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Facebook's New Anti-Clickbait Algorithm Buries Bogus Headlines (techcrunch.com)

Posted by msmash on from the fixing-your-feed dept.

Facebook is going to make some changes to its newsfeed, again, it said on Thursday. The company is now having another go at sweeping clickbait news stories away from people's newsfeed. The move comes as the social networking giant struggles to entice many people from coming back to its service every few hours. Under the new changes to the feed algorithm, articles with headlines that "withhold or distort information" will be classified as distort. Such stories won't completely disappear, but as the company says, will appear less frequently in users' feeds. TechCrunch adds: Facebook manually classified tens of thousands of headlines with a clickbaitiness score to train the new algorithm. Now it can detect headlines like "When She Looked Under Her Couch And Saw THIS... I Was SHOCKED!"; "He Put Garlic In His Shoes And What Happens Next Is Hard To Believe"; or "The Dog Barked At The Deliveryman And His Reaction Was Priceless." The algorithm then punishes the entire Page that shared them or site they link to by making all their posts or referral links less visible. Facebook's VP of Product Management on News Feed Adam Moserri said "If you post 50 times a day and post one piece a clickbait, this shouldn't affect you. If you're a spammer and post clickbait all day this should affect you a lot."

79 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. Just one quick trick ... by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 3, Funny

    To get rid of all those f*ckers. About time, too. Maybe they can apply it elsewhere (hint, hint)?

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    1. Re: Just one quick trick ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      US Posters shocked by this one new rule!

    2. Re:Just one quick trick ... by gfxguy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's bad enough on Facebook, but it's a lot more heinous on mainstream news sites (like CNN.com). A respectable news site has no business exposing their readers to that kind of s%!t. (don't hassle me about calling CNN respectable, they all do it).

      --
      Stupid sexy Flanders.
    3. Re:Just one quick trick ... by SirSlud · · Score: 3, Insightful

      People stopped having the right to expect more from journalism when they stopped paying for it.

      --
      "Old man yells at systemd"
    4. Re:Just one quick trick ... by ShaunC · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Perhaps once mainstream sites realize their articles are practically invisible on Facebook, they'll go back to writing proper headlines. I like Facebook's move here, it's a lot like Google penalizing sites that use black hat SEO tactics.

      --
      Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
    5. Re: Just one quick trick ... by tripleevenfall · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Slashdot posters read this story, but couldn't believe what they saw in the entire right column of Slashdot.org...

    6. Re:Just one quick trick ... by tripleevenfall · · Score: 1

      Cut down a little bit of journalism each day with one weird old tip

    7. Re:Just one quick trick ... by Nidi62 · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's bad enough on Facebook, but it's a lot more heinous on mainstream news sites (like CNN.com). A respectable news site has no business exposing their readers to that kind of s%!t. (don't hassle me about calling CNN respectable, they all do it).

      Go international. Reuters, Al-Jazeera, etc. I particularly like al-Jazeera because, while they have a lot of videos, their headlines are clear and the site layout is very clean compared to sites like CNN.

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    8. Re:Just one quick trick ... by powerlord · · Score: 4, Funny

      You won't believe THIS easy trick to getting rid of click-bait headlines! ...

      Click HERE to find out more!

      --
      This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
    9. Re:Just one quick trick ... by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1, Troll

      (like CNN.com). A respectable news site

      CNN used to be respectable. But they are part of the IN THE TANK HILLARY crowd now.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    10. Re:Just one quick trick ... by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      Go raw news site, unfiltered. I'm sick of people telling me what I saw, wasn't what I saw.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    11. Re:Just one quick trick ... by No+Longer+an+AC · · Score: 2

      The local news has been doing this for as long as I can remember. They'll tease a story during primetime programming. Find out on your local news at 10!

      Okay, so you're wondering what it's all about and it really sounds interesting. The teaser could be about anything, crime, entertainment, the latest fad it doesn't matter. So you tune in. You watch as they go through a few not-very-interesting news stories. You watch a boring weather report and then they cover sports - as if anyone who cares about sports didn't already know if their team won. Then they tease the story some more and cut to commercial.

