11 ms·

Facebook removed the news feed algorithm in an experiment

156 points by WookieRushing 5y ago

rob_c 5y ago
I dread that even if it were stripped from Facebook tomorrow the damage is done and cat out the bag, another platform would just copy and rise to the top of the pile that is "social" media...
- fsflover 5y ago
  Not if the other platform is decentralized and doesn't rely on advertising money.
  - jjulius 5y ago
    >Not if the other platform is decentralized... Like all of the other decentralized social media platforms that most people just don't care about? I'd argue that social media has become so polarized that, no matter their views, most people will want some sort of centralized body setting rules that act in their (the user's) interests. >... and doesn't rely on advertising money. People have widely adopted social media because they're not charged anything (aside from their privacy being invaded) to use it. How is such a platform staying online without charging users or using advertiser money?
    - fsflover 5y ago
      > centralized body setting rules that act in their (the user's) interests. Not sure it's possible. Only if you (or your friend) are the admin, you will like the rules. > How is such a platform staying online without charging users or using advertiser money? It's much more secure and reliable (long-term) to have a sustainable small server for friends than to rely on a huge anti-user for-profit company. One could also create a paid service. For example, I am using a paid email-provider.
      - pipeline_peak 5y ago
        A new social media platform taking off through ad revenue is enough of a lottery, let alone through a paid service. Even if it’s as low as $1 a month, you’re not gonna get average users to join a new social media platform in the name of politics. People want to connect with their friends, that’s all they ever wanted out of these sites.
        fsflover 5y ago
        I suggest that only some servers are paid. Others can be run by yourself or your friends. And they can federate. It definitely works with email, even though a large part of the network is from Google. All we need is a federated protocol (which AFAIK is already even required by GDPR).
        dane-pgp 5y ago
        > a federated protocol (which AFAIK is already even required by GDPR). You might be thinking of the GDPR's Right to Data Portability[0] which includes "the right to transmit those data to another controller ... by automated means". This should require Facebook to synch the posts you make on their website to another account you hold on a Fediverse node, but unfortunately it doesn't require Facebook to synch content that you can see (but didn't produce) from their website to that node. [0] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/
        fsflover 5y ago
        Thank you, I stand corrected. Still, a good step in the right direction.
        pipeline_peak 5y ago
        That is true, I’ve looked at Twitter and went “how is something so basic in functionality not an open standard?”. Although it’s not always as intuitive as email. IRC could’ve extended into something like Discord had it not been so programmer centric. Either way, these people have us by the balls over already established syndication capabilities like RSS, just weighted in their direction(s).
    - wintermutestwin 5y ago
      >How is such a platform staying online without charging users or using advertiser money? The resources required to provide the world with the valuable parts of these services are small enough to be funded through non-profits or benefit corporations. I'd gladly donate my time and money to a 501c3 facebook killer.
  - vmception 5y ago
    But if it was centralized, convenient, had shareholders and an advertising budget to get peoples attention faster than the decentralized one, then they’ll suck up the advertising money. People are exchanging time for money. They will do this.
  - aahortwwy 5y ago
    The damage is done by the psychological manipulation used to keep people engaged with the platform, not the centralization or advertising. Platforms that eschew psychological manipulation don't grow as large. That is the proverbial cat.
darepublic 5y ago
Title seems like Facebook bashing but the article is more even keel. Suggest that "Then it gave up" be removed from the post title
- cassianoleal 5y ago
  That would be editorialising, since that's in the actual article. > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: I don't mind being downvoted, but I would really like to know why that's the case so I can improve how I contribute to the forum.
  - gfosco 5y ago
    I'm with you, seems like the title should've stayed. If the framing was a problem, it should be prefixed by who is making the claim.
- metalliqaz 5y ago
  For the most part it's correct, they emded the experiment. However, it would probably communicate better to say "Then had to turn back." That probably conveys what happened, in that the "bad" stuff that we attribute to the algorithm still managed to grow without it, and normal engagement went down.
