Inside the Facebook Algorithm Most Users Don't Even Know Exists

First time accepted submitter catparty (3600549) writes An examination of what we can know about Facebook's new machine learning News Feed algorithm. From the article: "Facebook's current News Feed algorithm might be smarter, but some of its core considerations don't stray too far from the groundwork laid by EdgeRank, though thanks to machine learning, Facebook's current algorithm has a better ear for 'signals from you.' Facebook confirmed to us that the new News Feed ranking algorithm does indeed take 100,000 weighted variables into account to determine what we see. These factors help Facebook display an average 300 posts culled from roughly 1,500 possible posts per day, per user."

Comments

Bubbles

[i kan reed]

Social media helps keep you in a nice little bubble, where you're never exposed to information you might not like.

Psychology tells us we(in general) don't like information that challenges our biases. Is anyone else afraid that Facebook and Google are unintentionally driving us all towards ignorance?

No conspiracy necessary: happy people pay more attention to ads(citation available if anyone cares), they try to make us happy, trying to make us happy keeps us dumb, and it all serves everyone's short term interests, and no ones' long term interests.

Re:Bubbles

[sideslash]

Before anybody dons the proverbial tin foil hat, consider:

1. It is not possible to exert mind control over an intelligent and reasonable person simply by throttling their social media streams.
2. The "stuff you don't like" that it hides is more likely to be worthless drivel than desperate attempts of the suppressed Resistance to unify against The Man.

This is all speaking as an outsider -- I don't use Facebook and I can't imagine what would make me want to (to each his own, I suppose).

Re:Bubbles

[wisnoskij]

Will not any ranking necessarily be skewed towards eye catching posts? And who said that what is most eye catching is something you agree with and like? Rather than something you inherently hate and disagree with?

Re:Bubbles

[ThatsMyNick]

Social media helps keep you in a nice little bubble, where you're never exposed to information you might not like.

Same with slashdot, and most news sites. People find themselves in a bubble one way or other, unless they specifically go looking for other information

Re:Bubbles

[dantotheman]

No conspiracy necessary: happy people pay more attention to ads( citation available if anyone cares ), they try to make us happy, trying to make us happy keeps us dumb, and it all serves everyone's short term interests, and no ones' long term interests.

Just curious; did it take longer to write that than to just provide a copy/paste of the link you had in mind?

Re: Bubbles

[mattwarden]

Social media... You mean having friends with a similar worldview? Are we sure social media even makes this worse and not better? Most people interact in real life with very few people because it is expensive to do otherwise. Social media might actually reduce the problem by making it cheaper to interact with more people. Theoretically it could be just more of the same viewpoint, but as n increases, the chance that everyone agrees on everything is much less.

Re:Bubbles

[i kan reed]

Because it would involve digging through multiple google scholar searches to find the paper I'm remembering on a few vague mental relationships, checking through several papers to verify that they are/aren't the one I'm looking for, and then dropping them, which takes longer than both that post and this one.

Re: Bubbles

[i kan reed]

No, we're talking about a filtering algorithm applied to your friends, where you don't see things that might be important to challenging you because it makes a small difference in your happiness levels(which, again, influence your advertising susceptibility).

Re:Bubbles

[Lab Rat Jason]

1. It is not possible to exert mind control over an intelligent and reasonable person simply by throttling their social media streams.

See: Russia, Iran, Syria, China... need I go on?

Re:Bubbles

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anyone else afraid that Facebook and Google are unintentionally driving us all towards ignorance?

No, because only a narrow category of people read Facebook. A larger set uses it to post, but rarely reads. And an even larger set either doesn't use it, or uses it rarely.

Facebook is big, but it's still niche too. In fact, for all its success, the irony is that it's a total failure and nearly useless (and to everyone, not just some people) as "social" media. (Not that it's useless, just that it's useless for that.) Facebook isn't social, its graph still doesn't mirror real life social relationships, and so on. They got a lot of good press but completely failed at their mission statement (well, the one the public thinks about; I think their real mission of serving ads, might still be working out ok). Even people who use Facebook regularly ought to have noticed that by now. It just doesn't work right for anything other than very casual staying-in-touch. And while we all have some relationships like that, 90%+ of your time is spent with totally different categories of intimacy (either more or less).

Re:Bubbles

[gunner_von_diamond]

Citation please?

Re:Bubbles

[s.petry]

Social media helps keep you in a nice little bubble, where you're never exposed to information you might not like.

You don't like or they don't like? It is impossible to know the difference, and the latter is at least as likely as the former (perhaps more so).

Psychology tells us we(in general) don't like information that challenges our biases. Is anyone else afraid that Facebook and Google are unintentionally driving us all towards ignorance?

No argument with the first part. The second part I very much disagree with. Huge Businesses and Governments don't do things accidentally, and to believe they have all these "accidents" indicates that _you_ don't want your biases challenged. What you attempting to imply is simply irrational. Huge sums of money are spent on engineering strategies. Claiming anything was something "we didn't know would happen" means that they should fire every single "expert" on their panels and black list them from future hire. Except the later part does not happen, so they did "know it would happen". In fact they intended for it to happen, or they would have used a different strategy.

No conspiracy necessary: happy people pay more attention to ads(citation available if anyone cares), they try to make us happy, trying to make us happy keeps us dumb, and it all serves everyone's short term interests, and no ones' long term interests.

