5 ms·

The real issue here is creating an algorithm that optimizes what you like best: friend content, page content, and/or games/apps/etc. I would guess the majority

The real issue here is creating an algorithm that optimizes what you like best: friend content, page content, and/or games/apps/etc. I would guess the majority of the population has higher engagement with friend content then page content, which is why their algorithms show pages less and less. Not necessarily a malicious "bait and switch" (because that implies forethought, which I am highly skeptical was the case if you worked in a tech company in the valley for more than 3 months) but rather not providing the best solution for an algorithmic news feed.

saurik 13y ago
FWIW, I also would not claim that this is malicious: however, I still do not feel like these algorithms build a better news feed experience. I often go to Facebook, scroll through all the content for the day, and don't find enough of what I actually care about: it filters what it thinks are the top things from the day, and shows this content in something vaguely approximating chronological order. If a site is going to do this fancy filtering, I want a "no, show me more" button: I follow enough things that the idea that I would reach the end of the content posted recently is silly. That said, I think a key issue here is that I feel these algorithms are "solving the wrong problems"... if a friend is using some game and keeps posting from from it, everyone needs to realize that isn't the game's fault: that friend is choosing to post that stuff as they actually care about that game. They hope--they might even expect--that people are seeing that content: if your friend is spam, maybe you should unfollow your friend (Facebook thankfully now lets you do this without unfriending them, which might have political consequences ;P). This is important, as if a different person were playing that same game, the importance of the content might be fundamentally different: there are people in my life whom I would love to see those silly game posts from, to the point where it would make my day to see the games being played: if nothing else, I would know they are still alive and active (if maybe wasting their time and energy ;P). This is true if everything, not just games, and frankly seems to come down to pretty simple use cases: use cases that I would be shocked if it turned out most people didn't share. I have one friend that loves taking photographs, and they all kind of suck; I have another whose photographs are downright awe inspiring: I want to follow the photos from the second one, and not the first. I don't want more of the second and fewer of the first, I don't want the Photos app itself to be judged somehow "this guy seems to like photos more than games", I just want to see the second guy's photos and not the first (and maybe the first guy's gaming, and not the second's ;P). I say this is a common use case, as I swear everyone I know complains about similar issues: I have a friend who, despite having marked his wife as "Close Friend", misses content she posts (something I didn't believe, until I had it happen to me as well: some kinds of content isn't considered relevant enough for a notification even if you insist that all that user's content is relevent). I have another who only uses Facebook to post links and photos, and most people I talk to love her links but don't care about her photos (especially in one particular album: it would be great to be able to mark someone "Close Friend" and then unfollow one album ;P). I thereby end up returning to what I had said in my previous comment: I followed the pages I do because I liked their content... because I wanted to see more of their content... because that content made me happy. If that content doesn't make me happy, I want to think I'm responsible enough to unfollow the page, and I want to believe I live in a world where others are also capable of this. I also do not think any algorithm is going to figure this out automatically: I follow the page of a movie that posts quotes and screengrabs from the film. Like the comics in a newspaper, these snippets are a familiar and beneficial part of my perusal of Facebook: they are part of what I enjoy about visiting the website. I never comment on the screengrabs, nor do I "like" them (I would rather others not know what sappy parts of the sappy movie I'm most connecting with today ;P)... I'm not even clicking them... I have no clue how Facebook would ever figure out I want to see those, all of those, if it is going to insist on ignoring my explicit "I want to follow this Page" request :(.
- mkr-hn 13y ago
  Make sure to click Like on things you really want to see. I made a point of skimming through liking all the good stuff, and now my feed is much better.

saurik 13y ago

FWIW, I also would not claim that this is malicious: however, I still do not feel like these algorithms build a better news feed experience. I often go to Facebook, scroll through all the content for the day, and don't find enough of what I actually care about: it filters what it thinks are the top things from the day, and shows this content in something vaguely approximating chronological order. If a site is going to do this fancy filtering, I want a "no, show me more" button: I follow enough things that the idea that I would reach the end of the content posted recently is silly. That said, I think a key issue here is that I feel these algorithms are "solving the wrong problems"... if a friend is using some game and keeps posting from from it, everyone needs to realize that isn't the game's fault: that friend is choosing to post that stuff as they actually care about that game. They hope--they might even expect--that people are seeing that content: if your friend is spam, maybe you should unfollow your friend (Facebook thankfully now lets you do this without unfriending them, which might have political consequences ;P). This is important, as if a different person were playing that same game, the importance of the content might be fundamentally different: there are people in my life whom I would love to see those silly game posts from, to the point where it would make my day to see the games being played: if nothing else, I would know they are still alive and active (if maybe wasting their time and energy ;P). This is true if everything, not just games, and frankly seems to come down to pretty simple use cases: use cases that I would be shocked if it turned out most people didn't share. I have one friend that loves taking photographs, and they all kind of suck; I have another whose photographs are downright awe inspiring: I want to follow the photos from the second one, and not the first. I don't want more of the second and fewer of the first, I don't want the Photos app itself to be judged somehow "this guy seems to like photos more than games", I just want to see the second guy's photos and not the first (and maybe the first guy's gaming, and not the second's ;P). I say this is a common use case, as I swear everyone I know complains about similar issues: I have a friend who, despite having marked his wife as "Close Friend", misses content she posts (something I didn't believe, until I had it happen to me as well: some kinds of content isn't considered relevant enough for a notification even if you insist that all that user's content is relevent). I have another who only uses Facebook to post links and photos, and most people I talk to love her links but don't care about her photos (especially in one particular album: it would be great to be able to mark someone "Close Friend" and then unfollow one album ;P). I thereby end up returning to what I had said in my previous comment: I followed the pages I do because I liked their content... because I wanted to see more of their content... because that content made me happy. If that content doesn't make me happy, I want to think I'm responsible enough to unfollow the page, and I want to believe I live in a world where others are also capable of this. I also do not think any algorithm is going to figure this out automatically: I follow the page of a movie that posts quotes and screengrabs from the film. Like the comics in a newspaper, these snippets are a familiar and beneficial part of my perusal of Facebook: they are part of what I enjoy about visiting the website. I never comment on the screengrabs, nor do I "like" them (I would rather others not know what sappy parts of the sappy movie I'm most connecting with today ;P)... I'm not even clicking them... I have no clue how Facebook would ever figure out I want to see those, all of those, if it is going to insist on ignoring my explicit "I want to follow this Page" request :(.

mkr-hn 13y ago
Make sure to click Like on things you really want to see. I made a point of skimming through liking all the good stuff, and now my feed is much better.