d3vmax 5y ago
Have a chronological time series newsfeed only from friends. Once you have caught up show the recommended / algo posts. + Facebook should allow you to go filter and show posts using a calendar. Like all post from X date to Y date, from this location / friends. It will actually improve usage. Miss the old photo sharing days.
- timbit42 5y ago
  FBPurity is a browser plugin that lets you hide the junk you don't want to see on FB, set the newsfeed to chronological. I have mine set to only show what my friends post, but not the things they like or share or comment on.
- KaiserPro 5y ago
  but, as the post points out, you get lots of stuff people don't like (like group posts, or people abusing public figures, or arguments) so whilst in theory it sounds good, in practice, not so much
- mrweasel 5y ago
  The last year or so I was on Facebook I had basically hidden or otherwise removed anything that wasn't posted by a friend directly. It would take me around five minutes or less to scroll through everything once a week. The problem is that if Facebook implemented this site wide engagement would drop dramatically. No one really posts to Facebook anymore, people love it when you do, because it's actually kinda novel.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    I've started doing that, but the problem is facebook will prefer to hide thing my friends are doing and showing me more of the garbage others are sharing. Hiding everything someone shares makes things better, but I've been doing that for a month and still see tons of posts that people have shared. (some people share 40 things per day, they need to get a life) Facebook doesn't actually hide things when you make them show none from X. I see many of those things after I hide all them.
- 5y ago
tantalor 5y ago
The article seems to miss the point of the experiment. It wasn't an actual proposal to turn off the news feed for everybody. The purpose was to validate the news feed, which it did. So FB did not "give up". The experiment was a success.
gfosco 5y ago
Data wins arguments. One of my least favorite Facebook quotes. Bad data wins arguments, too. The misdirection term here is 'news feed ranking algorithm'... and what that means in the experiment versus what you might think that means, huge difference. e.g. I think most would assume the algorithm is responsible for showing you an unknown post that a friend merely liked, but it's right there in the article as still happening. The results and how people used it don't at all say to me that they enjoyed it less, it shows explicit care & intention to curate their own feed by hiding what they don't like.. which is how it should be. If they find the group posts too overwhelming, they can mute/unfollow/leave, or other methods of grouping posts can be explored. But look, they did this one bad science experiment, and now it's taken as fact and becomes folklore.
- jensensbutton 5y ago
  Given they made MORE money in this experiment, I suspect the decision to roll it back was more nuanced than a naive analysis and bad science experiment.
  - gfosco 5y ago
    The goal wasn't more money, there are more variables involved. One way to look at it might be, short-term more money vs long-term total narrative control.
    - KaiserPro 5y ago
      given that the algorithm is never going to be as effective as an editorial department, I don't understand the "total narrative control" argument. Facebook and instagram are social phase locked loops. Open a new instagram account, search for content that you like, like them, then what how it shove more/similar stuff into your feed. Now pivot to a different subject, only like that, and watch how your feed moves to that subject more. its not really rocket science, or indeed anything overly complex.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Hokusai 5y ago
> Even though the researcher kept the “integrity pass” in place, or the first layer of the algorithm that sorts for integrity ahead of engagement, they said that “integrity bad metrics still shot through the roof.” Not very interesting without understanding these algorithms. "Integrity pass" seems a good marketing name, but, at least this article, does not explain how it works. It would be like reviewing the Boing 737 Max and only knowing MCAS as "that thingy that makes the plane easy to fly" instead of http://www.b737.org.uk/mcas.htm http://www.b737.org.uk/mcas.htm
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
asimpletune 5y ago
I don’t remember what Facebook had instead of a news feed in 2008, but I do remember thinking Facebook was so cool then. When messenger came out, it was amazing. It was totally normal then to message random people who you thought were cool and just have a conversation. I would even get random chats from Facebook employees. It just seemed so different then than now. I’m just trying to piece together the evolution of Facebook, feeds, and then when I stopped caring. Like, I don’t think the feed was always like this. At one point there was nothing, sure, but there was also at one point a reverse chronically sorted log of what your friends were doing I think? That was the best. By the time my parents were on I think there was a few years of overlap before I just forgot about it.
