
Blue Feed, Red Feed - some-guy
http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/
======
zaroth
They try hard in the FAQ to explain what they built but I'm sure most people
will not actually understand what this is. This is not a Facebook feed, it is
not what left or right leaning users actually see. These are stories pulled
with Facebook's API and then filtered by WSJ to only show sources which were
previously ranked in a study as being the _most_ consistently right and left
leaning sources that people liked. In other words, they are just showing the
most slanted news sources they could find.

Talk about fanning the flames. When I first started reading I assumed what
they had created was a bunch of dummy accounts that would like various posts
based on political viewpoint and then showing actual feeds Facebook pushed to
those accounts. That is not at all what is happening here.

~~~
Spellman
That definitely would have been much more interesting.

Generate a few accounts. consistently cause the algorithm to think you are Red
vs Blue (via Likes, Profile tweaks, Posts from specific sources like Mother
Jones vs Instapundit/Drudge) and then see how they start to diverge.

Reminds me of the Like-Everything experiment Wired tried. a while back. Much
more interesting to see how it slowly moved toward what the Facebook thought
was the local maxima. ([http://www.wired.com/2014/08/i-liked-everything-i-saw-
on-fac...](http://www.wired.com/2014/08/i-liked-everything-i-saw-on-facebook-
for-two-days-heres-what-it-did-to-me/))

Unfortunately, without knowledge of Facebook's algorithms, it might be a bit
difficult. For example, I'm sure a decent chunk depends on your social network
and what they are posting and that's much harder to simulate.

EDIT: I still find this illuminating. I am subscribed to two feeds, one Far
Left and one Far Right, and it's always fascinating to look at them and how
little they overlap. They pull from completely different sources and focus and
nitpick and the craziest things about each other. Even when they cover the
exact same story, they contextualize it completely differently with insinuated
comments and bylines.

So, it's true it's not purely organic of real Facebook feeds. And as a result
doesn't get to the heart of the criticism of Facebook generating echo
chambers. However, it is a good exercise of showing how this might look and
how jarring it can be to compare them.

------
morgante
Everyone seems to be misinterpreting what the WSJ did (which is probably what
the WSJ intended). There's absolutely nothing here to be worried or concerned
about.

This is the key line:

> These aren't intended to resemble actual individual news feeds.

The WSJ specifically filtered each feed to only include conservative or
liberal sources. Facebook could observe a full equal time rule in each user's
feed, thereby constantly exposing users to a variety of viewpoints and this
so-called study would have given the exact same results.

------
mikejholly
So WSJ specifically crafted feeds with left and right leaning sources to
illustrate what exactly? That political differences exist? I don't think
Facebook has much influence over the company you keep in meat space. Your
real-life circle has far greater influence on your political leanings.

~~~
TheBiv
I definitely agree that your real-life circle has a large influence, but I
can't dismiss how much the articles that people see effect how they talk about
things.

Especially with the older generation. Anecdotally, I have seen my mother have
very extreme opinions on things simply bc "she saw an article on facebook" and
didn't fact check anything in the article. It was impossible for me to
convince her that the article was wrong.

~~~
mod
I have engaged in discussions where I post, for instance, actual scientific
studies that refute a shared article. (The specific debate was about nitrites
in hot dogs)

You didn't have to read more than the synopsis to see that the article was
thoroughly refuted.

The study had roughly zero effect on the beliefs of the person who shared the
article. In effect, they already believed something (hot dogs are going to
kill their baby), they found an article that agrees with them, and there will
be no changing minds thereafter.

I may just engage with a subset of people who are prone to be like that, but a
large portion of my facebook feed is similar. They just believe there's some
puppeteer pulling the strings on everything. We can cure cancer but 'they'
don't want to. We can create infinite free solar energy but 'they' don't want
us to have it. "They" orchestrated the entrance into wars, "they're" hiding
aliens, etc. Some of it is cliche conspiracy theory, but some of it leans
towards "we're in the matrix" level of conspiracy.

I come to HN to keep grounded. I love it here because of rational discussion &
debate among people who seek factual truths.

