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I was briefly in a Facebook A/B test that automatically categorized every post by everyone. I then had the option to "Unfollow Alice for posts about Politics".
by cglong 3y ago
I was briefly in a Facebook A/B test that automatically categorized every post by everyone. I then had the option to "Unfollow Alice for posts about Politics". It was glorious, and I always wonder why they never released that broadly.
- beachy 3y agoI marvel at the resources available to FB that they could release such a far reaching capability as an experiment.
- rtsil 3y agoProbably because it reduced engagement.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoThat, plus hours after deployment it would hit US national news, and hours later you'd have politicians accusing Meta/Facebook of bias because their political spam was correctly labeled as political spam, but the opposite side's politician's cooking recipes were NOT labeled as political spam, which reeks of favorism, bias, and is anti-democratic in several different ways.
- cglong 3y agoInterestingly, I can see this going either direction. In my case, this feature caused me to refollow Alice, enabling me to see most of her posts and thus increasing my engagement. OTOH, I bet not many people use the "stay friends but unfollow them" functionality.
- labster 3y agoProbably making all their users happier and healthier decreased engagement.