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Facebook will start showing some of its users less political content

15 points by apsec112 6y ago

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> Facebook will exempt Covid-19 information from national and regional health authorities as well as posts by official government agencies from its political content experiment.
sp332 6y ago
A specific group of people, or a random sample of people?
- frongpik 6y ago
  The wording implies FB is running an A/B experiment where randomly selected 0.01% of their users get shown 10% less political content and a committee of highly paid statisticians will write a 50 pages summary of how this experiment would affect their ads revenue, should the experiment be increased to 0.05% of their users. A separate committee of highly paid execs will decide if they should proceed. If there's a hint of revenue drop, they'll quietly cancel the experiment and we won't hear about it.
aasasd 6y ago
Perhaps it's better to link to the FB's post itself: https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02/reducing-political-content-in-news-feed/ https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02/reducing-political-content... (Also it's rather telling that CNN doesn't think it necessary to link to the source.) Personally, as a non-user of FB, I'm hella confused by this announcement. Apparently the feed is not dictated by the user's subscriptions but by FB's will? Such social service, wow.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > the feed is not dictated by the user's subscriptions but by FB's will? This is why my abortive attempt at using fb to keep in contact with people who refused to use another service was terminated.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  So I remember using Facebook years ago. First it was people, pages, groups you followed in chronological order. Then it wasn’t chronological order, but it was still stuff you explicitly chose to follow. Then they started showing you things these entities liked. And then somewhere along the way they definitely got more and more aggressive about shoving things in your face from the last category, at the expense of things you explicitly chose to follow. At this point, I pretty much just use the Messenger app.
- dawg- 6y ago
  I think Facebook could get a lot of users back by giving up even a tiny bit of control over the feed. Maybe some people want the algorithmic garbage feed, that's fine if it works for them. But just adding an option to see my friends'/groups posts in chronological order would make the whole thing a lot more palatable.
kumarvvr 6y ago
So Facebook now controls the political thought of people. If past behavior is any clue, it is perhaps, already doing this. And it looks like it is cozying up to the new administration.
Mc_Big_G 6y ago
Now that the party FB supports isn't in power? hmmm

15 points by apsec112 6y ago

> Facebook will exempt Covid-19 information from national and regional health authorities as well as posts by official government agencies from its political content experiment.

sp332 6y ago

A specific group of people, or a random sample of people?

frongpik 6y ago
The wording implies FB is running an A/B experiment where randomly selected 0.01% of their users get shown 10% less political content and a committee of highly paid statisticians will write a 50 pages summary of how this experiment would affect their ads revenue, should the experiment be increased to 0.05% of their users. A separate committee of highly paid execs will decide if they should proceed. If there's a hint of revenue drop, they'll quietly cancel the experiment and we won't hear about it.

aasasd 6y ago

Perhaps it's better to link to the FB's post itself: https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02/reducing-political-content-in-news-feed/ https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02/reducing-political-content... (Also it's rather telling that CNN doesn't think it necessary to link to the source.) Personally, as a non-user of FB, I'm hella confused by this announcement. Apparently the feed is not dictated by the user's subscriptions but by FB's will? Such social service, wow.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> the feed is not dictated by the user's subscriptions but by FB's will? This is why my abortive attempt at using fb to keep in contact with people who refused to use another service was terminated.
bobthepanda 6y ago
So I remember using Facebook years ago. First it was people, pages, groups you followed in chronological order. Then it wasn’t chronological order, but it was still stuff you explicitly chose to follow. Then they started showing you things these entities liked. And then somewhere along the way they definitely got more and more aggressive about shoving things in your face from the last category, at the expense of things you explicitly chose to follow. At this point, I pretty much just use the Messenger app.
dawg- 6y ago
I think Facebook could get a lot of users back by giving up even a tiny bit of control over the feed. Maybe some people want the algorithmic garbage feed, that's fine if it works for them. But just adding an option to see my friends'/groups posts in chronological order would make the whole thing a lot more palatable.

kumarvvr 6y ago

So Facebook now controls the political thought of people. If past behavior is any clue, it is perhaps, already doing this. And it looks like it is cozying up to the new administration.

Mc_Big_G 6y ago

Now that the party FB supports isn't in power? hmmm