I think you need to (re) read the definition of a conspiracy. Do us all a favor and stick with the dictionary definition.

Re:Bubbles

[Anonymous Coward]

Social media helps keep you in a nice little bubble, where you're never exposed to information you might not like.

Really? Cause a good part of my Facebook feed are opinions I disagree with.
I don't have a large total number of friends on FB (they're all people I know in real life), but I guess they're pretty diverse: white, black, Hispanic, Asian, Catholic, Evangelical, Jewish, Mormon, atheist, Democrat, moderate, Republican, Libertarian, socialist, etc.

And I disagree. And we're friends. I assume that's more normal than you think.

Re:Bubbles

[i kan reed]

Positive Mood and Susceptibility to False Advertising

Even though you're more aware of the fact that the advertising is false, you're still more likely to form a positive image of the brand as a result of being happy. I have, without being fully informed about "true" advertising, mentally extrapolated that to apply to all advertisements.

This idea is at least a little corroborated by this older study which suggests happier moods implies a greater uptake on simple advertising messages.

Re:Bubbles

[ClioCJS]

If you think Facebook keeps you in a bubble where you aren't exposed to ideas you don't like, you must have never been on Facebook. Try a day on my feed...

Re:Bubbles

[gunner_von_diamond]

Thank you! That took much less time then me digging through the internet myself!

Re:Bubbles

[nospam007]

"Is anyone else afraid that Facebook and Google are unintentionally driving us all towards ignorance?"

If Google+ actually is doing that, it has to do it quickly, before it gets cancelled.

Re:Bubbles

[sideslash]

Those nations don't just censor social media streams (Twitter, Facebook), they also censor regular news media, web sites and public conversations.

Re:Bubbles

[Lab Rat Jason]

So... for what percentage of Facebook users is this also true?

Re:Bubbles

[rolfwind]

Have you seen so-called "World News" with Diane Sawyer lately on one of the big networks?

It's embarassing. 3/4 human interest stories at least. Mostly domestic. A few minutes of human interest human interest stories.

Or when you watch the olympics. Very few competitions anymore on the networks. Especially not when foreigners are competing. And we need everyone's tearjerking backstory now.

It hasn't always been like this. People don't need social media to stay ignorant. Their own mass media does it for them.

Re:Bubbles

[Lab Rat Jason]

Sorry, to state this a little more clearly: What percentage of people do you think use facebook as their primary or only source of news? I'd bet the number is pretty high.

Re:Bubbles

[znrt]

1. It is not possible to exert mind control over an intelligent and reasonable person simply by throttling their social media streams.

yeah but it's hivemind control. hivemind oriented individuals are a majority, so hivemind control is actually a reality. and a pretty obvious one if you ask me. now for example you may not be buying this bullshit but it is your hive, and you can't escape: these hivelings may be your relatives, your friends, people you like or love. you screwed, bro. in other words: controlled.

of course the problem itself points to the way out. let's not despair!

Re:Bubbles

[lorinc]

You can think of it as a bias toward exploitation over exploration, which will inevitably leads us to a local optimum from which it will be very difficult to escape.

Re:Bubbles

[weszz]

explains my 4 year old running around the house singing nationwide is on your side...

The girl is perpetually happy and heard that on the radio, never to be forgotten... along with the "fact" she told me about MLKjr.

He had a dream, then he died. like Jesus and great grandpa. well yea... but you're kind missing some important parts there... Jesus died in the crosswalk for us.

Re:Bubbles

[i kan reed]

Yeah, no problem. I just only wanted to engage in that effort if someone actually wanted the info.

Re:Bubbles

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. your feelings are wrong.

Re:Bubbles

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, resistence is futile. You'll end up being labeled crazy, I'll go ahead and send you a tinfoil hat :)

Re:Bubbles

[Anonymous Coward]

"yeah but it's hivemind control. hivemind oriented individuals are a majority, so hivemind control is actually a reality."

No it isn't. No they are not. No it isn't.

Re:Bubbles

[Anonymous Coward]

This might also reflect the fact that more and more people get their in-depth news from the internet and watch TV news to have something on while eating dinner.

Re: Bubbles

[Type44Q]

You're a moron. Yes, you are.

Re:Bubbles

[i kan reed]

Sure, there are worse alternatives also driven by advertising profit.

Re:Bubbles

[bonehead]

He said "intelligent and reasonable" people. And he was right.

It is, however, trivial to influence stupid and unreasonable people. And there is no shortage of those.

Re:Bubbles

[Actually, I do RTFA]

happy people pay more attention to ads(citation available if anyone cares)

Please. It seems logical, but I'd like to see some data.

Re: Bubbles

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention, the active antiestablisment movement in China tends to deflate GPs pount

Re:Bubbles

[DerekLyons]

Social media helps keep you in a nice little bubble, where you're never exposed to information you might not like.

And that's different from Slashdot and it's all-to-often groupthink driven moderation system... how?

Re:Bubbles

[nine-times]

What are "intelligent and reasonable people", and what does it mean to "exert mind control"?

Because a lot of people like to think, "I'm a smart person. You can't just make me do things." That's only kind of true. All of us can be influenced through psychological manipulation. All of us can be tricked into forming incorrect conclusions based on faulty, incorrect, or incomplete information. If I can control what information you have access to over a long period of time, I definitely can have a big influence on what you believe, as well as how you behave. I can't "exert mind control" in the sense of completely controlling you to do any arbitrary thing that I say, but I can have a big influence on who you like, who you hate, what products you buy, what ideology you subscribe to, and what political allegiances you hold.

