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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 upda

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.

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.
- pishpash 5y ago
  Doesn't seem to work, won't filter out Sponsored posts despite the option being selected...
  - timbit42 5y ago
    I don't see sponsored posts but perhaps that's due to Ublock Origin, not FBPurity.
  - CompuHacker 5y ago
    Facebook changes the way Spοnsored content is formatted on a moment to moment basis, sometimes in a way that breaks accessibility software, to foil exactly this kind of software, and ad-blockers.
- 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.
simooooo 5y ago
They are terrified someone might end up with an empty news feed for that day
winternett 5y ago
Also, if the user base is conditioned to seeing things and posting things to serve a particular type of timeline, it's not easy for everyone to transition to a completely different method and for that method to stabilize/work quickly. When Facebook started changing their timeline and messing up the chronological order of posts it had a really strange effect on reality. Old news stories and posts were showing up for many months late, and they were reminding people about their pets that died years before as well, many people have forgotten that. The best option would be to abandon the ideal that one single news feed is best for everyone and give control back to users along with an option for a truly chronological time line. Thy should also make multiple pages that rank posts based on taxonomy that users can browse content that is most liked by everyone on the platform. The only reason why Facebook wants to be able to have singular time lines is so that they can push targeted ads without it becoming obvious to their user base, but if the taxonomy pages were titled and organized properly, the ads would be somewhat more relevant by nature, and not require them to invade everyone's privacy like they have been doing thus far.
dataflow 5y ago
I can't tell if they want us to believe none of their brilliant minds realize this, or that they deliberately wanted a test that would give them an excuse to keep things as is.
- wussboy 5y ago
  Which one is more likely? There’s your answer.
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.
jaywalk 5y ago
It seems Facebook is so far up their own ass that they actually think this "no algorithm" test they did is what people are clamoring for.
- threeseed 5y ago
  Except that it is exactly what people have been asking for: Simple reverse chronological order feed with no ranking.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    Did you even read the comment I replied to? BS like "we're throwing this post in your feed because one of your friends liked/commented on it" is not part of what people have been asking for, but that was still part of their "no algorithm" test. All they did was get rid of the ranking, but that's only part of the issue.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      I am some non-zero amount interested that a Facebook friend of mine liked or commented on some random post. I’m not as interested as something that they posted originally, but clearly non-zero interested in many of those.
      - jaywalk 5y ago
        That's perfectly fine. Me personally, I am not at all interested in it. But Facebook could very easily allow us to tailor our individual Newsfeeds to our liking, so you can have what you want and I can have what I want. But that's not what Facebook wants, so that's not what we get.
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
100% agree. In addition, look at their metrics. When it comes to "meaningful social interaction", calling Uncle Joey a stupid ass because he posted another semi-racist Obama meme is the same as telling Cousin Jane you like her baby pics. I should HOPE "meaningful social interactions" go down with a reverse-chron, friends-only feed.
- sam0x17 5y ago
  Aren't those both equally meaningless? Maybe this is why I don't participate in social media anymore XD
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- strken 5y ago
  They might do sentiment analysis, in which case you'd have to put thinly veiled sarcasm in your reply to Uncle Joey to be counted.
civilized 5y ago
And as Twitter shows, it's not hard to offer both options and let users choose. Twitter also implemented a timer so that, if you choose simple reverse chron, it forces you back into the ranking algorithm after a certain period of time. Hmm, I wonder why they'd go to the trouble to do that? Maybe these social networks have motivations that override user experience?
- sam0x17 5y ago
  FB isn't going to do anything that doesn't affect at least 30% of users. As always this is all about revenue.
  - civilized 5y ago
    I'm sure FB has done many, many things that affect less than 30% of users
    - sam0x17 5y ago
      OK name something they added that they actually kept in the current version of FB that is used by less than 30% of users in the life of their account and isn't there for regulatory reasons. They use way too much A/B testing for anything like that to survive longer than 2 years.
saurik 5y ago
Expand your mind to "a reverse chronological list of actions taken by my friends"? I don't want to--and don't need to--miss out on my friends replying to stuff just because I don't want to have an opaque content filtering and recommendation algorithm curating my life.
jacurtis 5y ago
> "Without a News Feed algorithm, engagement on Facebook drops significantly, people hide 50% more posts, content from Facebook Groups rises to the top, and — surprisingly — Facebook makes even more money from users scrolling through the News Feed." Yes, it is confusing when they say they "turned off the algorithm" because what it sounds like is they are still using an algorithm here, just a far worse version of one, maybe an earlier version of the algorithm. But if posts are "rising to the top" and "they saw double the amount of posts from public pages they don’t follow, often because friends commented on those pages". This still sounds like an algorithm is ranking posts, just in a "worse" way. Removing the algorithm to me would mean seeing posts in a reverse-chronological order as they happened. Everything would appear equally. Maybe some controls are given to users to hide certain types of items, such as 2nd degree pages (pages your friends follow and comment on, but you do not follow), group posts, and so on. But as soon as you re-order posts, you are using an algorithm. It is very disingenuous to claim you removed an algorithm when all you really did was replace it with a worse algorithm. Then justify your actions because the worse algorithm performed worse (wow shocking i know).
- novok 5y ago
  I think it's still legit to think of what they did was turning off the algorithmic filtering, but did not turn off the algorithmic event generation. To be fair although, group and friend posts are things people explicitly subscribed to, it's only the friend comments that they didn't explicitly subscribe to. Which makes me think, did they do a version of the experiment without "people commented on X" items and see what happened? I think the results would be somewhat similar although, because group activity will still dominate. Knowing a place like FB although, they probably tried all the combinations to see what happened. I'm curious what those results are too.
- chadlavi 5y ago
  it seems like they're using algorithm to mean "a more complicated means of calculating what to show you," and they're saying there is no algorithm involved when they use a simple means of determining what to show you. Which is of course also an algorithm -- when a person the user is friends with interacts with something, show that in the user's feed. But algorithm somehow means magic nowadays.