~~~
gregmac
> The study had roughly zero effect on the beliefs of the person who shared
> the article.

There's something called the Backfire Effect, wherein presenting facts and
evidence actually reinforces people's positions, and can make them believe
even more strongly in the thing you're proving is incorrect.

[1]
[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Backfire_effect](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Backfire_effect)
[2] [https://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-
effect/](https://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/06/10/the-backfire-effect/) [3]
[http://bigthink.com/think-tank/the-backfire-effect-why-
facts...](http://bigthink.com/think-tank/the-backfire-effect-why-facts-dont-
win-arguments)

------
danso
A little OT, but as part of its public apology/explanation, the FB news team
uploaded a PDF of RSS feeds that they say they pick from to find stories to
include in the News Feed (to supplement "organic" trending stories)...they
don't say how often they do this, but I imagine what RSS feeds they chose to
pay attention to (around 800+) has to be a partial reflection of how they do
day to day curation of the organically trending stories.

I parsed the PDF and did a scrape of the feeds in this repo:
[https://github.com/dannguyen/facebook-trending-rss-
fetcher](https://github.com/dannguyen/facebook-trending-rss-fetcher)

(but didn't do the work of extracting items from each individual XML)

------
TheBiv
Wow, what an awesome experiment!

I know that FB shows me articles that their feed algorithm determines to be
aligned with things I've clicked on before (so that I'll click again), however
it's pretty shocking to how my clicks can effect what sort of articles I see.

It's almost as if every click digs me further and further into a specific
bucket that shapes what I see and that I can't really climb out of.

~~~
Swizec
> It's almost as if every click digs me further and further into a specific
> bucket that shapes what I see and that I can't really climb out of.

As in life, it's important to _actively_ seek out information you disagree
with. That's how you learn and broaden your horizons. It's the only way.

~~~
davidivadavid
That keeps being repeated along with the "filter bubble" trope now and then.
I'm not sure I buy it.

Most of the stuff out of my "filter bubble" is just incredibly low quality
garbage, whether it agrees or disagrees with what I think.

I can't see how actively going out of my way to read articles about how Kim
Kardashian is an interesting intellectual adds much to my horizons.

There's only so much information we can consume. There seems to be this myth
that looking now and then at the opposite viewpoint from what you believe
frees you from the constraints of bounded rationality. It doesn't, and I
haven't seen very conclusive evidence that it helps in any meaningful way.

~~~
vertex-four
> Most of the stuff out of my "filter bubble" is just incredibly low quality
> garbage, whether it agrees or disagrees with what I think.

The thing is... it's entirely probable that most of the people who agree with
you do so because of low quality garbage. So you're very much comparing
yourself to a large group of other people and coming out that you read things
above their level - not very hard. You need to find people on your level on
"the other side" and figure out what they're paying attention to.

~~~
davidivadavid
> The thing is... it's entirely probable that most of the people who agree
> with you do so because of low quality garbage.

So?

> So you're very much comparing yourself to a large group of other people and
> coming out that you read things above their level - not very hard.

Not sure I understand. I'm not comparing myself to anybody. I'm simply stating
that I can't find a reason to go out of my way to read garbage.

Your last point is absolutely correct, and it probably summarizes why I
believe the whole "filter bubble" thing is irrelevant or at least vastly
overstated: the criteria that I use when deciding whether to read or not read
something are entirely orthogonal to what "side" it comes from.

~~~
vertex-four
The criteria that you use is that you come across the material in the first
place. Most likely, that is subject to a filter bubble. I really doubt your
bubble consists of all good information available.

Your fallacy is assuming that there is nothing outside your bubble that isn't
garbage.

~~~
davidivadavid
I don't think that's a very fair reading of what I'm saying.

First, whether something enters my filter bubble or not is not the same thing
as the criteria I choose to look for new things, or to decide whether
something stays within my filter bubble (say, a website I would add/remove
from my RSS feeds). There's a passive/active dichotomy here.