      Then you finally find out what it was they were teasing you over - and it's not even that interesting.

      Fortunately these days we have the internet at our fingertips so when I see a teaser like that on the local news I can get to the uninteresting part almost immediately and turn off the TV.

    12. Re:Just one quick trick ... by liquidsin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Your UID makes it look like you should remember the old days, but whatever. When I was growing up (80's - 90's) we didn't have cable television; we had an antenna on the roof that picked up the local ABC/NBC/CBS/FOX affiliates, plus the local CBC/CITY/other Canadian stations (grew up in a border town). We got the news from the local nightly news on whichever station, and didn't pay a thing for it, unless you count watching commercials as "paying". These days, we seem to be "paying" more for our news, in terms of ads and having our habits tracked and sold online, but *still* somehow we're getting less *actual* journalism.

      --
      do not read this line twice.
    13. Re:Just one quick trick ... by Solandri · · Score: 2

      Once of the nice things about using Google News as your aggregator is that if you see a clickbait headline for what looks like something you might actually be interested in ("You Won't BELIEVE What the Mars Rover Just Found!"), you can just click the little triangles to the right and get a bunch of related news articles with the same story, and read one of those instead.

    14. Re:Just one quick trick ... by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      If everyone who thinks Hillary is the answer to Trump actually opened their mind and saw that Hillary and Trump are basically the same lunatic, we'd be much better off. However, Hillary conspired to rig an election, with the MSM in her pocket and you're simply ignoring that because "Trump is worse". I reject the idea that "Trump is worse" the same way I reject the idea spewed by right wingers that "Hillary is worse". It is basically saying "dying of a heart attack is worse than dying of cancer", no, both suck equally.

      Here is a thought, perhaps there is someone sane that is ALSO running that isn't Trump or Hillary. Gary Johnson is the sane choice this election.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    15. Re:Just one quick trick ... by tomhath · · Score: 1

      CNN supports the Democrat and attacks the Republican every four years. This year they aren't even trying to hide their anti-Trump vitriol.

      Between elections they're okay.

    16. Re:Just one quick trick ... by neo00 · · Score: 2

      Yes, but they'll probably just switch to click-bate images rather than click-bate headlines.. It is significantly more difficult to recognize click-bait images with computer algorithms...

    17. Re: Just one quick trick ... by wbr1 · · Score: 2

      I have uBlock... what did you see? WHAT DID YOU SEE???

      --
      Silence is a state of mime.
    18. Re:Just one quick trick ... by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Even Gary Johnson says that Trump is insane.

    19. Re:Just one quick trick ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's dilution of eyeballs.

      "Back in the day" there were only ~3 TV channels that had the news, and there was no time shifting. If you advertised on the nightly news in the 80s, you can be pretty sure you got 100% of the news-viewing audience with the purchase of three slots (okay, perhaps more to get the early and late news). That means that it was worth spending big bucks on that advertising slot.

      Now days, very few people get their news from any one source. They're spread out across a number of different platforms and sites. This means that any one ad is worth much less. Hence less money being paid per ad. The total ad budget is being spread out across more news providers, meaning that any one provider is getting less total money.

      Targeting ads and click-through metrics doesn't help. Back in the TV era, it was spray and pray with adverts. Most of the views were wasted, but no one knew which ones were, or had any method to narrow things down. On the internet, advertisers can delude themselves that they can actually determine such things, which means that they don't want to pay for showing ads to people who aren't going to by things. Sure, the per-view cost might be higher, but content providers can't make as much money charging twice as much per impression for one fourth of the total impressions.

    20. Re:Just one quick trick ... by smooth+wombat · · Score: 1, Troll

      You're thinking of the Fox tabloid. Al-Jazeera is closer to the BBC in quality of stories and in-depth reporting.

      --
      We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
    21. Re:Just one quick trick ... by DRJlaw · · Score: 1

      People stopped having the right to expect more from journalism when they stopped paying for it.

      So you're saying that journalism from pre-WWII to the end of the 20th century was merely a fluke, given that people never directly paid for radio or television news in the first place, just as they don't directly pay for web-based news now.