Re:Bubbles

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus died in the crosswalk for us.

Those Jewish drivers are terrible, amirite?!

(Sorry, that was terrible. For the record, I've never noticed a difference in drivers' skills correlated with their religion.)

Re:Bubbles

[Anonymous Coward]

The ranking will optimize for what is being measured. "Eye catching" isn't really measurable (without eye tracking), but things like comments, likes, clicks through links, etc. can. A more clever classifier could measure positive vs. negative comments, pair interaction methods with relationship types, etc.

Facebook wants to make money, so at least part of what they are measuring is how many ads they can show you. They also want happy users, so they'll try to measure sentiment (or at least usage) as well...it's a multi-variable optimization - too many ads might bring in more money in the short term, but create unhappy users that don't return.

All in all, the top variable being scored is probably time spent on the site. The longer you're on the site, the more you like it (probably) and the more opportunity to advertise to you. Whether that means showing you cuddly kittens, or whipping you into a frothy political rage depends on what is successful, and can vary from person to person.

Re:Bubbles

[X0563511]

I don't think culling baby photo posts counts as encouraging an echo chamber...

Re:Bubbles

[bonehead]

Well, yeah, if you can maintain complete control over the information a person has access to, then, yes, over a period of time you could mold the way they think.

Nobody has that ability. Not the US govt, not the Iranian govt, and certainly not Facebook. "Reasonable and intelligent people" are able to recognize when they're being fed propaganda, and take it with the appropriate dosage of salt.

It's the idiots and morons that swallow it hook, line, and sinker. Obviously, that makes these people a very valuable target audience if you're running for political office.

Re:Bubbles

[Brulath]

Which, if you're eating with someone else, tends to prevent any kind of conversation. Conversation at dinner is good; it causes you to eat more slowly and it makes you a bit more aware that you're eating, as opposed to being engrossed in the television and mowing through dinner. Both of those help limit food intake, and conversation helps promote a bit of family interaction that might otherwise be lacking.

That and you don't have to think about the latest Paris Hilton replacement because you hear about it every night.

Re: Bubbles

[mattwarden]

Right... and I'm saying... how is that any different than surrounding yourself with friends who all think like you? It's not. In fact, if anything, social media (even filtered) is probably more diverse than the real-life filtering that your average yokel does.

Re:Bubbles

[Anonymous Coward]

We thank Lord for AdBlock. Since I only use FB messages (I don't use Google), I don't care about the other stuff but you can see weird stuff on the news feed, I prefer to ignore it.

Re:Bubbles

[Optali]

He said _INTELLIGENT_ You need to be very dumb to think that that what's presented to you by social media is everything there is.

Re:Bubbles

[bbsalem]

Yes, maybe the most rationalistic and anti-social among us are the most susceptible to the manipulation since they think that their consciousness is sufficient to protect them from fraud. Unfortunately, most of their brain is spending time processing subliminal messages, which is how Fox News fires up the right-wingers. They have no knowledge of general semantics and are often deluded that they can't be conned. How may engineers would admit that they can be conned?

Re:Bubbles

[bbsalem]

Then, we are in deep trouble. I take most of what I see on Facebook with a grain of salt, especially since the blog format doesn't support analysis and discussion. It is intentionally designed not to. So, I read Facebook, even my "friends" and family with the view that everything is biased, especially by Facebook, and I don't reply. I think Facebook is self-limiting. The OP links said as much, The spam burden can't raise much more than it is now. Facebook will probably survive as long as it penetrates into developing markets via mobile devices, but its relevance to its long-time users, who may use it only to keep in tough with family, will decline over time.

Re:Bubbles

[bbsalem]

Except of course of what does not reach your awareness and ability to analyze. And if by the design of the feed you are denied the time it takes for the mind to think it through. I have seen bright people suckered in by the way media operate and there is a great deal of technique that we are obviously not informed about which is meant to persuade and manipulate our thoughts, especially the subliminal rapid-fire responses of the Limbic System. These responses can take time to filter into consciousness and be censored by rational thought and deliberation, and the designers of every ad. every news show. and Social Media know that and more. The deregulation of the FCC started under the Reagan Administration is about opening the flood gates of subliminal persuasion. Now, the precepts of General Semantics, used in response to propaganda on the radio that began in the 1930's, should inform the Watchdogs of the Mind, and at least Descartes' Idols of the Mind were early attempts to point out the foibles of the mind, even and maybe especially people who are sure of their own minds need to be schooled in them.

I don't know if it is intentional of not but Al-Jezire does not have commercial breaks, or very many if you count their own promos, but because all their bills are paid for by the government and oil money their news feed runs without interruption. This means that a listener is not given the chance to deliberate through their 7/24 news cycle. I know of an intelligent person who is caught up in that news cycle for hours on end, especially on a big news day, and like CNN one can be glued to the stream if one is not careful. The best policy is to disconnect and take time to process. If I were designing media to manipulate I would try to entrain the listeners undevided attention so that the rational censors do not have time to filter out the sublinimal messaging.