Second, I don't think I've claimed there was nothing outside my bubble that
wasn't garbage. Now, I do assume that 99% of the stuff out of it is, because
that's the nature of the SNR on the internet. Note that all of that is of
course entirely subjective, and I'm only talking about the value I derive from
it personally.

Certainly, there are things that would be interesting that at a given time
live outside of my filter bubble. But actively looking for them is not
necessarily the best way to find them, as I might have to expend a lot of
effort going through lots of junk before I get there, and other sources within
my bubble might percolate that information faster, with less effort from me
(say a link post on SlateStarCodex will give me a bunch of links to stuff I
would have never found by myself).

Finally, I never said my bubble consists of all good information available,
precisely because as I stated, all that information could not fit in anybody's
bubble due to the limited nature of our attention or available time. So that's
just a straw man.

The fact is that there's a game being played between what's inside my filter
bubble and what's outside, and that game is not zero sum: most likely,
actively trying to add more information from other sources will decrease the
utility I get from it. It could be a temporary/local minimum (going through a
bunch of garbage to find some hidden gem), but it could also be a more stable,
lower utility state.

~~~
vertex-four
Personally, my bubble tells me untruths about communities and belief systems
I'm not part of - I suspect that yours likely does, too, because it seems to
be human nature to distill one's "opponents'" beliefs into something easy to
attack. Even when the beliefs are abhorrent, and I'm likely to continue seeing
them as abhorrent, it's useful to know what people are actually saying,
instead of what my bubble says they're saying.

And the only way I can find to do that consistently is to actively seek
sources of information on specific subjects from the "opposing" point of view.
The articles my filter bubble send me are generally going to be emotionally-
fueled rubbish, because it takes time and effort and a very good understanding
of the subject matter to take apart an argument otherwise, and for most
people, their time on the Internet is time they don't want to be spending
mental energy.

------
MOARDONGZPLZ
This is fantastic. It's especially interesting to see how differently the
exact same stories are reported on each side of the political spectrum.

Although (this coming from a huge Bernie supporter), it seems like both sides
are in agreement that they should be attacking Bernie Sanders.

As an aside, the format of "And now you won't believe THIS happened" as a
headline/tagline with almost no additional info to get more clicks is
absolutely infuriating. I've always made it a point to not click on
headlines/links written in that format.

~~~
mod
I also clicked on Sanders, and the feel of the articles wasn't all that much
different.

It seems the pro-Hillary left is fairly well aligned with the anti-Bernie
right.

I have no idea if this updates to display different articles throughout the
day, might have just been my small sample.

------
emodendroket
I'm not really sure viewpoints like "Pope Francis Likens Jesus to ISIS, says
Muslims Must Breed with Europeans" are what I need to be exposed to to have a
broader view of the world but this is a cool toy.

~~~
Houshalter
I found both sides of the feed repulsive. They are all biased and
misrepresenting facts, just towards different ends. It's sad that these
stories appear in anyone's feed, let alone that they get so many clicks and
shares.

~~~
emodendroket
That's true, although this one stuck out to me as particular egregious, if not
outright offensive.

Also, there's a lot of internecine quarrelling in the blue feed about Clinton
and Sanders which might be an interesting angle to examine further.

------
Xcelerate
I worry about the echo chamber effect. I have friends who are both
conservative and liberal, but what I increasingly notice is that each group
seems to mostly be friends with their own "type"; i.e. my conservative friends
are for the most part only friends with other conservatives, and my liberal
friends are for the most part friends with other liberals (there is always the
possibility that my friends represent an anomalous sample, but I think that's
unlikely. I generally avoid expressing my own political views to someone
unless I am extremely close to them, so perhaps this is why I haven't
alienated half of my friends yet...)

I think that only showing people news that agrees with their way of thinking
leads to the dangerous situation where you end up with a positive feedback
cycle of groups self-confirming their own beliefs, and the other side — "them"
— is viewed as a deranged bunch that is incapable of irrational thought. While
increasing groupthink may lead to higher advertising revenues, it also leads
to interpersonal polarization and higher levels of animosity.