    22. Re:Just one quick trick ... by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      People stopped having the right to expect more from journalism when they stopped paying for it.

      Advertisers always paid the cost of journalism. Subscription fees and newsstand sales paid the cost of producing and distributing the physical paper.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    23. Re:Just one quick trick ... by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      why trust anything from liberal or conservative outlets? they all have spin. you need to be able to pick out the facts from any "reporting" done by either.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    24. Re:Just one quick trick ... by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 2

      Even the republicans are attacking trump. it's not like attacking trump is partisan any more.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    25. Re:Just one quick trick ... by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1
      That has been an increasing problem of late. They use a redirect, the redirected site uses javascript to identify the phone platform, and then say you have a virus and you need to get rid of it. Google's logo is also shown to give it some legitimacy, and trying to close the window doesn't work.

      I thought wire fraud was a federal criminal offense.

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    26. Re:Just one quick trick ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And many Democrats are attacking Hillary - did you notice there were larger, and more violent, protests at the DNC than the RNC?
      There are always those that lost out, or aren't getting their plank into the party platform, that are willing to lose the election for ideological purity. Trying to claim that this somehow means that one of the candidates is insane and evil and must be stopped!!!1!1 while the other is just fine and dandy makes you look like a cheap hack.

    27. Re:Just one quick trick ... by complete+loony · · Score: 1

      In all likelyhood, you'll believe this one piece of completely anecdotal horseshit to getting rid of click-bait headlines.

      --
      09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
    28. Re:Just one quick trick ... by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      Your information is seriously screwed up. The majority on both sides don't like their candidate. Ditto the electorate in general - they don't like either of them, and it's hard to convince people to vote for someone they don't like.

      Going from today's ipsos/reuters poll, hardly anyone thinks either candidate is "fine and dandy."

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    29. Re:Just one quick trick ... by GbrDead · · Score: 1

      You should have linked to a certain song performed by Rick Astley.

    30. Re:Just one quick trick ... by waTeim · · Score: 1

      It's not necessarily true that click-bait images are harder to recognize than click-bait titles. For though it is true that the neural networks that recognize each will be different and will certainly have different training sets, the approach is the same. Find a bunch of examples and manually classify them, and then let the NN generalize based on those examples. The question is how many examples are required in each case. It's not obvious that these numbers are vastly different; would one expect each clickbaity image to be describable by succinct caption and would that caption be similar in complexity to a click-bait title? Expect Facebook to have plenty of money to pay people mechanical turk style to gather sufficient examples.

    31. Re:Just one quick trick ... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      You can't handle the raw news. Seriously. There's far too much of it. Even for a small incident, it can involve video footage, interviews (which are of course affected by the questions asked), additional research, hours of monitoring of Twitter and Facebook, and so forth. News outlets take all that stuff and condense it down into summaries that are small enough to be absorbed without a great deal of time and effort, and they may add background information. It would be useful to have all the source material available, to be able to dig into the details, but I don't expect that to happen any time soon.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    32. Re:Just one quick trick ... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      So, you're saying that only news outlets that endorse your favored candidate are respectable?

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    33. Re:Just one quick trick ... by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      News outlets take all that stuff and condense it down into summaries that are small enough to be absorbed without a great deal of time and effort

      By Summary you mean filtered through the lens of the biased reporters deciding what is worthy to report on. Hillary barking like a dog, if that was Trump it would have made NYT front page, but not Hillary. Or Weird facial ticks ? or NOT having a press conference in over 240 days. Or actually investigating the Clinton Crime Family Foundation and quid pro quo State Department special treatment of foreign governments ...

      Meanwhile Melania is NAKED!!!!!

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    34. Re:Just one quick trick ... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      No, Trump has some very hard limits on the people who will consider voting for him. You're referring to a certain anti-elitist and anti-rationality group, which is nowhere near a majority and which is basically in Trump's pocket already.

      Nor is an independent going to win. There have been realistic third-party challenges before (Teddy Roosevelt, Wallace, Perot), but no third party candidate will win a single state this election. If there was going to be a credible independent, we'd know by now. The news would be all over it. There simply isn't time for anyone not from the two major parties to get the name recognition and campaign going for 2016. Neither the Libertarians nor the Greens are going to become credible without some big changes. (The last time I looked at a Libertarian platform, it was clearly a document to publicize ideology and not anything to govern by.)

