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I believe their secret sauce is mainly that they don't manipulate the feed for other factors than if it fits. The Facebook feed used to work like that before 2

I believe their secret sauce is mainly that they don't manipulate the feed for other factors than if it fits. The Facebook feed used to work like that before 2013 something. You could clearly see the difference when they started optimizing for ads or what ever metrics they used. Posts could not go "viral" anymore in the way it used to. Zuckerberg capped the vitality so that companies had to pay I guess.

nikolay 4y ago
Can't agree more! Facebook is useless to me today and replaces meaningful to me stuff with ads and other things I don't care about and never engage with, i.e. there's for sure other weights and the feed is not organic!
- InitialLastName 4y ago
  I've tested in the past and counted streaks of 30+ consecutive posts in my Facebook feed without any posts from friends, groups I'm in, or pages I've followed. Just "recommendations" and ads for miles.
  - nikolay 4y ago
    I did a test as well. Unlike most people, I've set up relatives very well. Yet not a single post by a relative and some of those have high engagement! All kinds of Instagram Reels and ads and a bunch post from people with high a high absolute engagement, but historically a very low one from me. So, this obviously is a poor filter, which does not keep me engaged and which proves that Facebook is NOT a social network as to be social, it needs to act as such, and I never hear from my closest people over there anymore! How hard it is to see that a post is from my mother-in-law and multiply its weight by 100, or one from my sister and multiply by 1,000? Another thing that Facebook never puts any effort into is photos of children under 13! They had a feature called "scrapbooks" where you can create profiles of your children with the promise of those turning into profiles after kids turn 13. Well, they've abandoned this feature and people kept tagging children as their parents! Not sure how this served their facial recognition, but it inconvenienced us parents!
  - andirk 4y ago
    It seems ad prevalence is directly inversely related to the market in that in a down market, we get flooded with ads to temporarily increase the co's cash flow with more ads, but people this time around are claiming it has completely shot the various recommendation engines.
matesz 4y ago
The most impressive Facebook's feature was hands down Graph Search [1] which was released around this time - 2013. Basically it was an interface to the entire social graph! Eventually they had to pull those features out. Privacy concerns which lead to people sharing less data? Not sure. Even now a lot of people get surprised when I put their full name into search box and show them what photos are available via simple search - they completely forget or don't know even that when they are tagged their photos are searchable by their name. I mean now most people I know don't share much anymore, facebook is not that cool anymore. [1] great demo of graph search https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DySRn7c736c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DySRn7c736c
- pfisherman 4y ago
  Probably because open access to an entire community’s / nation’s social graph is a huge security risk. I mean if the NSA having access to all your phone call metadata isn’t already bad enough, why would you want any and all malicious state actors, criminal organizations, terrorists, or run of the mill scammers to have access to that type of information too?
  - thaeli 4y ago
    Yeah, it was the Cambridge Analytica scandal that killed this off iirc.
hellomyguys 4y ago
Generally true, but not entirely accurate... "TikTok’s Secret ‘Heating’ Button Can Make Anyone Go Viral" https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/01/20/tiktoks-secret-heating-button-can-make-anyone-go-viral/?sh=4fe708ce6bfd https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/01/20/tik... They also don't just optimize for consumption, but also for new users. Don't have concrete proof, but it seems they help new users get more views to give them that taste of "15 minutes of fame" as early as possible.
- jackson1442 4y ago
  I think a key part of their new user optimization is putting very little weight on your previous performance. So if you make a great video as a user with 0 followers, you still have similar odds to a 10M follower user to making it big on the FYP. There might, of course, still be additional new-user weight. But I think this is at least a part of it.
- vuln 4y ago
  Yeah I tend to agree regarding the 15 minutes of fame for new users. It's doesn't even need to go insanely viral. How many people have created and published videos on YouTube and got maybe a few tens or a couple hundred views over years. TikTok new users gets a couple THOUSAND views and the user is like "people like my content I MUST make more!!" And now they're hooked trying to get the same high view count as before. I would assume (as I have never used the platform) it's also a way for TikTok to grab you financial information "you earned x$ from you first video, please supply you financial information and a scan of your ID for payment. It's an addiction.
  - delecti 4y ago
    You assumption is likely incorrect. It takes a fair bit of success to get into the partner program, and you get no money until then. I agree that it's likely intended to give new users that hit though.
    - vuln 4y ago

nikolay 4y ago

Can't agree more! Facebook is useless to me today and replaces meaningful to me stuff with ads and other things I don't care about and never engage with, i.e. there's for sure other weights and the feed is not organic!