- arthurcolle 5y ago
  Spammers took over!
- nowherebeen 5y ago
  Before I deleted Facebook, I remember specifically around 2014-15 was when things started to change significantly on newsfeeds. It was less about keeping up with friends and more about advertisements.
- wodenokoto 5y ago
  They had the news feed back then too, although it looked very differently. The two major differences between fb and myspace was the forced layout and that you didn't have to browse the site to see if there were updates on friends walls. The major difference is what people are posting, and how tangentially related to your network, the posts on your newsfeed are. Back then celebrities and news media weren't part of the platform, so you didn't really have these major intersections in the graph. I also believe that you had to re-share in order to push a post into a node that isn't directly connected to the posts author. Today a like is enough. The reason why facebook is uncool now, is a mix between who the active users are, and how much room and focus facebook puts on links to newssite and posts by people who aren't your friends.
  - pxlpshr 5y ago
bob229 5y ago
Stop using this cancerous app. Problem solved
0x0 5y ago
There used to be a secret url param to only show friends posts, no pages or groups. It was heavenly.
- timbit42 5y ago
  FBPurity is a browser plugin that lets you do those things.
  - tenebrisalietum 5y ago
    Would want something that works on my phone and not having to deal with the mobile browser. I would say a great majority of Facebook usage is via phone and via the official Facebook app.
    - timbit42 5y ago
      I don't have the FB app on my phone. After blocking all the crap with FBPurity, it only takes a minute or two to check FB each day so there is no need to have it on my phone.
lanerobertlane 5y ago
When people argue against the 'news feed algorithm' they mean anything other than a reverse chronological feed of posts from the people they follow. status updates, and interactions between people/pages you both follow. This article mentions that they turned the news feed off but people were still hiding posts from pages they don't follow, which friends had commented on. These shouldn't appear in a news feed that is not curated as they are not following that page, and is one of the things people are complaining about in the algorithm. They didn't test the algorithm vs no algorithm, they tested the current algorithm vs another algorithm.
- mzs 5y ago
  I have no algorithm again, at least until FB decides to break it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29004489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29004489
  - forgotmypw17 5y ago
    Sadly, that link is not available on mbasic, the only version this computer can handle.
- timbit42 5y ago
  FBPurity is a browser plugin that lets you decide what to see on FB. You can decide to only see what friends post and not what they like, share, or comment on, etc.
  - Oddskar 5y ago
    Wow. Comparing with this addon and without is pretty jarring. I might actually start using the newsfeed again with this addon. Holy cow do FB just shove a bunch of shit into the feed.
  - pishpash 5y ago
    Doesn't seem to work, won't filter out Sponsored posts despite the option being selected...
pipeline_peak 5y ago
> Congress may strip Facebook’s legal protections for the content it amplifies. How so?
kilna 5y ago
"Their findings: Without a News Feed algorithm, [...] Facebook makes even more money from users scrolling through the News Feed." The obvious conclusion one can draw is that the product is primarily engineered to control users' information intake, and only secondarily to make money.
14 5y ago
Facebook is getting ever more desperate to get clicks and interactions. More and more of my notifications that will say they just happened or happened 20 minutes ago then I click it and find it was a post from the day before. How stupid since most of the time it is a repeat post I have already purposely passed on.
jeffybefffy519 5y ago
This article seems very misleading and honestly doesnt really analyse Facebooks actual experiment (which seems pretty flawed as other HN posts have already pointed out). Pretty disappointing.
laylomo2 5y ago
Imagine being able to choose your own algorithm. I’d want reverse chronological most of the time. And occasionally I might check out some of the other AI powered ones too. Imagine even having that choice at all.
- bluGill 5y ago
  What I really want is only first part posts. If you didn't write the status or take the picture yourself, then I don't want to see it.
yodsanklai 5y ago