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    35. Re:Just one quick trick ... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Sure. What do you want out of news? Raw news is impractical, and what's available is slanted by what the camera operators think are interesting, and what the reporters ask. There are going to be biases no matter what. Learn to deal with them.

      Also, recognize that your intuition is not necessarily better than actual news. You're childishly suggesting investigating the Clinton foundation and State Department special treatment, in terms that make it quite obvious that this is something you hope is found rather than something you have good evidence will be found. You seem to be complaining that no news outlet reports what you want to hear.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  2. overlords by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I for one welcome our clickbait-free overlords. A title should be a complete thought.

  3. This is lame by PCM2 · · Score: 1

    That's lame ... I share clickbait headlines all the time because I think they're funny. The posts always include a comment from me explaining why I'm posting it. Why shouldn't I be allowed to do that? Why assume that the people who ask to be my Facebook friends don't want to see my posts?

    --
    Breakfast served all day!
    1. Re:This is lame by gfxguy · · Score: 1

      Who said you weren't allowed?

      --
      Stupid sexy Flanders.
    2. Re:This is lame by PCM2 · · Score: 1

      Well if the Facebook algorithm is going to bury the posts so they're never seen, isn't that about the same thing?

      --
      Breakfast served all day!
    3. Re:This is lame by gfxguy · · Score: 1

      Appear less frequently = buried? And it sounds like it's only a problem if that's all you do.

      --
      Stupid sexy Flanders.
    4. Re:This is lame by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      I share clickbait headlines all the time because I think they're funny.

      You're the one, huh?

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    5. Re:This is lame by PCM2 · · Score: 1

      Appear less frequently = buried?

      That's a generally accepted term, as in a newspaper: "Bury the story on page 4."

      --
      Breakfast served all day!
  4. The great algorithmic wars begun they have by H3lldr0p · · Score: 1

    Considering it's pretty codable to create those headlines I have to wonder how long before someone comes up with a heuristic to write the headlines which get through the filter.

    At which point FB will have to update to catch those which will cause a counter update and so on and so forth until no headline ever will get through, leaving us completely news free and ignorant!

    Brilliant!

  5. I wish they'd all go away. by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 2

    Almost every website you go to now, even sites like CNN, CBS, Forbes, etc., have clickbait ads. The ones that irritate me the most lately are "You won't believe what X looks like now, it's stunning!" where X is some sort of 60's or 70's TV show star. They're in their 50's-80's, I pretty much guarantee they aren't going to look "stunning". They're going to look like old ladies. Nothing wrong with that, it's just the ads seem to imply they somehow magically got better looking over the past 40 years. /end rant

    --
    Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
    1. Re:I wish they'd all go away. by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      Almost every website you go to now, even sites like CNN, CBS, Forbes, etc., have clickbait ads.

      I bet they also wonder why people use ad blockers. You don't have to see those ads, you know.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    2. Re:I wish they'd all go away. by Nidi62 · · Score: 1

      Almost every website you go to now, even sites like CNN, CBS, Forbes, etc., have clickbait ads. The ones that irritate me the most lately are "You won't believe what X looks like now, it's stunning!" where X is some sort of 60's or 70's TV show star. They're in their 50's-80's, I pretty much guarantee they aren't going to look "stunning". They're going to look like old ladies. Nothing wrong with that, it's just the ads seem to imply they somehow magically got better looking over the past 40 years. /end rant

      Don't forget the ads that say "20 Celebrities you didn't know were dead" but uses as the ad picture the photo of a still living but hardly working celebrity.

      --
      The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
    3. Re:I wish they'd all go away. by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 2

      I bet they also wonder why people use ad blockers. You don't have to see those ads, you know.

      Unfortunately, I found ad blockers to be almost as much of a problem as the ads. Often times, if you have an ad blocker enabled, you won't be able to view videos on the site.

