4 ms·

I always thought that FB is somewhat complicit (not out of evilness necessarily). I see a lot of "viral" posts - some like those mentioned in the article, but

I always thought that FB is somewhat complicit (not out of evilness necessarily). I see a lot of "viral" posts - some like those mentioned in the article, but also a ton of odd woodworking, cooking, and "resin art" videos. The videos are quite repetitive and not really interesting so I wonder if they are maybe hidden ads, but they are not marked as such, and it is not clear what they are selling. (Well maybe they are trying to sell resin, which is really expensive.) Anyway, it seems like they are different kinds of posts on FB. Some stay close to their point of origin, and only rarely get shown to other people who have not liked a page or are friends themselves. And other posts which, if somebody commented on or interacted in any way with them, get shown to their friends and friends-of-friends. After running a charitable cause / political FB page for a while, I'm convinced that internally there are actually different categories of posts - ones that are shown to followers, and ones that are allowed to float or go viral. I really wonder what the mechanism is to get into the floating category. It doesn't seem to be based on quality, nor on money spent. Maybe it is some interaction metric that somebody learned to game?

taurath 5y ago
Engagement is just second order advertising, because it makes people spend more time on the ad platform.
xg15 5y ago
> I see a lot of "viral" posts - some like those mentioned in the article, but also a ton of odd woodworking, cooking, and "resin art" videos. The videos are quite repetitive and not really interesting so I wonder if they are maybe hidden ads, but they are not marked as such, and it is not clear what they are selling. As someone who got caught up in some of those videos when I was in complete "mindlessly browse facebook" mode, my guess would be they are optimized for "engagement", nothing more, nothing less. They are just interesting enough that you want to know how the end result looks while harmless enough to appeal to a maximally broad audience.
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  How are the people making the videos making money though, or why are they doing it if not?
  - machinerychorus 5y ago
    It's still possible to share things just for the sake of sharing
    - jrochkind1 5y ago
      Have you seen these videos? I agree they look like they have been "optimized for engagement"... I guess someone could be doing that just for fun, that's your theory?
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    They grow a Facebook page they can then use to push sponsored content, sell it off to the highest bidder or use it to brag about how they’re a successful content creator and sell a course on how to be as “successful” as them.

taurath 5y ago

Engagement is just second order advertising, because it makes people spend more time on the ad platform.

xg15 5y ago

> I see a lot of "viral" posts - some like those mentioned in the article, but also a ton of odd woodworking, cooking, and "resin art" videos. The videos are quite repetitive and not really interesting so I wonder if they are maybe hidden ads, but they are not marked as such, and it is not clear what they are selling. As someone who got caught up in some of those videos when I was in complete "mindlessly browse facebook" mode, my guess would be they are optimized for "engagement", nothing more, nothing less. They are just interesting enough that you want to know how the end result looks while harmless enough to appeal to a maximally broad audience.

jrochkind1 5y ago
How are the people making the videos making money though, or why are they doing it if not?
- machinerychorus 5y ago
  It's still possible to share things just for the sake of sharing
  - jrochkind1 5y ago
    Have you seen these videos? I agree they look like they have been "optimized for engagement"... I guess someone could be doing that just for fun, that's your theory?
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  They grow a Facebook page they can then use to push sponsored content, sell it off to the highest bidder or use it to brag about how they’re a successful content creator and sell a course on how to be as “successful” as them.