I'm under the impression that people are getting irrationally afraid of "algorithms". Like if some evil AI is controlling people mind. People wants to read the stuff they are interested in. No algorithm is forcing people to watch fox news for instance. That being said, FB should give the option to disable the news feed algorithm (or to have several version to choose from maybe), if that makes people happy.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Algorithms are tuned by human beings that are motivated by profit. Algorithms are not computer magic that show people "stuff they are interested in", they're designed to put companies' partners' content in front of eyeballs for money for long periods of time.
- dmix 5y ago
  Twitter finally returned the option to make the feed chronological again and I’m starting to like Twitter a lot more again. It was way more political and contentious with the smart feed on. FB should explore these options more. It sounds like there has to be more done here than just turning off the smart feed entirely.
- torben-friis 5y ago
  >People wants to read the stuff they are interested in. No algorithm is forcing people to watch fox news for instance. I think a mistake is thinking of people as static sets of tastes and interests. No one is going to be fed news that are a big deviation from their current worldview, but small deltas pile up over time.
- aahortwwy 5y ago
  Engagement loops do control people's minds. They explicitly aim to maximize the amount of time people spend on a platform. They are inherently manipulative by definition. It's common when interacting with an engagement loop to experience a loss of agency (perceived, at least). People don't like that feeling, even when they like the content they are being shown. Machines can be built to exploit odd elements of human psychology. I strongly recommend the book Addiction by Design.
starchild_3001 5y ago
This is hilarious (what Facebook calls meaningful!). I know people where back and forth comments with them are a lot less than meaningful or desired. "Meaningful Social Interactions — the back and forth comments between friends that Facebook optimizes for."
amelius 5y ago
Please give me the damn option to turn off the news feed.
klabb3 5y ago
While Facebook has created an addictive and destructive engagement machine, I'm really unimpressed with the contrarian response - as if manual follow/curation & reverse chrono is the only alternative. While transparency and control of the "ranking algorithm" is important, I reject the implication that infiniscroll content feed is the best that social media can ever be. Facebook (and others) have decided that discovery, chores, social upkeep, political activism, learning etc all belong in One Big Recommendation System. This is entirely new territory from a psychological perspective: Throughout history, humans have focused largely on one mental task at a time. You don't read Dostoevsky while having a drink with your friends, or answer emails while watching TV. Mental multitasking quickly converges on the low effort/instant gratification task. Add your favorite attention disorder to amplify this problem to the point of surrender. Any meaningful alternative needs to account for these psychological biases. Although this is new territory, we've been through this before - with porn. Basically, if you mix porn with other content, then porn becomes predominant. Hence, any non-porn platform needs to ban porn. Reddit is an interesting counter-example, because their subreddit barriers work pretty damn well, so even though there is porn on the platform, it hasn't infected everything else. Similar to the porn issue, we'll never extinguish celebrity clickbait, conspiracy theories and racist uncle posting memes. However, we might be able to partition it. How about designing tech which makes it POSSIBLE to avoid "crap", at least temporarily, without an outright boycott, careful curation or browser extensions?
8eye 5y ago
that was the worst thing to happen to facebook. before the newsfeed people barely talked about ridiculous political standpoints and it was more engaging. sure people sometimes posted a thing or two on their own but now everyone is an expert about things they read from for-profit news conglomerates, terrible for people with anxiety and ptsd because that was one of the main places people met, so turning facebook off is like going into total isolation for some. but going on the site definitely increased anxiety and traumatic triggers in people who would otherwise avoid the news
insin 5y ago
Just delete your Facebook account.
fairity 5y ago
I haven't been following this story -- has Frances Haugen actually revealed any fraud or illegal activities? This disclosure, while interesting, seems to fall squarely under material that should be kept confidential. As an outsider looking in, I'm wondering if she joined Facebook solely to collect a bunch of material she could disclose to the public, which seems unethical.

