
Facebook News is filled with stories too mainstream to do well on the rest of FB - elsewhen
https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/06/the-new-facebook-news-is-filled-with-stories-that-are-way-too-mainstream-to-do-well-on-the-rest-of-facebook/
======
perl4ever
You know what's weird?

I discovered that the following link shows my FB feed in chronological order:

[https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr](https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr)

I thought, oh, great, this is the key to making FB decent again.

 _But_ after a while of using it, it usually shows almost nothing. Sometimes
literally nothing. People are still posting stuff though that I can see with
the default view. I almost think I may have triggered some sort of adversarial
logic that is trying to force me to use the engagement-driven ordering.

Edit: In fairness, it could be that they are hostile to uBlock origin, either
deliberately or as emergent behavior. I wouldn't mind ads in principle, normal
ads like you used to have in print media, but I often get ones that are very
unpleasant if I don't use the blocker.

~~~
blululu
I have experimented with Chronological order in the past, and it almost
invariably provides a worse feed. It's like email with no spam filters. The
grim reality is that most of the content that is uploaded to Facebook is
repetitive and uninteresting. In my personal experience the friends who used
to post the most interesting things have mostly stopped, and all that remains
is the chaff.

~~~
kickscondor
Yeah this is less a statement on chronological ordering and more a product of
subscribing to all of your uncles. I do think chronological ordering can help
you diagnose this problem quicker.

~~~
henrikschroder
It's always baffling to me to read about people who complain about their
Facebook feed because their friends post shit, and because they like pages who
post shit...

Facebook can't magically fix your feed for you, you have to curate it
yourself, how come people don't understand that?

~~~
HenryBemis
It pisses me off when someone reassigns the blame to the user and not to the
cancerous Facebook shit and it's scumbag leadership. Just because WE are too
stupid to "curate it ourselves".... Here are the three top search results when
searching (in DDG) for: Facebook timeline psychological experiment

1:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/every...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-
we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/)

2:
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-
apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users)

3:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook-
manipulated-689003-users-emotions-for-science/)

Now then.. are we all so stupid, or is Facebook ran by a bunch of scumbags who
care only for "user engagement" no-matter-what? And it may be that some people
get confused by its practices, then understand the dishonesty that is causing
the confusion and give it up (abandon FB), while others get trapped in it, so
net-net FB made more £€¥$ and kept the bad practices.

~~~
henrikschroder
Stuff on your timeline doesn't appear there because Facebook picks stuff at
complete random to display to you. Your feed is built from the sum of what
your friends post, and what your liked pages post. Granted, Facebook does an
enormous amount of shenanigans to highlight the most engaging/enraging posts
from that source, and they're manipulating your friends to re-post
engaging/enraging things they've seen, so it can spread to you.

But at the end of the day, the source for your feed is what your friends post.
If all your friends post nothing but cute baby pictures, your feed is going to
be 100% cute baby pictures, and nothing else. If your friends post nothing but
cute cat pictures, it's caturday forever on your feed. And if your friends
keep posting political bullshit that you hate, then that's what you're going
to keep seeing.

The position I don't understand is the one where people endlessly complain
about how Facebook has turned to shit, and then expect Facebook to magically
fix it for them? That's never going to happen. Either curate your feed, or
stop using Facebook. Those are your options.

~~~
matsemann
I disagree. My friends almost post nothing, but what they post I wamt to see.
What they do much of however, is like and comment on pages. Fb, for some
reason, think that's interesting to see. However, I cannot stop fb from doing
so. I cannot say I don't want to see things this person comments on, then I
have to mute them.

I don't care that they comment on some post to win some product, or is tagging
a friend in some viral video. I don't want my feed to be full of fake
engagement. But I guess that's all Facebook is now, as no one really posts
anything anymore, so that's what they show to make it seem things happen.

------
djaque
Reading through the list of top news stories on Facebook scared me. It is
clear that news can't be chosen based on engagement and that Facebook can't
change.

Related: Wikipedia's current events portal [1] acts like a user sourced news
feed which is a pretty good representation of reality. I wonder if you could
commercialize a similarly moderated aggregator.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events)

~~~
metrokoi
>It is clear that news can't be chosen based on engagement and that Facebook
can't change.

Why can't news be chosen on engagement? That's what people want to read. Must
Facebook control what news people are reading?

Wikipedia's current event portal may have a more even representation of what
events are happening, but Wikipedia also has users that are interested in a
wider range of topics. Most people mainly care about sports and politics.
Scientific discoveries, economics, and international relations are simply not
as interesting to as many people. Why shouldn't Facebook just have news based
on engagement and a separate list with equal representation of events from
many different topics?

~~~
OminousWeapons
> Why can't news be chosen on engagement? That's what people want to read.
> Must Facebook control what news people are reading?