Re:Bubbles

[bbsalem]

Business and the economy is based on the fact that a majority of people are stupid. If that weren't true than the informal fallacies in most advertising would be laughed off the air and out of print. "Stupid" means correctly unaware, so that very bright people can be stupid, since processing ability is not the same as knowledge. So, the whole economy is based on people being lazy to some extant, to want convience and ease, and wishful thinking. That is why cons are common in business. Not all business is deceptive but much of it is or is based on subliminal messages. Think of how much appeal comes from the impression that someone offering a service rally cares about you more than getting their asking price, when the latter is really all they really care about. I am not being cynical. really, I am just stating that people operate on impressions that do not stand up to critical tests of motivation and that most people are not used to thinking critically.

Re:Bubbles

[bbsalem]

This is very dangerous. It is true that is comes from the nice-nice urge of most merchants not to offend customers, but in social media it has gotten out of hand. Sometimes it is intended, everybody must be nice and uncontroversial and avoid PR diasters, but this doesn't serve us will in the area of citizenship and civil discourse which have taken a beating due to the type of mass media and social media we have.

I place most of the blame for this on the blog, and on Mark Zuckerberg's idea of "Simple" UI design. It actually curtails communication and that is all at the behest of the Big Data application of Facebook and Google's business partners. It may be that they also really wish to suppress debate that supports democratic processes. that they are willing to suppress Free Speech to make a buck. The blog does not facilitate discussion. as proof go look at lengthy threads on Facebook, they really go anywhere and they frustrate their users. The reason is that they need far more structure than is allowed by the UI. We gave some of the needed structure here on Slashdot. One change I would make, and it would remove another big part of the Social Media suppression, it to make the topic hiererarchy less editorial either from an editorial staff or upmods by readers. I would restructure Slashdot more like a USENET newsgroup hiererarchy.

Human vs. crowd

[mi]

While each of us is as unpredictable as a molecule, once you put enough humans together, the crowd becomes as predictable as gas. Google, Facebook, Twitter, (/.?) and other companies with massive user bases can do some pretty interesting things with their users.

Whether it is ethical or not is another story, but it is certainly interesting.

Re:Human vs. crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree with that, and I'm trying to remember where I read the study, because there was one. Individuals are extremely predictable. On individual, exposed to a particular stimulus will behave almost identically every time. Think about when you go to a restaurant, is there a small core set of items you always order?

Where unpredictability comes in is, without prior information on a given individual (past observations of their behavior), it is almost impossible to predict what they will do. But once seeing what they'll do, given a similar situation, you can be sure they'll behave similarly.

Re:Human vs. crowd

[Anonymous Coward]

While each of us is as unpredictable as a molecule, once you put enough humans together, the crowd becomes as predictable as gas.

Yeah, as Hari Seldom has taught us.

Re:Human vs. crowd

[VitrosChemistryAnaly]

Reminds me of Asimov's "psychohistory" from the Foundation series as invented the character Hari Seldon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

I like to think that there's something to it, but there probably isn't.

Re:Human vs. crowd

[mi]

Reminds me of Asimov's "psychohistory" from the Foundation series as invented the character Hari Seldon.

Three follow-ups all brought up Asimov. Close, but not quite. Asimov speculated, that in the future it will be possible to predict not just behavior, but history of entire civilizations. Maybe. What I'm talking about today is today's possibility to plan and study ongoing behavior of masses of people.

Skillful politicians have been doing it for centuries (nay, millennia!) — there is no need for science fiction to talk about it...

No matter how sophisticated it gets...

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter how sophisticated it gets, it still starts you back at the top when you click on any entries. So, if you are ten clicks through the feed, you have to click ten times again to get back to where you were. How can something so "sophisticated" be some incredibly idiotic.

Because

[heezer7]

just showing shit in chronological order is too easy.

Re:Because

[werepants]

Exactly. I wish Facebook would just leave it alone - I don't want "intelligent" delivery of the posts facebook thinks I want to see - I would rather see a true feed representative of the people in my social network, rather than some secretly curated selection based on inscrutable mechanisms that I have no control over.

Re:Because

[Tog Klim]

SO FREAKING TRUE!!!

Re:Because

[jythie]

Their argument is that they are trying to optimize for people who have hundreds or thousands of friends, thus pure chronological would be an unreadable stream of posts. People with smaller numbers who actually do want to see each post in order just are not on their radar.

Re:Because

[wisnoskij]

Well I think the idea is that for 99% of accounts that is not possible. There is more content than you could ever read (1500 posts per day). So FB can either filter out the content based on chronology. Or it can take an educated guess like, he always reads, and often comments on John's posts, so instead of hiding them, we will put them right at the top of his feed when he logs in. And he had never even paused scrolling when confronted with a post from the official Coca Cola page, so maybe he cares less if we filter these out. I do not know about you, but I do not want to miss some major announcement for my best friend, simply because I liked coca cola and they posted 20 things after he made the announcement.

Re:Because

[Anonymous Coward]

People who CLAIM to have hundreds or thousands of "friends". That is the real problem.

Re:Because

[Lab Rat Jason]

The trouble here... and the reason I don't use facebook... is that just because I like coke, doesn't mean I "Like" coke. If I want to express my affinity for a product, that doesn't mean I want to be constantly marketed to by that company. Likewise, the sleazy practice of making someone like your product before you can see some kind of content (say a video for example) that has gone viral... but until you watch the video, you aren't sure whether you "Like" (or even like) the product/company... pisses me off.

Facebook operates under the pretense that it's a good way for you to keep in touch with your friends... but their quarterly financial statements argue for the fact that it is a good way for companies to market to individuals under the pretense of them keeping up with their friends.