156 points by WookieRushing 5y ago

I dread that even if it were stripped from Facebook tomorrow the damage is done and cat out the bag, another platform would just copy and rise to the top of the pile that is "social" media...

fsflover 5y ago
Not if the other platform is decentralized and doesn't rely on advertising money.
- jjulius 5y ago
  >Not if the other platform is decentralized... Like all of the other decentralized social media platforms that most people just don't care about? I'd argue that social media has become so polarized that, no matter their views, most people will want some sort of centralized body setting rules that act in their (the user's) interests. >... and doesn't rely on advertising money. People have widely adopted social media because they're not charged anything (aside from their privacy being invaded) to use it. How is such a platform staying online without charging users or using advertiser money?
  - fsflover 5y ago
    > centralized body setting rules that act in their (the user's) interests. Not sure it's possible. Only if you (or your friend) are the admin, you will like the rules. > How is such a platform staying online without charging users or using advertiser money? It's much more secure and reliable (long-term) to have a sustainable small server for friends than to rely on a huge anti-user for-profit company. One could also create a paid service. For example, I am using a paid email-provider.
    - pipeline_peak 5y ago
      A new social media platform taking off through ad revenue is enough of a lottery, let alone through a paid service. Even if it’s as low as $1 a month, you’re not gonna get average users to join a new social media platform in the name of politics. People want to connect with their friends, that’s all they ever wanted out of these sites.
      - fsflover 5y ago
        I suggest that only some servers are paid. Others can be run by yourself or your friends. And they can federate. It definitely works with email, even though a large part of the network is from Google. All we need is a federated protocol (which AFAIK is already even required by GDPR).
        dane-pgp 5y ago
        > a federated protocol (which AFAIK is already even required by GDPR). You might be thinking of the GDPR's Right to Data Portability[0] which includes "the right to transmit those data to another controller ... by automated means". This should require Facebook to synch the posts you make on their website to another account you hold on a Fediverse node, but unfortunately it doesn't require Facebook to synch content that you can see (but didn't produce) from their website to that node. [0] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/
        fsflover 5y ago
        Thank you, I stand corrected. Still, a good step in the right direction.
        pipeline_peak 5y ago
        That is true, I’ve looked at Twitter and went “how is something so basic in functionality not an open standard?”. Although it’s not always as intuitive as email. IRC could’ve extended into something like Discord had it not been so programmer centric. Either way, these people have us by the balls over already established syndication capabilities like RSS, just weighted in their direction(s).
  - wintermutestwin 5y ago
    >How is such a platform staying online without charging users or using advertiser money? The resources required to provide the world with the valuable parts of these services are small enough to be funded through non-profits or benefit corporations. I'd gladly donate my time and money to a 501c3 facebook killer.
- vmception 5y ago
  But if it was centralized, convenient, had shareholders and an advertising budget to get peoples attention faster than the decentralized one, then they’ll suck up the advertising money. People are exchanging time for money. They will do this.
- aahortwwy 5y ago
  The damage is done by the psychological manipulation used to keep people engaged with the platform, not the centralization or advertising. Platforms that eschew psychological manipulation don't grow as large. That is the proverbial cat.

darepublic 5y ago

Title seems like Facebook bashing but the article is more even keel. Suggest that "Then it gave up" be removed from the post title

cassianoleal 5y ago
That would be editorialising, since that's in the actual article. > Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: I don't mind being downvoted, but I would really like to know why that's the case so I can improve how I contribute to the forum.
- gfosco 5y ago
  I'm with you, seems like the title should've stayed. If the framing was a problem, it should be prefixed by who is making the claim.
metalliqaz 5y ago
For the most part it's correct, they emded the experiment. However, it would probably communicate better to say "Then had to turn back." That probably conveys what happened, in that the "bad" stuff that we attribute to the algorithm still managed to grow without it, and normal engagement went down.