      --
      Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
    4. Re:I wish they'd all go away. by dead_user · · Score: 1

      That's cool with me. I have already added Forbes.com to my personal block list for exactly this reason. There are PLENTY of places to read the same exact story that don't force me to watch their shitty ads.

    5. Re:I wish they'd all go away. by epine · · Score: 1

      Often times, if you have an ad blocker enabled, you won't be able to view videos on the site.

      I suppose this is a problem because, on the internet, there are too few videos, and way too much time to watch them all. So even the loss of one video is a strike against the home side.

      Ad blocker + plenty of fish attitude = why did I even worry about that stupid girl

      On YouTube, I have adopted a pretty much infallible personal rule about what curiosity links to click through, when I'm bored enough to even think about doing so.

      If the headline tells me how anyone feels (myself, the photographer, the poster, the subjects of the video, the bystanders in the video, or God himself) then the video is a 100% no fly zone.

      Also, words like "demolishes", "bitch slaps", "trounces", "debunks" are considered to describe someone's streaming pile of emotional aftermath, turd style "domination porn".

      I would probably click through "Hitchens mocks clueless audience member" so this is not an exact science, but I've had no regrets whatsoever since erecting this useful bar.

      It hardly needs to be added that any headline or title beginning with "you won't" is immediately subjected to the garlic garland and silver cross hairs.

    6. Re:I wish they'd all go away. by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 1

      if you have an ad blocker enabled, you won't be able to view videos on the site

      Which is rather telling of the quality of their content.

      --
      Time to offend someone
    7. Re:I wish they'd all go away. by Mike+Van+Pelt · · Score: 1

      The one I despise most of all is the "male enhancement product" quack ad which shows someone holding a geoduck clam in a disturbingly suggestive manner. What Has Been Seen Can Not Be Unseen.

    8. Re:I wish they'd all go away. by Bender+Unit+22 · · Score: 1

      I was browsing a serious news site recently without ad blocker and was presented with ads of really ugly fat women with skin flapping about. Something about weight loss I suppose. Yuck, I lost the interest in reading the article and installed ad-blocker.

    9. Re:I wish they'd all go away. by ArtemaOne · · Score: 1

      You say that as if it is bad. I don't want videos unless I purposefully go to youtube, vimeo, etc.

  6. Big-Balls Boyfriend Buries Bone in Bunch of Bitche by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

    This angry girlfriend read his text messages, you won't believe what happened next!

    --
    Support my political activism on Patreon.
  7. Guess which headline FB algorithm doesn't block by gachunt · · Score: 2

    1. "This presidential candidate deleted 30,000 emails, find out what top secret details they revealed."

    2. "A wall to block illegal immigrants? This presidential candidate says it can be done at no cost to America!"

  8. In related news ... by PPH · · Score: 2

    ... Slashdot goes dark.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  9. The really fucked up thing by war4peace · · Score: 1

    There's a major TV network in my country which has all video titles generated to be click bait. The fucked up thing is that the videos themselves are fine, OK-ish news which are not a pain to watch, are relevant and pretty well done. They don't really need clickbait titles because the quality is above average. Why they do it though is beyond my comprehension.

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  10. Re:Simplicity itself by tripleevenfall · · Score: 1

    Because then they don't get to control what you're reading.

  11. Gaming the system. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    So, the smartest bullshitters get through, raising the bar on bullshittery, and making it more of a cognitive challenge to recognise. Gotcha.

    Any rule-based system turns into an arms race, which is why they collapse in favor of value-based systems.

  12. Alterior motives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This will ultimately be used to explain why pro-Israel or conservative posts get buried despite NOT having click-bait headlines.

    Zuck is one self-loathing jew.

  13. Re:Big-Balls Boyfriend Buries Bone in Bunch of Bit by halivar · · Score: 1

    And every one of those pages tries to hijack my browser to another page.

  14. SHOCKING photos of how Kim Possible looks today by tech-law-ny · · Score: 1

    Some clickbait writers have shorter careers than others.

    1. Re:SHOCKING photos of how Kim Possible looks today by Dorianny · · Score: 1

      Some clickbait writers have shorter careers than others.