They can optimize only for engagement with no curation, but they shouldn't. It
shouldn't be done that way because people won't understand that this is the
mechanism for content selection. They will think that because content shows up
in a news section it has factual merit, and that the content being presented
is an accurate representation of the current world context. If you only
prioritize engagement, what you will create is a propaganda section
masquerading as a news section because the most inflammatory, baseless,
bullshit content is what draws the most engagement. That is in no one's best
interest long term and it undermines the credibility of news media in general.
If they want to create this, it should be labeled as entertainment, not news.

~~~
metrokoi
And if you curate news, you likely create a propaganda section selected by
individuals or a small group of individuals. It's not as if an unbiased AI
hand-picks which stories are of factual merit and representative of the
current world context. Is a story from Facebook's curated feed about protests
over a children's TV show more significant and accurate than "NASCAR’s Bubba
Wallace wants confederate flags banned from race tracks"? Is J.K. Rowling
doubling down on a "transphobic manifesto" more significant and/or accurate
than the sister of a slain police officer asking "Where’s the outrage for a
fallen officer who happens to be African American?"? A group of curators
selecting content does not necessarily make that content any more factual
either. Curated news greater possibility of being propaganda because the news
selection is in the hands of the few instead of the many.

Is a propaganda section a propaganda section if it contains propaganda from
both sides? I suppose, in that it is a section that contains propaganda, but
the section itself does not serve as an unequal biasing agent for viewers,
unless your issue with the engagement-based recommendation is that you believe
it is biased in a certain direction.

That seems like quite the assumption to assume that people will think content
has factual merit because it shows up in their news section. People should not
be treated with kid gloves and herded in certain directions out of fear that
we will harm ourselves. Facebook should clearly label news sections as
"Selections Based on Engagement" and "Selections By Facebook Curators". People
are capable of understaning that the selected news is biased.

------
dr_dshiv
Facebook needs to have separate feeds for politics and news sharing vs
original content and family photos.

In general, being able to let people filter and control the parameters of the
algorithms defining their experience.

~~~
saltedonion
The reason fb wont do this is because there is so little to show on the
friends and family front, it will do nothing but drive users away and solidify
its market positioning as a political news reader.

To pull off separate feed fb needs to fix trust so people actually posts
friends and family content as much as before.

~~~
jjeaff
I thought I remembered Zuckerberg announcing they would be deemphasizing news
over personal content a few years ago.

~~~
0x5f3759df-i
They even did a cute commercial they played in movie theaters about it.

------
austincheney
Why on Earth should this be a surprise to anybody?

Social media news is really a polite way of saying unsubstantiated rumors,
gossip, and bullshit. Tabloids are higher quality stories. The new FB News is
journalism, which is about as similar as TikTok videos to Harvard Law
textbooks.

~~~
gridlockd
...except all of the popular stories were from reputable journalist outlets as
well.

They were simply different stories from those that FB news wanted users to
see.

------
saltedonion
The key question here is how will the recommendation engine behave.

If they go down their previous path as using engagement as the sole KPI then
it will be no different than news feed.

To reestablish trust and shake off the regulatory scrutiny fb will need to
nudge people to more mainstream content, at the detriment of engagement.

~~~
curiousllama
The issue is if there's two sections, one "very engaging" and one "somewhat
engaging," then we won't solve anything. "Very engaging" will far outpace
"somewhat engaging" because, well, that's what people want to engage with.

I think you're right about the need to shift people but in order to do so,
engagement is key. They should maintain engagement as the primary KPI, and
instead nudge the content towards less inflammatory. Engagement is, IMO, a
primary measure for if they going to be able to reestablish trust.

------
vxNsr
I would be blown away if Facebook wasn’t using an algorithm based on what
publishers you used the most to show you news. Unless you can set up a 1000
computer clean room study with clean ips and everything and prove that they
all get the same news no matter how much they go to one side first there’s no
real way to know.

So basically what we know is this author likes NYT and the verge

------
seesawtron
Social Media works by curating content that a user like and building a safe
bubble around the user by showing them the content that will positively
reinforce their belief systems. Thereby keeping them shielded from views that
are challenging or contradictory to their belief systems. Creating a positive
reinforcement loop for the user to depend on it even more.

------
divbzero
“Engagement” seems to be the key word that doesn’t appear in OP but is
mentioned in many sibling comments. This metric is great for driving ad
revenue but is irremediably broken for constructive social discourse.

------
daodedickinson
Mainstream is what works well on the rest of FB. Facebook News is the radical
propaganda that the people are being snuffed out with.

------
kukx
Does not that mean the mainstream media is no longer mainstream?

It is important to get info from multiple sources including left, right,
because they all have their biases diverting from the truth and often reality.
You cannot simply trust that one side is presenting all the relevant facts.