d3vmax 5y ago

Have a chronological time series newsfeed only from friends. Once you have caught up show the recommended / algo posts. + Facebook should allow you to go filter and show posts using a calendar. Like all post from X date to Y date, from this location / friends. It will actually improve usage. Miss the old photo sharing days.

timbit42 5y ago
FBPurity is a browser plugin that lets you hide the junk you don't want to see on FB, set the newsfeed to chronological. I have mine set to only show what my friends post, but not the things they like or share or comment on.
KaiserPro 5y ago
but, as the post points out, you get lots of stuff people don't like (like group posts, or people abusing public figures, or arguments) so whilst in theory it sounds good, in practice, not so much
mrweasel 5y ago
The last year or so I was on Facebook I had basically hidden or otherwise removed anything that wasn't posted by a friend directly. It would take me around five minutes or less to scroll through everything once a week. The problem is that if Facebook implemented this site wide engagement would drop dramatically. No one really posts to Facebook anymore, people love it when you do, because it's actually kinda novel.
- bluGill 5y ago
  I've started doing that, but the problem is facebook will prefer to hide thing my friends are doing and showing me more of the garbage others are sharing. Hiding everything someone shares makes things better, but I've been doing that for a month and still see tons of posts that people have shared. (some people share 40 things per day, they need to get a life) Facebook doesn't actually hide things when you make them show none from X. I see many of those things after I hide all them.
5y ago

tantalor 5y ago

The article seems to miss the point of the experiment. It wasn't an actual proposal to turn off the news feed for everybody. The purpose was to validate the news feed, which it did. So FB did not "give up". The experiment was a success.

gfosco 5y ago

Data wins arguments. One of my least favorite Facebook quotes. Bad data wins arguments, too. The misdirection term here is 'news feed ranking algorithm'... and what that means in the experiment versus what you might think that means, huge difference. e.g. I think most would assume the algorithm is responsible for showing you an unknown post that a friend merely liked, but it's right there in the article as still happening. The results and how people used it don't at all say to me that they enjoyed it less, it shows explicit care & intention to curate their own feed by hiding what they don't like.. which is how it should be. If they find the group posts too overwhelming, they can mute/unfollow/leave, or other methods of grouping posts can be explored. But look, they did this one bad science experiment, and now it's taken as fact and becomes folklore.

jensensbutton 5y ago
Given they made MORE money in this experiment, I suspect the decision to roll it back was more nuanced than a naive analysis and bad science experiment.
- gfosco 5y ago
  The goal wasn't more money, there are more variables involved. One way to look at it might be, short-term more money vs long-term total narrative control.
  - KaiserPro 5y ago
    given that the algorithm is never going to be as effective as an editorial department, I don't understand the "total narrative control" argument. Facebook and instagram are social phase locked loops. Open a new instagram account, search for content that you like, like them, then what how it shove more/similar stuff into your feed. Now pivot to a different subject, only like that, and watch how your feed moves to that subject more. its not really rocket science, or indeed anything overly complex.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago

Hokusai 5y ago

> Even though the researcher kept the “integrity pass” in place, or the first layer of the algorithm that sorts for integrity ahead of engagement, they said that “integrity bad metrics still shot through the roof.” Not very interesting without understanding these algorithms. "Integrity pass" seems a good marketing name, but, at least this article, does not explain how it works. It would be like reviewing the Boing 737 Max and only knowing MCAS as "that thingy that makes the plane easy to fly" instead of http://www.b737.org.uk/mcas.htm http://www.b737.org.uk/mcas.htm

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

asimpletune 5y ago

I don’t remember what Facebook had instead of a news feed in 2008, but I do remember thinking Facebook was so cool then. When messenger came out, it was amazing. It was totally normal then to message random people who you thought were cool and just have a conversation. I would even get random chats from Facebook employees. It just seemed so different then than now. I’m just trying to piece together the evolution of Facebook, feeds, and then when I stopped caring. Like, I don’t think the feed was always like this. At one point there was nothing, sure, but there was also at one point a reverse chronically sorted log of what your friends were doing I think? That was the best. By the time my parents were on I think there was a few years of overlap before I just forgot about it.