Your description of the myriad ways in which your feed is broken and fails to satisfy you is a proxy for the myriad ways in which Facebook is making money off you.

Re:Because

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a chronological order option, but it's hidden in a drop-down by the news feed link in the list on the upper-left portion of the Facebook UI. It also tends to randomly switch back to "Top Stories" mode as well as showing a little link for "back to Top Stories" at the top of the feed.

As expected, there is no long-term setting to appeal to those of us who have no interest in seeing the same story (usually an advertisement) at the top of the page every day for a month when I know my friends actually have other things to say.

Re:Because

[scottbomb]

Exactly. It's extremely annoying having FB pick and choose what I see. I keep my news feed on "Most Recent" all the time. But every once in a while, without warning, they pull the ol' switcheroo and change it back to what they think are the "Top Stories". No FB, I actually know everyone in my friends list and I like to keep with with all of them, not just the few I communicate with most.

Re:Because

[Andy_R]

Exactly, I've found that the only way to get Facebook to work the way it should work â" showing everything posted by people I know and pages I've liked â" is to install the FBPurity browser extension (from fbpurity.com) and to manually select 'receive notifications' from a hidden drop down menu when I 'like' a page.

The iPhone app just keeps getting worse, it does have the ability to show things in the right order, but it conveniently forgets that setting every time you open the app, and now the app has stopped showing everything after the first few characters when some sends you a message, begging you to install an extra app (but you don't need to, just open facebook.com in the phone's browser and you can read and respond to messages there).

Re:Because

[Anonymous Coward]

That's their problem, not F-Book's.

Maybe if they would cull their friends down to people they actually know, and unsubscribe to the ones whose posts they don't want to see; it wouldn't be a problem.

Re:Because

[Anonymous Coward]

The chronological order option still doesn't show all the posts. I keep my Facebook fried list down to just people I've met in real life and actually would care about (or in a few select cases, friends I don't keep much in touch with but who post interesting things), and even with that I'm missing all sorts of stuff.

I read fast, 1500 one or two sentence posts are nothing over the course of a day. Bring it on!

Re:Because

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, what's so hard about showing me everything my actual friends post, in order? Oh, there's no money in that.

Re:Because

[_xeno_]

There is a chronological order option, but it's hidden in a drop-down by the news feed link in the list on the upper-left portion of the Facebook UI. It also tends to randomly switch back to "Top Stories" mode as well as showing a little link for "back to Top Stories" at the top of the feed.

As another AC mentioned but I think deserves reiterating: that option merely sorts the Top Stories in chronological order. It does not show you all posts from all your friends. If Facebook has decided you don't want to see a post, you will not be seeing it. If they've decided you want to see fifty copies of various people posting some annoying Facebook quiz result even though you've hit the little "don't show me this" option a thousand times, well, you will be seeing fifty copies of that Facebook quiz. (After all, stupid Facebook quiz makers are important (paying) Facebook partners, and your friends are just more losers to show important (paying) Facebook partner content to.)

The only difference is that in Most Recent, they'll be in chronological order and not ranked by Facebook's "how much did the content publisher pay us?" algorithm.

Re:Because

[heezer7]

I can even open my phone app and desktop browser at the same time and see totally different content.

Re:Because

[_xeno_]

Exactly. It's extremely annoying having FB pick and choose what I see. I keep my news feed on "Most Recent" all the time. But every once in a while, without warning, they pull the ol' switcheroo and change it back to what they think are the "Top Stories". No FB, I actually know everyone in my friends list and I like to keep with with all of them, not just the few I communicate with most.

The article actually mentions this: that doesn't do what you think it does. All that does is sort the Top Stories feed in chronological order.

Users mostly rebelled against this because they peeked behind the curtain and realized that Facebook is indeed controlling the content we see. Naturally, Facebook placated the naive with a button that lets us view posts in chronological order. The illusion remains intact!

It's still the filtered view.

Re:Because

[darkain]

Something else I've personally noticed, and this is consistent with everyone I've asked about the issue...

"Top Stories" for desktop viewing vs mobile viewing are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. I have to check FB on both my desktop AND my tablet every day just to get an idea of what going on with my social circle. This is just stupid bad. What is even worse is that there is next to zero intersection between these two separate news feeds from the same account. It is as if Facebook decided to split timelines in half, one set for mobile, the other for desktop.

Re:Because

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. It's extremely annoying having FB pick and choose what I see. I keep my news feed on "Most Recent" all the time. But every once in a while, without warning, they pull the ol' switcheroo and change it back to what they think are the "Top Stories". No FB, I actually know everyone in my friends list and I like to keep with with all of them, not just the few I communicate with most.

The article actually mentions this: that doesn't do what you think it does. All that does is sort the Top Stories feed in chronological order.

Depends on the app version you use. I still run an older version (like prior to auto-play videos) and the Top Stories and Most Recent views each show posts that the other does not.

Re:Because

[wisnoskij]

You have control over that though. You can like something and mark as not seeing anything from it. And as far as I have seen companies have public profiles that never require likes to see.

Re:Because

[reikae]

That's pretty interesting. Any idea what criteria they use for splitting between mobile or desktop content?

Re:Because

[Brulath]

You can, but it isn't the default and I'd wager that most users don't know the option exists. So they have to implement filtered news feeds to deal with the users that like everything / friend everyone.

