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How many friends do you have on there? Facebook shows you a tiny percentage of the content added to your network, including repeating items way before they have

How many friends do you have on there? Facebook shows you a tiny percentage of the content added to your network, including repeating items way before they have run out. If the News Feed team is trying to show me what I actually want to see, and not what they think will get the most interaction, ad clicks or time out of me, they are doing a terrible job. I find that the items displayed do not give me an accurate view of what my connections are posting. Often when I check the pages of in-person friends, while Facebook has been showing inane political posts by people I barely know, I have not been presented with the actually relevant and interesting activity my (real) friends have posted during the same time, or more recently. I have unfollowed, blocked, and hidden so many stories about guns and politics, yet Facebook manages to find new friends I’ve never heard of with similar stories for my newsfeed. Ever since 2016, at least, I feel like politics is shoved in my face every time I go to Facebook, provoking me to interact with strangers regarding my opinions in one of the worst venues that one can do that. I think they may be chasing interaction, regardless whether it’s positive our negative. Another wild theory is that they want to gather information about members’ reaction to politics, as it is not as lucrative to record reactions to someone’s cousin’s baby photos. The other alternatives mean they are very bad at their jobs, so I’m not sure.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> If the News Feed team is trying to show me what I actually want to see, and not what they think will get the most interaction, ad clicks or time out of me, they are doing a terrible job. The News Feed believed that interaction reveals a preference for seeing something. Even though they added more icons so that you weren't thumbs-upping your friends personal tragedies to indicate that they matter to you, interactions all mean “like” in the sense of “I like Facebook relaying this content to me”.
- code_duck 8y ago
  Sure, that’s what I mean by chasing interaction regardless of whether it’s negative or positive. If you comment on something, they show you more items like that, assuming you like to comment on those things. My impression was that Facebook’s user behaviors analysis is way more detailed than that, though. There are the specific negative indicators you can give to them such as hiding stories, which even says it will make them show fewer stories like that one, and unfollowing people. When you unfollow someone, surely Facebook attempts to analyze why? Neither of these seem to have an impact on the type of items shown to me.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> If the News Feed team is trying to show me what I actually want to see, and not what they think will get the most interaction, ad clicks or time out of me, they are doing a terrible job. The News Feed believed that interaction reveals a preference for seeing something. Even though they added more icons so that you weren't thumbs-upping your friends personal tragedies to indicate that they matter to you, interactions all mean “like” in the sense of “I like Facebook relaying this content to me”.

code_duck 8y ago
Sure, that’s what I mean by chasing interaction regardless of whether it’s negative or positive. If you comment on something, they show you more items like that, assuming you like to comment on those things. My impression was that Facebook’s user behaviors analysis is way more detailed than that, though. There are the specific negative indicators you can give to them such as hiding stories, which even says it will make them show fewer stories like that one, and unfollowing people. When you unfollow someone, surely Facebook attempts to analyze why? Neither of these seem to have an impact on the type of items shown to me.