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.

pishpash 5y ago
Doesn't seem to work, won't filter out Sponsored posts despite the option being selected...
- timbit42 5y ago
  I don't see sponsored posts but perhaps that's due to Ublock Origin, not FBPurity.
- CompuHacker 5y ago
  Facebook changes the way Spοnsored content is formatted on a moment to moment basis, sometimes in a way that breaks accessibility software, to foil exactly this kind of software, and ad-blockers.
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.

simooooo 5y ago

They are terrified someone might end up with an empty news feed for that day

winternett 5y ago

Also, if the user base is conditioned to seeing things and posting things to serve a particular type of timeline, it's not easy for everyone to transition to a completely different method and for that method to stabilize/work quickly. When Facebook started changing their timeline and messing up the chronological order of posts it had a really strange effect on reality. Old news stories and posts were showing up for many months late, and they were reminding people about their pets that died years before as well, many people have forgotten that. The best option would be to abandon the ideal that one single news feed is best for everyone and give control back to users along with an option for a truly chronological time line. Thy should also make multiple pages that rank posts based on taxonomy that users can browse content that is most liked by everyone on the platform. The only reason why Facebook wants to be able to have singular time lines is so that they can push targeted ads without it becoming obvious to their user base, but if the taxonomy pages were titled and organized properly, the ads would be somewhat more relevant by nature, and not require them to invade everyone's privacy like they have been doing thus far.

dataflow 5y ago

I can't tell if they want us to believe none of their brilliant minds realize this, or that they deliberately wanted a test that would give them an excuse to keep things as is.

wussboy 5y ago
Which one is more likely? There’s your answer.

