
Facebook Overhauls News Feed to Focus on What Friends and Family Share - axg
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/technology/facebook-news-feed.html
======
untog
I very much hope this isn't just words. The core problem, IMO, is that content
that makes us angry, anxious or jealous is a much better driver of clicks than
content that makes us happy. I'm sure Facebook knows this. If they _really_
mean it, they'll accept that they will make less money as a result of this
change. It would be the right decision in the long term, but the short term
will hurt.

~~~
jp555
Are clicks the majority of revenue for FB? An ad unit that fills a users
screen for a few second as they scroll throughout the day every day is super
super valuable to brand advertising. I think that’s ~$450 billion of the total
~$500 billion total annual global ad spend.

To me browsing the fb feed is a lot like like flipping through tv channels
used to be. Brand advertising loved that too.

I’d think the More people browse their feeds the more valuable their ad unit
becomes to brand advertisers.

~~~
xefer
How many people are aware that the list of interests directing Facebook ads
are easily visible and editable?

Settings | Ads | Your Interests

It's really interesting to see the full scope of the interests FB has gathered
over time. Some of them are pretty hilarious.

They have a seemingly huge ontology of every subject you could think of. If
you methodically go through an remove every interest, the ads suddenly become
very generic - stuff targeted to, say, age group and/or location. Since
removing everything, and periodically clearing it all out, I generally only
see stuff for things like real estate and car dealerships, which don't really
mean much for me.

~~~
jp555
Generally people only consider ads that “don’t mean much to me” as ads. If
they do mean something to someone they suddenly cease being ads to that
person. It’s a weird thing.

------
archiepeach
Good intentions or not, we must remember that history has proven time and time
again, when any entity has far too much unchecked power, it is inevitably
exploited by bad actors. A user base of two billion users without any real
accountability is a scary thing. The only people policing Facebook are
Facebook. We would never agree to a having a single dictator who answers to no
one, why should Facebook be treated any differently?

~~~
thinkloop
Because unlike a dictator Facebook has zero real power over your life? It's a
site of puppies and horoscopes, you think we should be dealing with them like
we do Kim Jong Un?

How have we moved so far on the personal responsibility scale. Why aren't
people partly responsible for not making better use of their time? Facebook is
an "evil echo chamber", "wasting people's lives", "catering to business", etc
- ALL THEY DO IS HOST YOUR FRIENDS' PHOTOS. Can't we take partial
responsibility at least for how often we _choose_ to log on? Are we that
simple that our entire personalities can be fully pwned with some basic
machine learning?

~~~
lbotos
> ALL THEY DO IS HOST YOUR FRIENDS' PHOTOS

This is like saying a Tesla car is just a machine that generates heat.

Facebook has built an algorithmically optimized list of content that they
believe will drive you back to the site to consume more.

They also have insane amounts of usage data which they are testing for
sentiment analysis [0] They've also run tests on content to provoke emotion as
far back as 2014.[1]

It's clear that they have the power to influence emotions and impact people in
real ways. Because you are strong willed does not mean that others cannot be
easily swayed by dopamine release.

[0]([http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/27/technology/facebook-ai-
suici...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/27/technology/facebook-ai-suicide-
prevention/index.html))
[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/))

~~~
thinkloop
> This is like saying a Tesla car is just a machine that generates heat.

Not to that degree but I admit that I used a hyperbolic devise to try and pull
back the implied necessity of Facebook.

> does not mean that others cannot be easily swayed by dopamine release

Facebook should be regulated as a narcotic :-P

Jokes aside, FB does have lots of ability to influence, and they shouldn't be
able to operate with impunity, but that's a far cry from where we are now:

\- Facebook is too fun (because AI!!) and my work is suffering!

\- Facebook keeps giving me what I'm interested and engaged in!! (echo
chamber)

------
dfee
I wonder if enough of the core-base was eroding that they were forced to make
this change. I've been logged out of Facebook since October, and I know a few
other friends who have as well. That's not really relevant, except that this
group all had membership on Facebook at the 1 year mark - early 2005.

~~~
IshKebab
Yeah exactly the same for me. Friends communicate and share photos and news on
WhatsApp now, not Facebook.

Facebook has become a kind of shit version of Reddit where everything in the
news feed is basically stuff from Reddit that has been shared by friends. It
used to be original messages from friends.

~~~
Double_a_92
> a kind of shit version of Reddit

This!

Intermixed with ads, game invites, racist/populist images, and those silly
heart glitter greeting cards stuff...

------
fallous
I'm beginning to wonder if Facebook has begun to realize that being the source
of ads while temporarily beneficial to their bottom line is actually
destroying their long-time value to advertisers. Chasing eyeballs for ads
necessarily warps the things you present to those eyeballs and eventually
you're in a race with every other eyeball chaser. The problem with that race
is that you no longer have an undistorted understanding of viewer/user
preferences but instead only understand their reaction to your attempts to
capture attention and clicks, which is a more mechanical understanding of
behavior rather than understanding underlying motives and preferences.

Ad companies have long specialized in the mechanistic side of things so
Facebook really brings nothing new to table for them, and merely being "a
giant audience" isn't especially worthwhile either since a "run of network" ad
buy for Adsense or the like is cheap. Facebook's differentiator was "we have
all this insight into users!" and while that was true at the time they began
courting advertisers what I suspect advertisers and Facebook discovered was
that those insights became less and less accurate as users responded to the
changes Facebook began to make in order to try and increase ad effectiveness,
thus beginning the distortion spiral.