      I would click on that just to see how an artists imagines Married life for the morbidly obese Ron Stoppable and Stressed out middle aged soccer mom Kim Stoppable

  15. Not a problem by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

    Since I'm one of the last few carbon-based lifeforms in the entire world who doesn't use Facebook, I can ignore this whole mess. Yay for meeeeeeee!

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  16. ...And You Won't Believe What Happened Next! by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Facebook Changed One of it's Algorithms And You Won't Believe What Happened Next!"

    "Facebook Reduced Its Clickbait Using This One Weird Trick!"

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    1. Re:...And You Won't Believe What Happened Next! by Not-a-Neg · · Score: 1

      "Facebook knows the secret to paying off your mortgage with this one simple trick!"

      --
      -==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
    2. Re:...And You Won't Believe What Happened Next! by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      And the secret is.....sending a shitload of money to the mortgage company. lol

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  17. Why can't it remember my setting? by QuietLagoon · · Score: 1
    Why do I have to set my newsfeed to "Most Recent" each time I visit facebook?

    .
    facebook should respect my request to view my newsfeed as I want to view it, and stop hiding behind their "algorithm" to show me stuff I don't want to see.

    1. Re:Why can't it remember my setting? by coinreturn · · Score: 1

      Why do I have to set my newsfeed to "Most Recent" each time I visit facebook?

      . facebook should respect my request to view my newsfeed as I want to view it, and stop hiding behind their "algorithm" to show me stuff I don't want to see.

      I regularly post this complaint in my FB feed, calling out Zuckerberg on it. Fuck man, you're a goddamn software company and you can't keep one fucking preference saved?????

    2. Re:Why can't it remember my setting? by Bender+Unit+22 · · Score: 1

      Come on, I think you two already know the answer to that.
      It's not a bug, it's a feature. It's really not about what you want.

  18. I'll believe it when I see it by ausekilis · · Score: 1

    For the past couple weeks my feed has shown various "The Rock Arrested!!!!" and "Free The Rock!" nonsense. A quick search shows Snopes debunked this nonsense. It's a photograph of a scene from one of his movies where his character gets arrested.

    FB's 'algorithm' could start with random clickbait bullshit sites like Outbrain, TMZ and Zergnet.

  19. I'd prefer they try to stop direct marketers by Ranbot · · Score: 1

    I can spot and avoid a click-bait article without Facebook's help. What I really want from Facebook is a way to block direct marketing posts from my friends without blocking the friend completely (e.g. Herbal Life, Mary Kay, Shake-ology, Stella & Dot, etc.).

  20. How long? by sycodon · · Score: 1

    How long until legitimate headlines on legitimate stories are found to "withhold or distort information" because they don't fit the political Narrative of Facebook?

    This is not good thing. It is cover for pushing agendas and squelching stuff they don't like... "Oh, it was the algorithm, not our political bias".

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  21. You'll be SHOCKED [Re:Just one quick trick ...] by XXongo · · Score: 1

    This reality TV star decided to try something new. You'll be SHOCKED to find out what he did next!

  22. my current slashdot sppnsored content by trb · · Score: 1

    Here's what's in my Slashdot home page Sponsored Content right now:

    The Open Source ""Code"" That Saved the World
    Microsoft

    This Service in -mytown- is Changing the Way People Cook at Home
    HelloFresh

    Your 401(k) Isn't Growing as Fast as It Should - Here's Why
    Mint | Future Advisor

    Aging Science Advances At Unprecedented Pace: The Potential of the Latest Findings on Long-term Health
    MIT Technology Review | Elysium Health

  23. Facebook kills all mainstreamnews, and that's OK. by nowsharing · · Score: 1

    For once I actually support something that FB is doing. I'm still zero steps closer to ever joining FB, but it would be nice if this kind of filtering could come to other sites. Maybe here?

  24. About time by alphabet26 · · Score: 1

    Click bait is like the 2015 version of the blink tag.

    --
    -AlPhAbEt
  25. Sheesh, I just wish by PJ6 · · Score: 1

    they'd give me control over what I see from my friends. As in, everything, please, unless I say otherwise.

    I don't need your clickbait algorithm.