6 ms·

Money quote: "Your Facebook won't be as good while it relearns your preferences." I bet that depends on how you define "good".

tripzilch 9y ago
It's a veiled threat, just like when they told you that if you disable facial recognition you're worsening the experience of blind users, and that nefarious people will take your photos and impersonate you.
chrischen 9y ago
They probably intentionally selected things to delete to cripple the experience. It's a way of forcing people bad-mouthing facebook to put their money where their mouth is. If critics don't use this feature, they can put the blame solely on them.
- tripzilch 9y ago
  Why is this downvoted? The article itself is a demonstration that they really do this. Case in point: If you're not logged in to the FB tracking network, after 5 seconds of reading, you get surprised by this "funny" jump scare: https://i.imgur.com/PCQOo8N.png https://i.imgur.com/PCQOo8N.png That is deliberately worsening the experience. If you click the close-button (helpfully labelled "Not now"), it is replaced with a sticky footer that takes 33% of your screen (depending on your window size and zoom setting).
- Lionsion 9y ago
  > If critics don't use this feature, they can put the blame solely on them. Once this rolls out, I'm going to be posting instructions to my feed. One of the only reasons I still keep Facebook around is to publicize articles critical of social media and stuff like this.
ceejayoz 9y ago
Indeed. I've discovered it can make major mistakes on who's "important" to me - I'd thought they'd stopped Facebooking, but it turned out their algorithm had for some reason deemed them not to be a "close" friend and de-emphasized them from my feed.
giarc 9y ago
I agree this probably won't make Facebook as good. I relate this to the time before spam filters were good and 50% of my email was penis enlargement pills and money wire fraud. You dump all this data and we go back to a time where I'm not known, and Facebook shows me my active "friends" and it's just my aunt sharing her latest Bejeweled score. I'm all for better control of my data, but there needs to be some balance so the ads I see are still relevant and not acai berries super juices and Hot Local Singles In My Area.
- luxpir 9y ago
  Why do you want to see ads?
  - giarc 9y ago
    Because I want Facebook to be free... just like I want Google to be free and Gmail and Google Maps and my news site and my sports site and my fantasy sports app and...and...and...and... I understand that an ad model is what allows me to do many things I do on the internet without cost. Now, if I have to choose between an ad model that shows me "Dewalt Tools 25% off" (Something I am interested in) or "Gluten Free Bread" (something I'm not interested in), I will select the former.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Advertising is a race to the bottom. As long as GDPR affects everyone more-less equally, it'll only reduce the current depth of advertising hole. That is, non-targeted ads might become more profitable again.
LargeWu 9y ago
Likely, you will see a bunch of random ads instead of targeted ones of things that might actually be interesting to you. Whether or not that's better is up to the user.
- kparaju 9y ago
  I'm assuming I will see a lot more posts from old high school friends who I don't really interact with anymore. It would be a fun experiment to try though.
  - basch 9y ago
    the two systems are probably unrelated. muddling newsfeed and ad targeting would make both systems unnecessarily complicated.
criddell 9y ago
I read that sentence as you can try to get rid of us, but we'll be back!
rhizome 9y ago
The sentence should be rendered as: "Your Facebook won't be as good [for us] while it relearns your preferences."
tbyehl 9y ago
I had the realization a while back that certain advertisers were flooding my Newsfeed with Sponsored posts every time I interacted with them in some way -- on or off Facebook. So I started regularly clearing out the Interests and Advertisers sections of Ad Preferences and now my Newsfeed is almost entirely devoid of Sponsored posts. The experience using Facebook without them exploiting knowledge of my "preferences" is substantially better. Granted, I'm running ad blockers, so most of the low-value advertising on FB was already blocked.
jacquesm 9y ago
He meant 'my Facebook won't be as profitable'.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
It won't have that "tailored experience". People can pin this on Facebook all day, but that's the same bullshit every user-productizing company spews. That the best experience is the one they design, which necessarily includes tracking, ads, and half of the dark patterns in the book.
- tripzilch 9y ago
  Some days, I secretly wonder if my experience would indeed be better, because I've been blocking ads and tracking shit for the 20 years I've been online. Because frankly, I wouldn't know, maybe this world of constantly being targeted with advertising is really cool. They keep telling me I'm missing out, you know?

