4 ms·

My business does a lot of posting on Facebook of sometimes controversial things (we're a news site and we sometimes cover local politics). By far the most engag

My business does a lot of posting on Facebook of sometimes controversial things (we're a news site and we sometimes cover local politics). By far the most engaged stuff is the most controversial where people begin to fight and attack each other. I have ~3k followers on one of my pages. Usually ~200-300 people see any given post if it has no engagements. If it has normal engagement, it might get to 1000-2000 views, still short of my follower count. If it has sparked controversy and there is a fight, I've had the views spike up over 8000-9000 without any shares. Facebook posts to your timeline "your friend commented on this" and others start piling in too. Facebook emails me saying "this post is getting more attention than 95% of the rest of your posts, please pay us money to show it to more people". The more toxic the comments, the more views it gets and the more Facebook begs me to pay them for it. That's the problem with these algorithms that humans don't watch over. Usually it works great and good content is seen by the people who want to see it. But every now and again it goes out of control and people end up getting hurt and Facebook/Twitter profit from it and even promote it. And as the person who posted it, I have zero ways to stop it from spreading other than deleting the post. -edit- oh another story... I run a news site for a town, lets call it Townsville. There is another Townsville in another state, but it is not my Townsville. I had a post go super viral, 90,000 views from my 3k followers, because somehow the post made it to the wrong Townsville and 87,000 people were being shown the wrong news article. Again, I had no way to stop this, no tools to correct it. Absolute insanity.

ASalazarMX 7y ago
> By far the most engaged stuff is the most controversial where people begin to fight and attack each other. Well, duh. If people are fighting they are definitely "engaged", but not in a good way. Defining that more engagement equals more success is what made social networks so toxic. The current state that more eyeballs equals more ad money needs to change.
- muckrakerz 7y ago
  Why do you state that? Some of the largest advances in our society have come from what would be seen as toxic or hostile engagements.
  - em-bee 7y ago
    examples?
- hi5eyes 7y ago
  lmao that’s completely bullshit my fb page is about 16k and one of my most engaged posts is just people sharing/tagging their friends the controversial content meme is so played out. you can definitely make and post safe content and still get crazy good engagements the only reason people blame social networks for toxicity is because _people_ choose to engage with the toxic shit and _people_ choose to post this controversial shit as a cheap way to boost their brand Yeah, i used to post edgy content that got people arguing in the comments. as a kid. blogging after school. i learned it by adopting baiting style quips from chans. i cant believe grown adults are still this pathetic >Defining that more engagement equals more success is what made social networks so toxic. social networks are built to give you want you want. you can choose to stop participating it the toxicity for starters
  - freehunter 7y ago
    >you can choose to stop participating in the toxicity for starters In my case, it's not that easy. Simply posting factual news updates is often enough to trigger wild responses. For example, a few months ago I attended a city council meeting and wrote a Facebook post during the meeting saying "City has approved a new 70 unit condo project" with a picture of the plans. It was one of the most toxic comment sections I've ever seen simply because some people disagreed with the action being taken. Not my actions, but the actions I was reporting on. The answer certainly is not to stop reporting the news. On a side note, your comment comes dangerously close to sounding like a personal attack. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong but it seems like you're saying if you have problems on Facebook (which I and the person you're responding to have said we do), we must be pathetic and posting like edgy children seeking the toxicity we find. If that's not your intention, maybe you could clarify?
  - gdy 7y ago
    I see that you haven't really abandoned your 'baiting style'.
tunesmith 7y ago
This is kind of like how the value of information is how surprising it is. Classic information theory, but with a twist, because in these cases the "surprise" element is often not the value of the information itself, but the way it is presented. So these algorithms are quite good at recognizing when things are surprising and thus perhaps deserving of wider sharing, but bad at recognizing what kind of surprise it is - is it actually new information, or is it just froth?
omegaworks 7y ago
The surprising thing about all of this is that sentiment analysis--machine learning algorithms that can interpret the feeling you're trying to convey with your words--is a fairly solved problem. These companies can easily put a filter over this engagement maximization algorithm and they are choosing not to.
- JetSpiegel 7y ago
  Of course, machine can read the commenters' minds, this is a solved problem. I, for one, welcome our mechanical overlords. --- https://text2data.com/Demo https://text2data.com/Demo This document is: positive (+0.52) Magnitude: 1.39
- trickstra 7y ago
  But why would they do it? They have some pretty solid data to support the argument that more engagement, whatever the quality, equals more money to the poster, and more money to the platform. There is no bad publicity. The question is what can we do about it? It exploits basic human psychology.
- disgruntledphd2 7y ago
  Sorry, can you provide some citations to "sentiment analysis being a solved problem". Last time I looked, it was decidely non-trivial, though I admit I haven't followed the topic in a few years. And it is worth noting that if these companies could stop this with limited engagement impact, they totally would as it would get them out of the horrible political hole they are in right now.
padobson 7y ago
Mark Zuckerberg is the 21st century's Pablo Escobar.
- alexanderdmitri 7y ago
  Because he runs a vast, violent empire that smuggles illegal drugs?
  - filoleg 7y ago
    Probably because the parent dislikes Zuck, and the Hitler comparison has gotten too overused in recent times (and Zuck isnt a politician), so Escobar was chosen as an appropriate one. Fully expecting to see that comparison being used against Jeff Bezos soon. tl;dr: “everyone i dislike is a nazi or something close” syndrome
cat199 7y ago
> That's the problem with these algorithms that humans don't watch over. ... and Facebook/Twitter profit from it and even promote it. Don't be fooled.. Someone is spot checking the training data against the output at a statistically valid sampling interval.. ML in this case is the data equivalent of a limited liability corp..
- stubish 7y ago
  Why does someone need to spot check the training data against the output? I'd assumed the algorithm is trying to maximize a metric, which is best completely automated without human intervention to slow it down or provide biased opinions. Even fuzzier goals like 'not be racist' would get turned into metrics (eg. proportion of words used that are on this watchlist or similar scoring algorithm)
  - cat199 7y ago
    > Why does someone need to spot check the training data against the output? because one wants to make sure ones program is operating as intended?