InitialLastName 4y ago
I've tested in the past and counted streaks of 30+ consecutive posts in my Facebook feed without any posts from friends, groups I'm in, or pages I've followed. Just "recommendations" and ads for miles.
- nikolay 4y ago
  I did a test as well. Unlike most people, I've set up relatives very well. Yet not a single post by a relative and some of those have high engagement! All kinds of Instagram Reels and ads and a bunch post from people with high a high absolute engagement, but historically a very low one from me. So, this obviously is a poor filter, which does not keep me engaged and which proves that Facebook is NOT a social network as to be social, it needs to act as such, and I never hear from my closest people over there anymore! How hard it is to see that a post is from my mother-in-law and multiply its weight by 100, or one from my sister and multiply by 1,000? Another thing that Facebook never puts any effort into is photos of children under 13! They had a feature called "scrapbooks" where you can create profiles of your children with the promise of those turning into profiles after kids turn 13. Well, they've abandoned this feature and people kept tagging children as their parents! Not sure how this served their facial recognition, but it inconvenienced us parents!
- andirk 4y ago
  It seems ad prevalence is directly inversely related to the market in that in a down market, we get flooded with ads to temporarily increase the co's cash flow with more ads, but people this time around are claiming it has completely shot the various recommendation engines.

matesz 4y ago

The most impressive Facebook's feature was hands down Graph Search [1] which was released around this time - 2013. Basically it was an interface to the entire social graph! Eventually they had to pull those features out. Privacy concerns which lead to people sharing less data? Not sure. Even now a lot of people get surprised when I put their full name into search box and show them what photos are available via simple search - they completely forget or don't know even that when they are tagged their photos are searchable by their name. I mean now most people I know don't share much anymore, facebook is not that cool anymore. [1] great demo of graph search https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DySRn7c736c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DySRn7c736c

pfisherman 4y ago
Probably because open access to an entire community’s / nation’s social graph is a huge security risk. I mean if the NSA having access to all your phone call metadata isn’t already bad enough, why would you want any and all malicious state actors, criminal organizations, terrorists, or run of the mill scammers to have access to that type of information too?
- thaeli 4y ago
  Yeah, it was the Cambridge Analytica scandal that killed this off iirc.

hellomyguys 4y ago

Generally true, but not entirely accurate... "TikTok’s Secret ‘Heating’ Button Can Make Anyone Go Viral" https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/01/20/tiktoks-secret-heating-button-can-make-anyone-go-viral/?sh=4fe708ce6bfd https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/01/20/tik... They also don't just optimize for consumption, but also for new users. Don't have concrete proof, but it seems they help new users get more views to give them that taste of "15 minutes of fame" as early as possible.

jackson1442 4y ago
I think a key part of their new user optimization is putting very little weight on your previous performance. So if you make a great video as a user with 0 followers, you still have similar odds to a 10M follower user to making it big on the FYP. There might, of course, still be additional new-user weight. But I think this is at least a part of it.
vuln 4y ago
Yeah I tend to agree regarding the 15 minutes of fame for new users. It's doesn't even need to go insanely viral. How many people have created and published videos on YouTube and got maybe a few tens or a couple hundred views over years. TikTok new users gets a couple THOUSAND views and the user is like "people like my content I MUST make more!!" And now they're hooked trying to get the same high view count as before. I would assume (as I have never used the platform) it's also a way for TikTok to grab you financial information "you earned x$ from you first video, please supply you financial information and a scan of your ID for payment. It's an addiction.
- delecti 4y ago
  You assumption is likely incorrect. It takes a fair bit of success to get into the partner program, and you get no money until then. I agree that it's likely intended to give new users that hit though.
  - vuln 4y ago