4 ms·
One thing I think a lot of people forget is that Facebook is incredibly customizable after you give it a few signals. After college I made a list of "who would
by sharkweek 13y ago
One thing I think a lot of people forget is that Facebook is incredibly customizable after you give it a few signals.
After college I made a list of "who would I avoid (or maybe not even recognize) if I saw them out in public" and removed them from my friend list.
After that came the "baby photo" stage - if someone posted too many images that didn't interest me, I told Facebook that I wasn't interested in seeing updates from those people anymore.
Similar to the Facebook gaming spam a few years back, I simply just removed updates from any site or app that contained content I wasn't interested in seeing anything from (BuzzFeed, Upworthy, Zynga games, etc).
My newsfeed is now a finely tuned machine, where I get updates from my close circles and occasionally from news sites I enjoy.
Point being, you can virtually customize Facebook as much as you want so I'm not sure what the disconnect is here. I wouldn't expect Gmail to be perfectly tailored to my preferences the first time I created an account. I figure the same thing applies with Facebook.
- imkevinxu 13y agoI do the same thing but the problem is 99% of users don't :/
- sharkweek 13y agoSure - but then I think that falls squarely on Faebook, not on third parties Yes, I found those Upworthy posts incredibly obnoxious but obviously millions of people disagree as otherwise the posts wouldn't receive the engagement they do.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- JackC 13y agoThe problem is the article isn't obnoxious to the person posting it, because that person already knows what it's about. It's obnoxious to you because the headline is intentionally vague, and because it's designed by a cynical AB-testing robot to try to sound like an extremely impressed friend of yours. Compare: Pre-Upworthy Facebook post: My friend: "I thought this sucked until 0:45. Then my jaw dropped." Video embedded title: "Guy does tricks on pogo stick." Post-Upworth Facebook post: My friend: [nothing] Video embedded title written by cynical robot: "I thought this sucked until 0:45. Then ..." Seems the same to the poster. Insanely annoying to the reader. (Oops -- deleted and reposted this because I switched browsers and accidentally logged in under an old account.)
- j_s 13y agoThis has been called The Problem with Facebook ('Facebook uses its filtering power to make money [...] we are all advertisers') by the guy currently on the frontpage for his 'Facebook Fraud' video ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7211514 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7211514 ). The Problem With Facebook http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g
- veange 13y agoNot just a problem with Facebook: http://www.thefilterbubble.com/ted-talk http://www.thefilterbubble.com/ted-talk
- mcintyre1994 13y agoGreat video, Ted host a better quality version: https://new.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles https://new.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_b...
- benwikler 13y ago... and the speaker in that video: the CEO of Upworthy!
- mcintyre1994 13y ago...Wow, seriously? I find it interesting how compatible that is with his views against filtering things out, although I doubt boring linkbaity articles was ever part of the things he imagined were problematic to lose.
- lukasb 13y agoI really wish there was a way to say "I want to see less from this person" that would just surface their most popular content.
- bicknergseng 13y agoI might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that used to exist... maybe 6 months ago the little dropdown that allows you to unsubscribe from a person used to say only show me important updates.