arthurcolle 5y ago
Spammers took over!
nowherebeen 5y ago
Before I deleted Facebook, I remember specifically around 2014-15 was when things started to change significantly on newsfeeds. It was less about keeping up with friends and more about advertisements.
wodenokoto 5y ago
They had the news feed back then too, although it looked very differently. The two major differences between fb and myspace was the forced layout and that you didn't have to browse the site to see if there were updates on friends walls. The major difference is what people are posting, and how tangentially related to your network, the posts on your newsfeed are. Back then celebrities and news media weren't part of the platform, so you didn't really have these major intersections in the graph. I also believe that you had to re-share in order to push a post into a node that isn't directly connected to the posts author. Today a like is enough. The reason why facebook is uncool now, is a mix between who the active users are, and how much room and focus facebook puts on links to newssite and posts by people who aren't your friends.
- pxlpshr 5y ago

bob229 5y ago

Stop using this cancerous app. Problem solved

0x0 5y ago

There used to be a secret url param to only show friends posts, no pages or groups. It was heavenly.

timbit42 5y ago
FBPurity is a browser plugin that lets you do those things.
- tenebrisalietum 5y ago
  Would want something that works on my phone and not having to deal with the mobile browser. I would say a great majority of Facebook usage is via phone and via the official Facebook app.
  - timbit42 5y ago
    I don't have the FB app on my phone. After blocking all the crap with FBPurity, it only takes a minute or two to check FB each day so there is no need to have it on my phone.

lanerobertlane 5y ago

When people argue against the 'news feed algorithm' they mean anything other than a reverse chronological feed of posts from the people they follow. status updates, and interactions between people/pages you both follow. This article mentions that they turned the news feed off but people were still hiding posts from pages they don't follow, which friends had commented on. These shouldn't appear in a news feed that is not curated as they are not following that page, and is one of the things people are complaining about in the algorithm. They didn't test the algorithm vs no algorithm, they tested the current algorithm vs another algorithm.

mzs 5y ago
I have no algorithm again, at least until FB decides to break it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29004489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29004489
- forgotmypw17 5y ago
  Sadly, that link is not available on mbasic, the only version this computer can handle.
timbit42 5y ago
FBPurity is a browser plugin that lets you decide what to see on FB. You can decide to only see what friends post and not what they like, share, or comment on, etc.
- Oddskar 5y ago
  Wow. Comparing with this addon and without is pretty jarring. I might actually start using the newsfeed again with this addon. Holy cow do FB just shove a bunch of shit into the feed.
- pishpash 5y ago
  Doesn't seem to work, won't filter out Sponsored posts despite the option being selected...

pipeline_peak 5y ago

> Congress may strip Facebook’s legal protections for the content it amplifies. How so?

kilna 5y ago

"Their findings: Without a News Feed algorithm, [...] Facebook makes even more money from users scrolling through the News Feed." The obvious conclusion one can draw is that the product is primarily engineered to control users' information intake, and only secondarily to make money.

14 5y ago

Facebook is getting ever more desperate to get clicks and interactions. More and more of my notifications that will say they just happened or happened 20 minutes ago then I click it and find it was a post from the day before. How stupid since most of the time it is a repeat post I have already purposely passed on.

jeffybefffy519 5y ago

This article seems very misleading and honestly doesnt really analyse Facebooks actual experiment (which seems pretty flawed as other HN posts have already pointed out). Pretty disappointing.

laylomo2 5y ago

Imagine being able to choose your own algorithm. I’d want reverse chronological most of the time. And occasionally I might check out some of the other AI powered ones too. Imagine even having that choice at all.

bluGill 5y ago
What I really want is only first part posts. If you didn't write the status or take the picture yourself, then I don't want to see it.