tripzilch 9y ago

It's a veiled threat, just like when they told you that if you disable facial recognition you're worsening the experience of blind users, and that nefarious people will take your photos and impersonate you.

chrischen 9y ago

They probably intentionally selected things to delete to cripple the experience. It's a way of forcing people bad-mouthing facebook to put their money where their mouth is. If critics don't use this feature, they can put the blame solely on them.

tripzilch 9y ago
Why is this downvoted? The article itself is a demonstration that they really do this. Case in point: If you're not logged in to the FB tracking network, after 5 seconds of reading, you get surprised by this "funny" jump scare: https://i.imgur.com/PCQOo8N.png https://i.imgur.com/PCQOo8N.png That is deliberately worsening the experience. If you click the close-button (helpfully labelled "Not now"), it is replaced with a sticky footer that takes 33% of your screen (depending on your window size and zoom setting).
Lionsion 9y ago
> If critics don't use this feature, they can put the blame solely on them. Once this rolls out, I'm going to be posting instructions to my feed. One of the only reasons I still keep Facebook around is to publicize articles critical of social media and stuff like this.

ceejayoz 9y ago

Indeed. I've discovered it can make major mistakes on who's "important" to me - I'd thought they'd stopped Facebooking, but it turned out their algorithm had for some reason deemed them not to be a "close" friend and de-emphasized them from my feed.

giarc 9y ago

I agree this probably won't make Facebook as good. I relate this to the time before spam filters were good and 50% of my email was penis enlargement pills and money wire fraud. You dump all this data and we go back to a time where I'm not known, and Facebook shows me my active "friends" and it's just my aunt sharing her latest Bejeweled score. I'm all for better control of my data, but there needs to be some balance so the ads I see are still relevant and not acai berries super juices and Hot Local Singles In My Area.

luxpir 9y ago
Why do you want to see ads?
- giarc 9y ago
  Because I want Facebook to be free... just like I want Google to be free and Gmail and Google Maps and my news site and my sports site and my fantasy sports app and...and...and...and... I understand that an ad model is what allows me to do many things I do on the internet without cost. Now, if I have to choose between an ad model that shows me "Dewalt Tools 25% off" (Something I am interested in) or "Gluten Free Bread" (something I'm not interested in), I will select the former.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Advertising is a race to the bottom. As long as GDPR affects everyone more-less equally, it'll only reduce the current depth of advertising hole. That is, non-targeted ads might become more profitable again.

LargeWu 9y ago

Likely, you will see a bunch of random ads instead of targeted ones of things that might actually be interesting to you. Whether or not that's better is up to the user.

kparaju 9y ago
I'm assuming I will see a lot more posts from old high school friends who I don't really interact with anymore. It would be a fun experiment to try though.
- basch 9y ago
  the two systems are probably unrelated. muddling newsfeed and ad targeting would make both systems unnecessarily complicated.

criddell 9y ago

I read that sentence as you can try to get rid of us, but we'll be back!

rhizome 9y ago

The sentence should be rendered as: "Your Facebook won't be as good [for us] while it relearns your preferences."

tbyehl 9y ago

I had the realization a while back that certain advertisers were flooding my Newsfeed with Sponsored posts every time I interacted with them in some way -- on or off Facebook. So I started regularly clearing out the Interests and Advertisers sections of Ad Preferences and now my Newsfeed is almost entirely devoid of Sponsored posts. The experience using Facebook without them exploiting knowledge of my "preferences" is substantially better. Granted, I'm running ad blockers, so most of the low-value advertising on FB was already blocked.

jacquesm 9y ago

He meant 'my Facebook won't be as profitable'.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

It won't have that "tailored experience". People can pin this on Facebook all day, but that's the same bullshit every user-productizing company spews. That the best experience is the one they design, which necessarily includes tracking, ads, and half of the dark patterns in the book.

tripzilch 9y ago
Some days, I secretly wonder if my experience would indeed be better, because I've been blocking ads and tracking shit for the 20 years I've been online. Because frankly, I wouldn't know, maybe this world of constantly being targeted with advertising is really cool. They keep telling me I'm missing out, you know?