ASalazarMX 7y ago

> By far the most engaged stuff is the most controversial where people begin to fight and attack each other. Well, duh. If people are fighting they are definitely "engaged", but not in a good way. Defining that more engagement equals more success is what made social networks so toxic. The current state that more eyeballs equals more ad money needs to change.

muckrakerz 7y ago
Why do you state that? Some of the largest advances in our society have come from what would be seen as toxic or hostile engagements.
- em-bee 7y ago
  examples?
hi5eyes 7y ago
lmao that’s completely bullshit my fb page is about 16k and one of my most engaged posts is just people sharing/tagging their friends the controversial content meme is so played out. you can definitely make and post safe content and still get crazy good engagements the only reason people blame social networks for toxicity is because _people_ choose to engage with the toxic shit and _people_ choose to post this controversial shit as a cheap way to boost their brand Yeah, i used to post edgy content that got people arguing in the comments. as a kid. blogging after school. i learned it by adopting baiting style quips from chans. i cant believe grown adults are still this pathetic >Defining that more engagement equals more success is what made social networks so toxic. social networks are built to give you want you want. you can choose to stop participating it the toxicity for starters
- freehunter 7y ago
  >you can choose to stop participating in the toxicity for starters In my case, it's not that easy. Simply posting factual news updates is often enough to trigger wild responses. For example, a few months ago I attended a city council meeting and wrote a Facebook post during the meeting saying "City has approved a new 70 unit condo project" with a picture of the plans. It was one of the most toxic comment sections I've ever seen simply because some people disagreed with the action being taken. Not my actions, but the actions I was reporting on. The answer certainly is not to stop reporting the news. On a side note, your comment comes dangerously close to sounding like a personal attack. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong but it seems like you're saying if you have problems on Facebook (which I and the person you're responding to have said we do), we must be pathetic and posting like edgy children seeking the toxicity we find. If that's not your intention, maybe you could clarify?
- gdy 7y ago
  I see that you haven't really abandoned your 'baiting style'.

tunesmith 7y ago

This is kind of like how the value of information is how surprising it is. Classic information theory, but with a twist, because in these cases the "surprise" element is often not the value of the information itself, but the way it is presented. So these algorithms are quite good at recognizing when things are surprising and thus perhaps deserving of wider sharing, but bad at recognizing what kind of surprise it is - is it actually new information, or is it just froth?

omegaworks 7y ago

The surprising thing about all of this is that sentiment analysis--machine learning algorithms that can interpret the feeling you're trying to convey with your words--is a fairly solved problem. These companies can easily put a filter over this engagement maximization algorithm and they are choosing not to.

JetSpiegel 7y ago
Of course, machine can read the commenters' minds, this is a solved problem. I, for one, welcome our mechanical overlords. --- https://text2data.com/Demo https://text2data.com/Demo This document is: positive (+0.52) Magnitude: 1.39
trickstra 7y ago
But why would they do it? They have some pretty solid data to support the argument that more engagement, whatever the quality, equals more money to the poster, and more money to the platform. There is no bad publicity. The question is what can we do about it? It exploits basic human psychology.
disgruntledphd2 7y ago
Sorry, can you provide some citations to "sentiment analysis being a solved problem". Last time I looked, it was decidely non-trivial, though I admit I haven't followed the topic in a few years. And it is worth noting that if these companies could stop this with limited engagement impact, they totally would as it would get them out of the horrible political hole they are in right now.

padobson 7y ago

Mark Zuckerberg is the 21st century's Pablo Escobar.

alexanderdmitri 7y ago
Because he runs a vast, violent empire that smuggles illegal drugs?
- filoleg 7y ago
  Probably because the parent dislikes Zuck, and the Hitler comparison has gotten too overused in recent times (and Zuck isnt a politician), so Escobar was chosen as an appropriate one. Fully expecting to see that comparison being used against Jeff Bezos soon. tl;dr: “everyone i dislike is a nazi or something close” syndrome

cat199 7y ago

> That's the problem with these algorithms that humans don't watch over. ... and Facebook/Twitter profit from it and even promote it. Don't be fooled.. Someone is spot checking the training data against the output at a statistically valid sampling interval.. ML in this case is the data equivalent of a limited liability corp..

stubish 7y ago
Why does someone need to spot check the training data against the output? I'd assumed the algorithm is trying to maximize a metric, which is best completely automated without human intervention to slow it down or provide biased opinions. Even fuzzier goals like 'not be racist' would get turned into metrics (eg. proportion of words used that are on this watchlist or similar scoring algorithm)
- cat199 7y ago
  > Why does someone need to spot check the training data against the output? because one wants to make sure ones program is operating as intended?