About Facebook

[meerling]

This filter, that in my experience has the equivalent discrimination level of crack addicted meth head chimp, only detracts from the feed and explains why I am often saying "FB SUCKS!".

Thank you, and Facebook sucks.

Re:About Facebook

[crashumbc]

Exactly !

What's worse is I think they've started dicking around with "most recent" also :(

ALL I want is POSTS to appear in chronological order and ALL of them to appear. If I haven't unfriended them or muted them...

THEN I WANT TO SEE THEIR POSTS....

FB can't even do that right...

Re:About Facebook

[necro81]

crack addicted meth head chimp

Ooooh, now THAT I gotta see!

Re:About Facebook

[Anonymous Coward]

This post is racist. It calls african american crack heads chimps. Mods, please downmod parent for using racist language to refer to a nigger.

I like to dick with FB

[OzPeter]

Yes I have a FB account (for various reasons) but when ever I get the chance I always flag ads as being sexually explicit with the hope that it wastes more FB resources than they gain from me. Yeah, it may not actually do anything, but it keeps me happy.

(Likewise I also report unsolicited emails from major companies as spam)

Re:I like to dick with FB

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because they are able to analyze almost everything about your behavior but could never catch on that all your reports are crap? Its also very unlikely that they would even care about your report if you are the only person reporting.

Come on, can you really be that naive? Do you really think that during the design of the report functionality they said to themselves "a few million people will see this and might click on it, so we probably should handle everything manually and not find a way to filter out trolls, this is the internet after all and everybody is always nice here".

If you don't want to help facebook, then you don't join facebook. Simply being on there makes the whole system better for other users. Unless you are there but nobody ever contacts you on it or friends you.

Re:I like to dick with FB

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably already have your account marked as "troll_flagger: true".

Re:I like to dick with FB

[Lab Rat Jason]

If only I hadn't spent my mod points yesterday, I'd mod this up. This is the point of machine learning, and probably one of the first aspects that they tackled... the numbers don't lie.

Re:I like to dick with FB

[antdude]

I like to block ads.

still completely broken

[Anonymous Coward]

The Facebook news feeds are still completely broken.

The algorithm is very simple: all post I subscribe to, sorted newest to oldest.

Culling is completely broken.

I just wish ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish there was an up-arrow to increase your mod points.

I have nothing to add to the parent other than "well said!"

becau$e we can

[Anonymous Coward]

Users would never stand for just being displayed everything they want in chronological order.

And yet

[bananaquackmoo]

And yet it still sucks at presenting me with any news I'm interested in. I think I've clicked on a news story from that feed only once and by accident. Hint : I don't have any interest in sports, politics, celebrity gossip, pop music, old news, and pretty much anything else they've recommended.

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

It keeps in minds loads of other things than simply if you clicked it. Perhaps you actually are looking at those news feeds you talked about for longer than most others, maybe in a smug "I don't care about this crap" way. Or perhaps almost all of your friends do care, so facebook decided that its probably making you happier if you kind of know what they are talking about by shoving the "crap" you think you aren't interested in in your face all the time.

Or perhaps their algorithms are about groups of people and don't care about the individual person. If 99% of the people that they group you up with want those news feeds, but you are actually not interested in it, perhaps thats close enough for them.

Re:And yet

[QuietLagoon]

Every time I visit my facebook page, I have to click on the "most recent first" option instead of having facebook decide what items I want to see. Sure would be nice if facebook made the "most recent first" option persistent across visits....

Re:And yet

[_xeno_]

Every time I visit my facebook page, I have to click on the "most recent first" option instead of having facebook decide what items I want to see.

Just in case you weren't aware, all that does is sort the Top Stories chronologically. You're still only seeing the posts Facebook decides you want to see.

As far as I know, there is absolutely no way to prevent Facebook from filtering posts. If there is I'd love to know what it is, but Most Recent isn't it. (I think it used to be, but enough people knew about it, so Facebook had to take that away. We will read the ads Zuckerberg wants us to read, dammit.)

Re:And yet

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have any interest in sports, politics, celebrity gossip, pop music, old news, and pretty much anything else they've recommended.

So what DO you like? Youve pretty much ruled out most of the collective interests of Murica.

Do you also have no interest in Freedom, Baseball and walking around with guns openly in the fervent hope that you get to shoots yourself a criminal or terrorist to death?

*while im on topic, can somebody answer this age old question for me?: If I have hollowpoints loaded, do I need to double tap in the brain, or is one round enough? If ive taken at least half of the skull off with a hollowpoint and can very clearly see the majority of his brains on the walls and floor, is that considered dead enough, or is it wise to keep on shooting until there is only a bloody stump left?

Re:And yet

[mrchaotica]

Or perhaps it doesn't know what you actually do want to see, so it's showing you the "least unlikely" things (i.e., the "most likely" but with low confidence). It's kind of like how if you've never used Amazon.com before and you view and/or buy one item, then all of the "recommended for you" things are other permutations of similar items.

Re:And yet

[Uzuri]

There sort of is, if you have a limited enough group of people you're interested in -- put them in your close friends and only look at that feed. So far as I can tell*, you then get all the entries for that group (though you still need to sort chrono, which FBPurity and other tools will do for you).

*not necessarily very far

Yeah, I'm still annoyed

[PJ6]

that I don't have the choice to tell Facebook to just stop randomly hiding shit on me.

Some of us don't have 1200 "friends" and don't want a filter.