There was an interesting NY Times article that came out recently
([http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confessio...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confession-
of-liberal-intolerance.html)) about how liberals and libertarians are far
overrepresented in academia. While that in itself didn't surprise me, the
comments on the article did. Here are a few of the NYT picks:

> "It's not that conservatives aren't bright; it's that, for the most part,
> they are narrow-minded and are sure they have the right answers."

> "Conservatives are entitled to their views, but they also must understand
> that young adults pay thousands of dollars to obtain a college education in
> order to learn facts, not fiction."

> "Is intolerance necessarily a bad thing?"

> "No scientist holds groundless beliefs to prove some kind of subservience to
> a deity."

What is interesting is that I frequently hear conservatives making the same
comments — just swap out a few of the words:

> "It's not that _liberals_ aren't bright; it's that, for the most part, they
> are narrow-minded and are sure they have the right answers."

> " _Liberals_ are entitled to their views, but they also must understand that
> young adults pay thousands of dollars to obtain a college education in order
> to learn facts, not fiction."

> "Is intolerance necessarily a bad thing?"

> "How could any intelligent person possibly believe the universe came from
> nothing?"

What I generally find is that the further left or right someone leans, the
more similar their personality becomes to their right/left-wing counterpart.
In my experience, the "extreme" people are much more similar to each other
than they are to the people in the middle of the political spectrum. I would
argue that — born into a different family — many of the zealots would hold
their opposing view just as strongly.

One oddity that I haven't yet found an explanation for is that conservatives
seem to be less prevalent online than liberals. I'm not quite sure why this is
the case.

~~~
jerf
"One oddity that I haven't yet found an explanation for is that conservatives
seem to be less prevalent online than liberals. I'm not quite sure why this is
the case."

Your filter bubble, probably. Telling whether that's true in an absolute sense
would be difficult.

(Bear in mind that I believe it is not possible to "not have" a filter bubble,
so no offense is intended in my first sentence; everyone has a bubble, the
only question is the nature of it, not whether it exists, and it is not
sensible to want to not be in one, only to ask how you might change it.)

~~~
mod
I come from a very conservative circle, and I find that outside of my specific
facebook feed (where that group is), the internet at large is a very left-
leaning place.

HN is the most neutral place I can think of. I think it might just hide it
well, as politics aren't a large topic here. I'm just glad to see that even
political conversations here are largely rooted in facts.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
HN is really cool in that many people have an idea of what public choice
theory is.

There is an old maxim - "all organizations that are not designed expressly to
be conservative get more and more left leaning over time" or the like.

~~~
internaut
Mr Bug is a philosopher for our times.

I see his ideas spreading everywhere, directly and in derivative form.

I can seriously see him being studied in academia in XXIIth Century. Him and
Satoshi and a handful of other radicals in our midst who should not be named.
The Net is like a flower unfolding, the people who intellectually influence
the beginning are sure to have some of their number be rockstars much later
on.

------
rcpt
This kinda thing has been visible in social media for quite some time now. For
example in Adamic and Glance's “The political blogosphere and the 2004 US
Election” the authors study a network where blogs are connected based on
hyperlinks. I made a visualization of their dataset here:

[http://ryancompton.net/2014/10/22/stochastic-block-model-
bas...](http://ryancompton.net/2014/10/22/stochastic-block-model-based-edge-
bundles-in-graph-tool/)

------
noobermin
I often see both, may be because I click on both the "red" and "blue" topics
in the "TRENDING" feed.

------
exolymph
Takeaway: the far right _and_ the far left are both nutso.

~~~
kaybe
There is a saying that the political spectrum is actually a circle.

------
dforrestwilson
Huh, all I'm seeing is yellow journalism.

------
_nalply
Note that Ghostery blocks the posts. You might need to whitelist the site.
YMMV.

~~~
metasean
As does uBlock Origin.

