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If you are so sure it's _not_ commercial content you have lost the ability to distinguish real content from adverts. That's a skill 7 years olds need to develop

If you are so sure it's _not_ commercial content you have lost the ability to distinguish real content from adverts. That's a skill 7 years olds need to develop. Maybe Facebook are being played, but not by anyone in my list of friends so they are complicit or we are expected to believe that they can't filter content by your social graph. Potentially that's true: it does not paint a very good picture of The Social Network's ability to target ads. More likely, Facebook have no real content for me because noone in my list of contacts posts on Facebook anymore and Facebook push this shitty content so thier pages are not bare. Perhaps one in ten is a real ad. It's still 100% low grade ads, just 90% is Facebook trying, and failing, to drive traffic for itself. I imagine they logged me looking at the titles long enough to write them down as active user engagement.

nl 5y ago
I just checked my FB. The first "suggested for you" piece is this link[1], about the Australian cycling team's bronze medal in the team pursuit. I'm a cyclist and Australian, and can confirm this link is interesting to me. It's from SBS, which is one of Australia's publicly funded broadcasters. It's not a paid ad. > More likely, Facebook have no real content for me because noone in my list of contacts posts on Facebook anymore and Facebook push this shitty content so thier pages are not bare. Exactly. If you are only seeing junk content from your friends, then the suggested content is likely to be junk stuff that is globally popular too. That doesn't somehow make it some secret paid ad, it's just junk. Same way the old Buzzfeed listicles were junk, but popular. > If you are so sure it's _not_ commercial content you have lost the ability to distinguish real content from adverts. That's a skill 7 years olds need to develop. You say you and your friends don't use FB much. Whereas I do, and have spend 5 or so years going very deep on their advertising work. Perhaps I do actually know what I'm talking about here? There is literally no way to pay for "suggested content". [1] https://www.sbs.com.au/cyclingcentral/article/2021/08/05/aussie-mens-team-pursuit-bronze-almost-gold-after-passing-down-nz https://www.sbs.com.au/cyclingcentral/article/2021/08/05/aus...

nl 5y ago

I just checked my FB. The first "suggested for you" piece is this link[1], about the Australian cycling team's bronze medal in the team pursuit. I'm a cyclist and Australian, and can confirm this link is interesting to me. It's from SBS, which is one of Australia's publicly funded broadcasters. It's not a paid ad. > More likely, Facebook have no real content for me because noone in my list of contacts posts on Facebook anymore and Facebook push this shitty content so thier pages are not bare. Exactly. If you are only seeing junk content from your friends, then the suggested content is likely to be junk stuff that is globally popular too. That doesn't somehow make it some secret paid ad, it's just junk. Same way the old Buzzfeed listicles were junk, but popular. > If you are so sure it's _not_ commercial content you have lost the ability to distinguish real content from adverts. That's a skill 7 years olds need to develop. You say you and your friends don't use FB much. Whereas I do, and have spend 5 or so years going very deep on their advertising work. Perhaps I do actually know what I'm talking about here? There is literally no way to pay for "suggested content". [1] https://www.sbs.com.au/cyclingcentral/article/2021/08/05/aussie-mens-team-pursuit-bronze-almost-gold-after-passing-down-nz https://www.sbs.com.au/cyclingcentral/article/2021/08/05/aus...