Re:Yeah, I'm still annoyed

[scottbomb]

Amen.

Re:Yeah, I'm still annoyed

[PJ6]

You don't, you really don't.

The Windows Phone Facebook app doesn't filter, it's the unadulterated feed that you claim to want. I don't have that many Facebook friends, but this feed is terrible. It includes all sorts of crap I don't want to see, like how my sister's Farmville farm is doing, and the latest "Share if you love Jesus" that my mom shared, and a boring video of my high school buddy's child playing soccer.

I like these people, I don't want to unfriend them because they genuinely do post things I want to see. But they also post crap. Facebook has figured out what I think is crap and does a good job of hiding that. And this is my definition of crap - my high school buddy's wife probably does want to see that soccer video.

I'm less sold on the chronological re-ordering that FB does. I'm glad that they're showing me just the stories that they think I care about, but it's confusing when something ten hours old shows up above something ten minutes old.

Dude. You can filter all game posts pretty easy. And I don't know how long it's been since you've used Facebook, but you don't need to unfriend people just to stop following their posts. I've found those two features perfectly adequate for my filtering needs.

The real News Feed algorithm

[DigitAl56K]

if (session.timeelapsed() > 1800 || rand() % 3 == 0)
        newsfeed.setmode(TOP_STORIES);

its interesting, but only if you dont use facebook

[nimbius]

Articles like this are, for those of us who dont care to shackle ourselves to zuckerbergs moneytrain, technically interesting. For those of you with a facebook account however it should be insulting and demeaning as the equivalent of a farmhand explaining the latest milking machine or stun bolt to a herd of angus.

its completely OT, but i still feel obligated to say it. Facebook isnt interested in you as a person, theyre interested in you as a product.

Yeah well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can say with a high degree of certainty those 100,000 variables are set wrong... else I (an athiest) would not have my wall flooded with "this day in jebus" posts. (Unless if course, they are aiming to convert me? :P)

The algorithm I want

[slapout]

All the posts from my friends + all the post from places I've liked - anything I've turned off (like game requests)

Is that so hard?

Re:The algorithm I want

[ayesnymous]

All the posts from my friends + all the post from places I've liked - anything I've turned off (like game requests)

Is that so hard?

Easy, create a list with all your friends and all the things you liked. Then read that list instead of your news feed - you will see ALL the posts on that list.

Most Users

[future assassin]

have no clue how Facebook works behind the scenes.

Re:Most Users

[Chris Mattern]

...and that's exactly how Facebook likes it.

Re:its interesting, but only if you dont use faceb

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook isnt interested in you as a person, theyre interested in you as a product.

Why would it be otherwise?

Should be much simpler....

[vanyel]

If it's a post by a friend or group I've joined (main news feed) or list member (when I have a list selected), show it. Period. That's the whole point of facebook. It's *extremely* annoying to find out some time later I missed something important because facebook decided it wasn't interesting for some obscure reason.

Flowers for Algernon

[Anonymous Coward]

Happy people click on ads? So your saying that the periods in Charlie Gordon's life when he was most likely to click on ads was before his treatments and after they wore off?

Anybody else notice event posts getting delayed?

[Obscene_CNN]

Anybody else notice event posts getting delayed? Often I find out about post from friends on events after they happen. I would suspect that Facebook's algorithm does this intentionally to try and encourage people to pay to boost a post.

Real OG

[WillgasM]

Real gangstas browse by recent stories. My actual news feed only contains posts by chicks I'd like to do. I guess "doability" is one of those weighted variables.

Re:Real OG

[Actually, I do RTFA]

"Doability" isn't. How long you look at the post is. So, FB figured out your preferred use of their service is to look at small pictures of attractive women.

Re:Real OG

[Hillgiant]

You realize all those "chicks" are actually spam-bots using images culled from inactive instagram accounts, right?

And since when do "gangstas" post on /.?

Re:Real OG

[is as us Infinite]

Heh, that's because the longer you spend on a persons profile and looking through their photo albums the more likely it is those people will show up on your newsfeed. All that time spent looking at their pictures tells Facebook those people are important to you so it presents you with their other posts, too.

Am I Just Unpopular?

[Anonymous Coward]

300 posts culled from roughly 1,500 possible posts per day, per user.

Who has that many possible posts per day??

Bubbles

[Anonymous Coward]

It's beyond bread and cirucuses. This is population control. We already have Fox News and MSNBC to report biased news based on what people want to hear, even if it's wrong. People actaully think theres a difference between Democrats and Republicans. It's working.

Re:its interesting, but only if you dont use faceb

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. What kind of an idiot expects complete strangers to be interested in them as people? Everyone is a people, its not a big accomplishment. Your family and friends care about you as a person - no one else does. That is a Good Thing.

Re:Anybody else notice event posts getting delayed

[Anonymous Coward]

I have lately been missing event invites and only finding out about the events when it gets to a week or a few days before it's scheduled. I'll go look at it and it says "X invited you" but I never saw a damn invite.

That's not how FB works

[anyaristow]

You might filter your news (in the conventional, informational sense) feed that way, but you filter your Facebook feed according to people you think are interesting. If you only interact with people who are like minded, and that's not unlikely, *you* are creating a filter bubble, not FB. But it's also not how people tend to use FB. You probably have some "friends" who post idiotic rants or divisive jokes, and if you ignore them you are training FB to not show them, but you might also hit "like" or comment on pictures of their kids or news of their vacation, telling FB that you are, in fact, interested in this person. The real trick for FB is to distinguish between the two.