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.

jaywalk 5y ago

It seems Facebook is so far up their own ass that they actually think this "no algorithm" test they did is what people are clamoring for.

threeseed 5y ago
Except that it is exactly what people have been asking for: Simple reverse chronological order feed with no ranking.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  Did you even read the comment I replied to? BS like "we're throwing this post in your feed because one of your friends liked/commented on it" is not part of what people have been asking for, but that was still part of their "no algorithm" test. All they did was get rid of the ranking, but that's only part of the issue.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    I am some non-zero amount interested that a Facebook friend of mine liked or commented on some random post. I’m not as interested as something that they posted originally, but clearly non-zero interested in many of those.
    - jaywalk 5y ago
      That's perfectly fine. Me personally, I am not at all interested in it. But Facebook could very easily allow us to tailor our individual Newsfeeds to our liking, so you can have what you want and I can have what I want. But that's not what Facebook wants, so that's not what we get.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

100% agree. In addition, look at their metrics. When it comes to "meaningful social interaction", calling Uncle Joey a stupid ass because he posted another semi-racist Obama meme is the same as telling Cousin Jane you like her baby pics. I should HOPE "meaningful social interactions" go down with a reverse-chron, friends-only feed.

sam0x17 5y ago
Aren't those both equally meaningless? Maybe this is why I don't participate in social media anymore XD
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
strken 5y ago
They might do sentiment analysis, in which case you'd have to put thinly veiled sarcasm in your reply to Uncle Joey to be counted.

civilized 5y ago

And as Twitter shows, it's not hard to offer both options and let users choose. Twitter also implemented a timer so that, if you choose simple reverse chron, it forces you back into the ranking algorithm after a certain period of time. Hmm, I wonder why they'd go to the trouble to do that? Maybe these social networks have motivations that override user experience?

sam0x17 5y ago
FB isn't going to do anything that doesn't affect at least 30% of users. As always this is all about revenue.
- civilized 5y ago
  I'm sure FB has done many, many things that affect less than 30% of users
  - sam0x17 5y ago
    OK name something they added that they actually kept in the current version of FB that is used by less than 30% of users in the life of their account and isn't there for regulatory reasons. They use way too much A/B testing for anything like that to survive longer than 2 years.

saurik 5y ago

Expand your mind to "a reverse chronological list of actions taken by my friends"? I don't want to--and don't need to--miss out on my friends replying to stuff just because I don't want to have an opaque content filtering and recommendation algorithm curating my life.

jacurtis 5y ago

> "Without a News Feed algorithm, engagement on Facebook drops significantly, people hide 50% more posts, content from Facebook Groups rises to the top, and — surprisingly — Facebook makes even more money from users scrolling through the News Feed." Yes, it is confusing when they say they "turned off the algorithm" because what it sounds like is they are still using an algorithm here, just a far worse version of one, maybe an earlier version of the algorithm. But if posts are "rising to the top" and "they saw double the amount of posts from public pages they don’t follow, often because friends commented on those pages". This still sounds like an algorithm is ranking posts, just in a "worse" way. Removing the algorithm to me would mean seeing posts in a reverse-chronological order as they happened. Everything would appear equally. Maybe some controls are given to users to hide certain types of items, such as 2nd degree pages (pages your friends follow and comment on, but you do not follow), group posts, and so on. But as soon as you re-order posts, you are using an algorithm. It is very disingenuous to claim you removed an algorithm when all you really did was replace it with a worse algorithm. Then justify your actions because the worse algorithm performed worse (wow shocking i know).

novok 5y ago
I think it's still legit to think of what they did was turning off the algorithmic filtering, but did not turn off the algorithmic event generation. To be fair although, group and friend posts are things people explicitly subscribed to, it's only the friend comments that they didn't explicitly subscribe to. Which makes me think, did they do a version of the experiment without "people commented on X" items and see what happened? I think the results would be somewhat similar although, because group activity will still dominate. Knowing a place like FB although, they probably tried all the combinations to see what happened. I'm curious what those results are too.
chadlavi 5y ago
it seems like they're using algorithm to mean "a more complicated means of calculating what to show you," and they're saying there is no algorithm involved when they use a simple means of determining what to show you. Which is of course also an algorithm -- when a person the user is friends with interacts with something, show that in the user's feed. But algorithm somehow means magic nowadays.