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It's absolutely in Facebook's interest to allow this kind of viral garbage. It feels like engagement, gives people a way to engage socially in seemingly harmles

It's absolutely in Facebook's interest to allow this kind of viral garbage. It feels like engagement, gives people a way to engage socially in seemingly harmless questions. (I'm not at all convinced these are some dastardly data gathering scheme - many of the viral questions don't have meaningful answers.) It would be so, so simple to stop these. Just de-prioritize posts with too many replies, or replies from people you don't know, or.. anything. The virality of these things sticks out like a sore thumb. Facebook is choosing to not stop them. Then again as we learned recently Facebook is choosing not to stop all sorts of things on their platform. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28512121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28512121

redisman 5y ago
I’m sure some are but most are just trying to build a large following with this cheap viral garbage. If 1% of the respondents “Like” the page and share their stuff later then that’s quite a good audience builder
csomar 5y ago
> many of the viral questions don't have meaningful answers. They do, at large scales. Also some of them could pass for password recovery questions.
- fallinghawks 5y ago
  I've seen one that asks the last 3 digits of your phone number. Not sure how useful that one is but it could probably positively ID someone with a reasonably unique name. My feed has become littered with these things because my friends are replying to them. Which encourages me (or, rather, the hypothetical FB user) to reply to my friend(s).
  - Alan_Dillman 5y ago
    Added to correlational hints as to my location, it would clarify six of ten digits of my phone number. There are probably other clever ways to skeeve the other four, and I cannot say for certain if some digits of those other four are situationally impossible. Certainly some combinations likely are, like 0911, and 0000.
    - herbst 5y ago
      If you already have a list of possible real numbers 6 of 10 sounds like it could narrow it down a lot.

redisman 5y ago

I’m sure some are but most are just trying to build a large following with this cheap viral garbage. If 1% of the respondents “Like” the page and share their stuff later then that’s quite a good audience builder

csomar 5y ago

> many of the viral questions don't have meaningful answers. They do, at large scales. Also some of them could pass for password recovery questions.

fallinghawks 5y ago
I've seen one that asks the last 3 digits of your phone number. Not sure how useful that one is but it could probably positively ID someone with a reasonably unique name. My feed has become littered with these things because my friends are replying to them. Which encourages me (or, rather, the hypothetical FB user) to reply to my friend(s).
- Alan_Dillman 5y ago
  Added to correlational hints as to my location, it would clarify six of ten digits of my phone number. There are probably other clever ways to skeeve the other four, and I cannot say for certain if some digits of those other four are situationally impossible. Certainly some combinations likely are, like 0911, and 0000.
  - herbst 5y ago
    If you already have a list of possible real numbers 6 of 10 sounds like it could narrow it down a lot.