------
yters
It's funny that mainstream now means what most people don't care about.

~~~
netsharc
Well, it's what most FB users aren't reading. My theory/hope is that they
visit normal news stories outside of Facebook, so when they see the same
headline on FB, they think "ah I've read that already". Meanwhile when the
user sees a click-baity title on FB, they haven't heard about that on
mainstream sites, so they end up clicking on it...

------
gentleman11
People still use Facebook for their news? I’ve been off it for 1-2 years and
started following some local/national agencies instead. Much more level headed
coverage of everything

------
acd
I think social media is bad in the sense that sensational news gets attention.
This does mot necessary mean that news that are news worthy get attention.

------
mhagmajer
This is often the case with top social media companies that they deal with a
ton of content sponsorship requests.

~~~
mhagmajer
Most of these requests I would assume would be for the most visited one - the
front page

------
intopieces
Is that a laughing reaction to George Floyd's brother tearfully calling for
police reform? Christ Facebook is even more toxic than I thought it was.

------
11thEarlOfMar
Where people are getting their news from when left on their own:

Fox, Fox

NPR, NPR

CNN

Daily Wire

Sean Hannity

People

NBC

Newsweek

Where FB Editors source stories from:

NYT, NYT, NYT

NBC, NBC

NPR

CNN

The Verge

Comic Book

~~~
nexuist
This ignores the impact of advertising and FB's advertising algorithms, which
promote stories from Fox etc. onto the feeds of users who otherwise wouldn't
see them. Thus I don't think you can say this is an accurate representation of
what people do "when left on their own."

------
surround
Popular news stories on Facebook: mostly right wing.

Stories on Facebook news: mostly New York Times.

Does the title really fit the article?

------
gurumeditations
So clearly from that list, the proliferation of social media is what has led
to the radicalization of the right wing.

~~~
stass
More like radicalization in general. Left wing got similarly radicalized, if
not more so. When everybody lives in their own bubble people get pushed to the
extremes :-(

~~~
teunispeters
There are no communist activist violent groups, so no not to the same extent.
At least none visibly active anywhere reported. That argues that the
radicalisation has been predominantly right wing, as there are many active
violent fascist groups now, and weren't a few years ago.

~~~
m0zg
Have you not heard of Antifa somehow? It's a communist activist violent group.

~~~
tarkin2
Just to clarify, antifa became an issue after trump started quoting a twitter
antifa account, which was run by a right wing, white supremacy guy.

It is a good example of social media being used to radicalise the right wing,
in fact.

~~~
arcseco
I vaguely remember a story a few years ago about a guy receiving a blow to the
head from a bike lock and requiring therapy for potential brain damage from
said blow.

~~~
klyrs
Let's be clear, that sucks, but it's nowhere near the radicalization we've
seen on the right. Boogaloos shooting cops, neo-nazis responsible for numerous
synagogue / church / mosque shootings, driving cars into crowds, etc. aren't
really comparable to a bike lock to the head.

~~~
vorpalhex
The Jewish deli shooting, the Dallas cop shooter... the list goes on.

------
ForHackernews
> A few other things I noticed scrolling through:

> There are very, very few politics stories

What? This is contradicted by the list of top stories given just above!

1\. “‘It’s a lot of pain’: George Floyd’s brother tearfully demands police
reforms during emotional hearing” (NBC News)

2\. “Jon Ossoff wins Georgia’s Democratic Senate primary” (NPR)

3\. “Trump will return to campaign trail with rally in Tulsa” (New York Times)

4\. “Coronavirus is making a comeback in Arizona” (NBC News)

5\. “2020 is the summer of the road trip. Unless you’re black.” (New York
Times)

6\. “Starbucks is closing up to 400 stores in shift to takeout strategy” (CNN)

7\. “Amazon bans police from using its facial recognition technology for the
next year” (The Verge)

8\. “J. K. Rowling doubles down in what some critics call a ‘transphobic
manifesto'” (NBC News)

9\. “The protests come for ‘Paw Patrol'” (The New York Times)

10\. “Upcoming Nintendo Switch exclusive canceled” (ComicBook.com)

2 & 3 are explicitly political, 1, 5, 7, 8 and 9 are perhaps not about
electoral politics, but still focus on hot-button political issues of the day.

In what world are these "very few politics" stories?

~~~
WhatIsDukkha
In the world of people that finished the author's sentence -

"""There are very, very few politics stories — almost nothing about the
Trump/Biden race, for instance."""

They explicitly bounded what they meant by politics.

~~~
ForHackernews
Grammatically "for instance" is a non-restrictive clause in that sentence. It
adds information, but it doesn't narrow the meaning of what preceded it.

------
jakeogh
OT-ish: There was just a political story on the FP, about a open letter from a
college that starts with B. It disappeared, which makes sense considering that
political stuff is strongly down rated on a tech site, so I went into /newest
and went back many days looking for the [flagged] and or [dead] item, and I
dont see it. So I used the search interface, but it does not show flagged or
dead stories, if logged in, is it possible to have the search interface
include those too?

~~~
dec0dedab0de
You can search and limit to the last 24 hours

~~~
jakeogh
No results. The story is very likely flagged or dead, I'm trying to find out
of there is a query string to showdead in the search results.

