

firstplacelast 9y ago
In America, we hate poor people. I mean, none of us say it. In fact, most of us state the opposite. However, a good chunk of us vote for politicians and work for companies that exacerbate the problems of the poor.
- lwansbrough 9y ago
  There’s a difference between hating them hen poor, and being self-interested. That being said, the effects are often the same. And self-interest is an acceptable excuse for people that want to ignore their impact on those around them.
  - disordinary 9y ago
    There does seem to be a culture where poor people are dismissed as being lazy when often that's the opposite of true.
  - rndgermandude 9y ago
    I rarely (actually never I think) heard anybody complain that "I have to pay for somebody else's healthcare?! Socialism sucks" where I live. In the US however that seems to be a different matter for a lot of people. This - to me - goes beyond mere self-interest... It's essentially stating that one is fine with other people suffering and dying just because they are too poor to pay the ridiculous health care premiums in the US or find an employer who does that for them.
    - 9y ago

pelario 9y ago

From all the reasons to claim that "the Internet is broken", I think the worst is that most services today apparently do one thing; but in reality do a different one. And if you want it to do what "is supposed to do", it is extremely laborious, or literally impossible. The facebook feed is one example. Recent changes in google search, another.

txt 9y ago

Today I got an email from a female friend of mine who passed away 4 years ago. Apparently they used her facebook info (email, display name) with the subject being 'Fwd for 'my facebook display name' followed by terrible spam .. Ohhhhh how I long for the days that we weren't hooked on social media.

foobaw 9y ago

I doubt FB will change how their feed works because of this publicized incident. Perhaps Zuck will make a post about how they'll try and improve because they care about people. I know a lot of people that work at Facebook and they're all highly intelligent. It's a great place to work at but incidents like this makes me question if their talent is all being put to good use. The algorithm has definitely a lot more "machine" learning to do to prevent these incidents from happening again. Close friend, related to death and health, gofundme campaign all scream that the statuses should've been shown. (if FB can be so good at showing relevant ads, why can it show relevant feed)

kercker 9y ago

Algorithms can have their downside. Sometimes I miss some important emails just because the emails are classified as spam and moved into spam folder.

k3a 9y ago
That is not the same. You can always check the Spam folder. But you can't see posts which FB decided not to show you!

111_1_111 9y ago

0% chance I'm going to read a story that is formatted as a series of tweets.

msmith10101 9y ago

Reading something like this: I feel like TWTR users need to find a better product.

ClassyJacket 9y ago

I would assume because they live in a third world country such as the United States.

sbuttgereit 9y ago
Or perhaps a country with a national medical program? https://www.gofundme.com/StephenSykes https://www.gofundme.com/StephenSykes "Unfortunatey, the cost of the drug is above the NHS funding threshold. It is not therefore available on prescription and the Consultants have told us that we will need to raise the funds required to purchase the treatment that Stephen needs to give him the real prospect of becoming well again."
- azernik 9y ago
  Insulin is a much cheaper intervention than that.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- kalleboo 9y ago
  Every healthcare system rationalizes spending. The US system lets low income people die because they can't afford something as basic as insulin. The NHS rationalizes on £90,000 recently-out-of-trial cancer treatments.
- stordoff 9y ago
  If I'm reading the papers correctly, PD-1 inhibition for Hodgkin's Lymphoma appears to be a particularly early treatment[0]. I doubt "the cost of the drug is above the NHS funding threshold" is a wholly accurate statement, as factors beyond just cost of treatment are involved (the NHS/NICE will approved costly treatments if they are effective and the only available treatment). I'm struggling to find the NICE report (assuming there is one), as the drug in question is not named. [0] See, e.g., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5210230/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5210230/ from January 2017: "[M]ajor issues such as timing and sequencing, treatment duration and synergistic combinatory approaches remain to be resolved. Furthermore, long-term efficacy outcomes and potential development of late toxicities in lymphoma patients are still poorly defined."

renegadesensei 9y ago

I had a similar experience a few years ago. https://righteousruminations.blogspot.jp/2015/06/hating-facebook.html https://righteousruminations.blogspot.jp/2015/06/hating-face...