The FB algorithm is a popularity-seeking thing. It's probably one unspoken reason geeks hate Facebook. Adding a bunch of "mundanes" to your friends list can be really humbling. Spoken from experience.

Re:its interesting, but only if you dont use faceb

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Facebook isnt interested in you as a person, theyre interested in you as a product.

Why would it be otherwise?

Ethically: Because someone read Kant.

Financially: Because it will likely lead to a longer lived network, that makes more money over 90+ years, but less money in the first decade.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

PA

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello Everybody. My name is John, and im a recovering Privacyretardaholic.

This month marks 3 years since I deleted my Facebook account and gained back some privacy and sanity. I feel great, my life is less fearful, my job prospects are better, my privacy is in its best shape in 3 years.

The best part of all is that not once in the 3 years of freedom have I EVER missed Facebook and all the shit, spam, profiling and bitchiness that comes with it.

I feel like I have my life back, and all thanks to staying sober from the evils of privacy-retardation.

Thank you Privacyretardaholics Anonymous for saving my online life.

Dumb Algorithm

[Anonymous Coward]

All that work and it still can't figure out that I just want my feed in reverse chronological order at all times.

Re:Dumb Algorithm

[tehlinux]

That's actually not a bad idea! Maybe in the future, they'll start teach comparison-based sorting algorithms in undergraduate computer science programs...

Of course they can.

[Voyager529]

Well I think the idea is that for 99% of accounts that is not possible. There is more content than you could ever read (1500 posts per day).

So FB can either filter out the content based on chronology. Or it can take an educated guess like, he always reads, and often comments on John's posts, so instead of hiding them, we will put them right at the top of his feed when he logs in. And he had never even paused scrolling when confronted with a post from the official Coca Cola page, so maybe he cares less if we filter these out.

I do not know about you, but I do not want to miss some major announcement for my best friend, simply because I liked coca cola and they posted 20 things after he made the announcement.

Here are the answers:

1.) sudo showeverypost. Think it's too much content for me to handle? You're welcome to believe that. Let me decide that, not Mark. If it takes me an hour and a half to sort through everything, then so be it. Either way, I won't see it all.
2.a) eHarmony style. I couldn't possibly send a request to everyone on eHarmony, so they ask me an hour's worth of questions to help filter the kind of person I'm looking for. Facebook could easily do the same thing, and it'd be worth some people's time to help curate it manually. Hell, include a specific section where I can explicitly choose the kinds of ads I want. You don't get much more customized than people explicitly telling you what kind of ads they will respond to.
2b.) sub-categorize re-posts. "Stuff from Buzzfeed", "Stuff from Huffington Post", etc. If they're directly categorized like that, it helps me see what's trending easier, while simultaneously clearing out stuff when I'm looking for stuff from friends.
3.) Auto-Sort. This is what they currently have now.

This is what Facebook needs to implement. Thus, they never will.

Re:its interesting, but only if you dont use faceb

[fisted]

Unfortunately sometimes FB is the only feasible and free way to stay in touch with someone, especially when they are technically illiterate.
If there's no such person in your life, okay, but others have to deal with it.
Turns out there's a great way to deal with it, completely eliminating the need to use their website. On one end it speaks numerous IM protocols (incl. facebook chat (which is essentially XMPP)); on the user end it pretends to be an IRCd, offering a uniform way to chat via the various IMs

its completely OT, but i still feel obligated to say it. Facebook isnt interested in you as a person, theyre interested in you as a product.

Yes. But stale. It doesn't even sound smug anymore, can we finally stop pointing this out? Everyone knows it already.

Yeah, I'm still annoyed

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't, you really don't.

The Windows Phone Facebook app doesn't filter, it's the unadulterated feed that you claim to want. I don't have that many Facebook friends, but this feed is terrible. It includes all sorts of crap I don't want to see, like how my sister's Farmville farm is doing, and the latest "Share if you love Jesus" that my mom shared, and a boring video of my high school buddy's child playing soccer.

I like these people, I don't want to unfriend them because they genuinely do post things I want to see. But they also post crap. Facebook has figured out what I think is crap and does a good job of hiding that. And this is my definition of crap - my high school buddy's wife probably does want to see that soccer video.

I'm less sold on the chronological re-ordering that FB does. I'm glad that they're showing me just the stories that they think I care about, but it's confusing when something ten hours old shows up above something ten minutes old.

Hypocrites much?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do enjoy reading bashing of Facebook's method of keeping people in their own little echo-chamber, showing them stuff that keeps reinforcing their own views regardless of whether they're ignorant or not... and yet people don't recognize the hypocrisy of saying this on Slashdot, a place which doesn't encourage alternate views on say Microsoft or Windows and won't allow complaint about the many, many limitations of Linux and its distros without falling into flame wars. Everyone here reinforces their own world view of tech regardless of how far removed from the actual world that most people reside in.

Facebook can't do something simple...

[Anonymous Coward]

Show in chronological order posts from only my real friends.

WSOD?

[mrfatmann]

WSOD? http://civic.mit.edu/blog/nate...

Memo to Self :

[RockDoctor]

Must log into FaceBook and trash an number of adverts while lieing about my preferences in a confusing manner.

It must be a couple of weeks since I poured sand into that particular Web2.0 gearbox. I do hope it's high-precision.