yodsanklai 5y ago

I'm under the impression that people are getting irrationally afraid of "algorithms". Like if some evil AI is controlling people mind. People wants to read the stuff they are interested in. No algorithm is forcing people to watch fox news for instance. That being said, FB should give the option to disable the news feed algorithm (or to have several version to choose from maybe), if that makes people happy.

heavyset_go 5y ago
Algorithms are tuned by human beings that are motivated by profit. Algorithms are not computer magic that show people "stuff they are interested in", they're designed to put companies' partners' content in front of eyeballs for money for long periods of time.
dmix 5y ago
Twitter finally returned the option to make the feed chronological again and I’m starting to like Twitter a lot more again. It was way more political and contentious with the smart feed on. FB should explore these options more. It sounds like there has to be more done here than just turning off the smart feed entirely.
torben-friis 5y ago
>People wants to read the stuff they are interested in. No algorithm is forcing people to watch fox news for instance. I think a mistake is thinking of people as static sets of tastes and interests. No one is going to be fed news that are a big deviation from their current worldview, but small deltas pile up over time.
aahortwwy 5y ago
Engagement loops do control people's minds. They explicitly aim to maximize the amount of time people spend on a platform. They are inherently manipulative by definition. It's common when interacting with an engagement loop to experience a loss of agency (perceived, at least). People don't like that feeling, even when they like the content they are being shown. Machines can be built to exploit odd elements of human psychology. I strongly recommend the book Addiction by Design.

starchild_3001 5y ago

This is hilarious (what Facebook calls meaningful!). I know people where back and forth comments with them are a lot less than meaningful or desired. "Meaningful Social Interactions — the back and forth comments between friends that Facebook optimizes for."

amelius 5y ago

Please give me the damn option to turn off the news feed.

klabb3 5y ago

While Facebook has created an addictive and destructive engagement machine, I'm really unimpressed with the contrarian response - as if manual follow/curation & reverse chrono is the only alternative. While transparency and control of the "ranking algorithm" is important, I reject the implication that infiniscroll content feed is the best that social media can ever be. Facebook (and others) have decided that discovery, chores, social upkeep, political activism, learning etc all belong in One Big Recommendation System. This is entirely new territory from a psychological perspective: Throughout history, humans have focused largely on one mental task at a time. You don't read Dostoevsky while having a drink with your friends, or answer emails while watching TV. Mental multitasking quickly converges on the low effort/instant gratification task. Add your favorite attention disorder to amplify this problem to the point of surrender. Any meaningful alternative needs to account for these psychological biases. Although this is new territory, we've been through this before - with porn. Basically, if you mix porn with other content, then porn becomes predominant. Hence, any non-porn platform needs to ban porn. Reddit is an interesting counter-example, because their subreddit barriers work pretty damn well, so even though there is porn on the platform, it hasn't infected everything else. Similar to the porn issue, we'll never extinguish celebrity clickbait, conspiracy theories and racist uncle posting memes. However, we might be able to partition it. How about designing tech which makes it POSSIBLE to avoid "crap", at least temporarily, without an outright boycott, careful curation or browser extensions?

8eye 5y ago

that was the worst thing to happen to facebook. before the newsfeed people barely talked about ridiculous political standpoints and it was more engaging. sure people sometimes posted a thing or two on their own but now everyone is an expert about things they read from for-profit news conglomerates, terrible for people with anxiety and ptsd because that was one of the main places people met, so turning facebook off is like going into total isolation for some. but going on the site definitely increased anxiety and traumatic triggers in people who would otherwise avoid the news

insin 5y ago

Just delete your Facebook account.

fairity 5y ago

I haven't been following this story -- has Frances Haugen actually revealed any fraud or illegal activities? This disclosure, while interesting, seems to fall squarely under material that should be kept confidential. As an outsider looking in, I'm wondering if she joined Facebook solely to collect a bunch of material she could disclose to the public, which seems unethical.