973015077 9y ago

Wapo

grondilu 9y ago

TL,DR: A Facebook user died and his online friends were not notified because he did not post much so Facebook presumably assumed it was not worth notifying them.

ben_jones 9y ago

So we've given our "Make sure my friends aren't dead" check to Facebook, and we're blaming Facebook? Isn't this our fault? Isn't the rational thing to take back the rights we've given to Facebook?

mclightning 9y ago
I am astounded that this comment is not receiving more upvotes and comments! I can't believe we are taking someone seriously for blaming Facebook for not telling them their friend has died. If you care about someone, call them, be present in their life every once in a while. Caring is a proactive act!
- jmcqk6 9y ago
  The key value proposition of facebook to me is that it makes those types of connections easier to scale up. Do I really need to call 200 people a month to see what they're up to and how they're doing? It's much better to have a constant feed of information that you can interact with as you can and want. But it doesn't provide that value any more. It shows me ads and posts from a handle of the hundreds of people I'm friends with. So you're right that caring is a proactive act, but that doesn't invalidate that initial value proposition at all.

sixstringtheory 9y ago

This post reeks of entitlement. The time the author spent writing this would have been better spent actively cultivating another relationship than complaining that something didn’t perfectly spoonfeed them life experiences.

bdreadz 9y ago

Why isn't there a setting that you can just choose to see everything in chronological order. That's fine if you want to default people to the algorithm feed. It's just such a simple thing to add.

NightlyDev 9y ago

A Facebook user who thinks Facebook is ment for keeping in touch? I wonder how people can avoid noticing what Facebook has become after all this time and still use it.

acjohnson55 9y ago

I've had this experience a few times, when a friend has popped into mind and I looked them up only to find old posts eulogizing them. It adds an extra gut punch not being able to actually mourn with other people because you didn't find out in time. The reality is that Facebook doesn't assume your Friends are your friends. It assumes you want to keep interacting with the same people you most recently interacted with. It also assumes you want to see things you're likely to Like or comment on. On the whole, this probably leads to them more reliably providing that dopamine hit when users check in, at the cost of being useful for actually staying in touch.

edgartaor 9y ago

It's possible to create a Facebook client using the API and get a feed the way you want?

k3a 9y ago
No, that's not practically possible. And even if it were, FB could stop or change/restrict it any time.

kapad 9y ago

The news feed is terrible. On Facebook or on Twitter. I don't like unfollowing people, but I have on occasion unfollowed people that post too often. For some reason, Facebook thinks I need to see all of these posts, and drowns out other stuff in my news feed. I've missed congratulating friends on getting married, having a kid, getting a degree or sending my condolences on the death of a loved one. It's terrible, that these people who post less often, but post only the bigger things in their lives get drowned out by Facebook's algorithms. I'd infact want it the other way around. The folks who post often should simply be treated as fillers. Finally there's the bugs in facebook that randomly causes my feed to refresh. And on these refreshes, I'm shown an entirely new/different feed. Maybe Facebook thought they showed me a post, but the bug and auto page refreshes caused me to miss that certain post.

corobo 9y ago
That refresh you describe is the only thing that’s made me angry at a website (technology) rather than a website’s content It was the straw that uninstalled the camel’s app for me too, the app would refresh itself whenever you switch to something else and come back I’m almost positive Facebook thinks I’ve successfully seen the post because it completely vanishes from then on and I have to visit the person/page’s profile to see it again
- TheKarateKid 9y ago
  What's just as frustrating is that this issue has existed for a few years now. I've submitted a few bug reports/feedback regarding it in detail, but Facebook listening to user feedback/bug reports is about as likely as Apple/Microsoft listening to anything their users have to say via an online submission.
thirdsun 9y ago
If I understand you correctly you're suggesting to simply hide someone else's posts. However wouldn't that potentially lead to the very same outcome, as in missing an important event? What if Facebook decided the marriage of your frequent poster friend was the one post that had to disappear?

Molaxx 9y ago

Blaming Facebook in this is really weird. You didn't know about it because you weren't really friends. You were acquainted, yes, but you didn't actually keep in touch. If it weren't for Facebook you'd never consider him a friend, just some guy you knew. I'm sorry this seems insesnsitive, but Facebook isn't reality, and it's a company trying to make money. It should be accountable for the damage it does for society, but it can't be accountable for the way we manage our friendships. That part is our responsibility as humans.

iMarv 9y ago
I think it is not as binary as this. I too have friends that I do not see often, but what makes them friends to me is that no matter for how long we do not meet, as soon as we meet our relationship is the same as the last time we met. Friends are not always those who you meet every day, but those that give you the feeling of happiness when you have them around, at least for me.
RickS 9y ago
> If it weren't for Facebook you'd never consider him a friend, just some guy you knew. If you re-read the post, this is inaccurate. The friendship began elsewhere. >Facebook isn't reality, and it's a company trying to make money It is a company whose value proposition (to non advertisers) is its being reflective of or enhancing reality. This as opposed to, say, warcraft. >it can't be accountable for the way we manage our friendships Managing friendships is exactly facebook's purpose. If it claims to be the best way to manage a friendship, and bad things happen as a result of presumptions the company makes in the course of managing said friendship, it's sane to associate facebook's tooling around friendship management with the actual management of friendships. If I sign up for facebook under the pretense of "see what happens to my friends", and then sort by recency, if recent things that happen to my friends do not appear, that is, IMO, a legitimate grievance. Facebook might not owe this user anything, but that doesn't mean they can't wish for better service. A person missed the death of their friend because they were second guessed by an algorithm that has gradually torn control from the hands of users and downgraded reality and chronology to foster "engagement". That sucks.
- 9y ago

TekMol 9y ago

This is in line with my Facebook experience. I only post every few weeks on FB, sometimes only every few months. And FB treats me as a second class citizen. My posts often don't even appear in the default feed of my friends. They do appear when my friends switch to 'Most Recent'. But most recent is pretty much unbearable for friends with many friends because it shows every tiny thing like 'Mike is interested in an event' and stuff.

anm89 9y ago

So facebook should just open source their algorithms and let every technical decision be made by public vote? If you don't like their algorithms, or their platform, or the fact they are monetizing you, then get off of facebook. Facebook is not responsible for organizing your relationships for you. It doesn't owe you anything. There is not even a specific ask here. It's just whining because they know it is the easiest way to rile up a mob for blog traffic.

jeandejean 9y ago

Sorry for your loss but... Wake up! Facebook doesn't owe you the prioritization of information flow you wish. It's like TV: you must watch tons of crap, commercials etc. and often you miss important information...

touristtam 9y ago
Maybe FB doesn't, but the newsfeed display has significantly changed over the years, that expectation based on initial experience aren't matched anymore to the current format. For a significant portion of the user base, this seems to be detrimental to the experience, and one might argue to the engagement sought after by this company.

rocho 9y ago

Utterly ridiculous. The feed cannot show every possible post, otherwise it would be a mess rather than a feed. I really dislike Facebook, but blaming it in this case doesn't even make sense.

bprasanna 9y ago

One day FB will say AI has taken over the algorithms without anyone's notice!

ocfx 9y ago

Algorithms are going to be the new boogeyman.

Toast_25 9y ago

A little birdy told me you can see tweets chronologically in lists. I've yet to try it out though.

ap3 9y ago

Hopefully posts like these encourage us to reach out to our friends in actual real life way, not just through social media likes or mentions

taylodl 9y ago

The irony is FB isn't a very good way for staying in touch with your friends, not when they suppress posts about the most important events going on in their lives. If that's the case then what's the point of social media? What function is actually being served?

k3a 9y ago
Ads are being served and FB makes money from advertisers. It's good that some people are slowly starting to see that...

hateful 9y ago

I posted this article on Facebook and received 0 responses. My wife, who has me in "close friends" and on "show first" frequently misses my posts.

k3a 9y ago

People shouldn't rely on these services for anything important. FB is primarily ad serving business and entertainment website. It doesn't make our life better, it also takes away our time and reduces productivity. :(