I wonder if Facebook is making an attempt to return to the insight side of the
business, allowing advertisers to use the info Facebook has regarding people
as targeting for ads that occur away from Facebook. They return to a
demographic/insight source rather than an advertising platform.

------
iokevins
Josh Marshall just now: "Announcement to publishers who reshaped business
models around Facebook. Bye."

[https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/951615904760172545](https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/951615904760172545)

~~~
george3383
If it's bad for journalists and advertisers then it's good for users.

~~~
roywiggins
It depends. Some people use Facebook "likes" as a crappy replacement for RSS,
so it's probably not great for them.

~~~
freehunter
As someone who runs a business partly driven by people who use Facebook as a
crappy replacement for RSS, I can confirm. Facebook made a change a while back
where people who explicitly followed my page to keep up to date on local
events and businesses suddenly were not seeing anything I posted. I had to
start paying Facebook to keep them showing things to people, but even that is
far slower than it had been. Out of about 2000 people following my page, I
used to have around 1500 seeing my posts per week, now it's down to under 500.

My readers are pretty upset, complaining to me that I don't post enough
anymore and they're missing events they wanted to know about, but I can't make
Facebook show them what Facebook doesn't want to show them. I tell the people
to go directly to my website, but for a lot of them Facebook is the only
website that exists.

It's a small town without a newspaper or any other media outlets, so I'm still
trying to figure out how to keep on going because I think it's a worthwhile
service. Facebook doesn't make it easy anymore though.

~~~
jasonkester
Here's your experience summed up in comic form:

[http://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/reaching_people)

Seems to be a common thing.

~~~
freehunter
Damn that's so true.

------
makecheck
There’s still something eerily uncomfortable about how they want me to log in
_so much_ and check _everything_. They basically lie about it now, finding any
excuse to put a colored flag on something.

Recent example: while I was logged out, they put my picture on their “quick
login” page _with a little red number “2” on my photo_. Well gee, turns out
there wasn’t “2” of _anything_ in my profile to see: no unread messages, etc.;
no, it was just made-up crap to make me want to go check Facebook again.

Not sure why Facebook is so desperate for attention that they need to _LIE_ to
get it but advertisers should be concerned: anything Facebook claims about
“active users”, etc. is probably greatly exaggerated.

~~~
DashRattlesnake
> Recent example: while I was logged out, they put my picture on their “quick
> login” page with a little red number “2” on my photo. Well gee, turns out
> there wasn’t “2” of anything in my profile to see: no unread messages, etc.;
> no, it was just made-up crap to make me want to go check Facebook again.

I've seen this too: I created an empty profile once for some reason. The email
account that I setup for it very quickly started getting messages like "you
have 1 new notification - log in." When I did that, there wasn't a damn thing
there.

------
rdiddly
Oh brother... the quote at the end there? _" It’s important to me that when
Max and August grow up that they feel like what their father built was good
for the world."_ Why does it bother me? Let me analyze.

OK 1) There are people out there who live their whole lives according to good
values pretty much the whole time, and don't need the shock of parenthood to
finally make them care about acting like a decent human being. And most are
not 2) billionaires. However, quite a few apparently do need that little kick
in the pants, which explains 3) how trite this sentiment is.

But owing precisely to how common it is, we may never know if this is
something Zuckerberg actually feels, or if it's 4) just something he picked up
that he thought sounded like something an earthling might say. A nice
platitude to conceal the true market-driven motivation for this move, and 5)
you just know there is one.

Also even assuming it's sincere, there's a prominent tone of 6) narcissism in
it, when people suddenly start caring about their legacy. (Like "my legacy"
and "how I will be viewed" as opposed to anything about the kids themselves or
you or me or anyone that person might've hurt.)

I feel like as outlandish as it is, South Park's animated version of him,
voiced like a badly dubbed Hong Kong martial arts actor, saying "Ha ha ha, you
cannot block my shtoyle" and such, is more convincing & realistic than the
reality!

~~~
tinymollusk
I like to apply a test to myself, which I fail every time. Goes as follows:

Can I literally write down a statement that would have changed my perspective
on this statement/issue/perspective?

Most things that I'm against, I cannot imagine myself not being against. One
possible explanation is Zuckerberg is evil incarnate, but I believe the world
is much more nuanced than that. If I cannot bring to life (and even
metaphorically "try on" the other perspective), there is a high probability
that I am too biased to offer a fair judgement.

~~~
rdiddly
I hear ya, and obviously I would fail as well, though a few years of
statements backed up by actions would definitely change my perspective. We'll
just have to wait & see!

------
Animats
"Sharing" is spamming.

I'm interested in what my friends _write_. I have little interest in what they
_share_ , especially if it's commercial content.

~~~
freehunter
I agree. I've unfollowed so many friends because they are basically little
machines designed to share everything they see on Facebook. I'm missing tons
of moments from their lives and it gets awkward when my brother asks me if I
saw his Facebook post the other day, but man I wish I could choose to see
written posts but not shared posts.

~~~
Animats
_man I wish I could choose to see written posts but not shared posts._

Exactly. And Facebook won't give you that.

~~~
creator_lol
I remember when that was only what I saw on facebook

------
jrs235
I've unfollowed everyone. My feed only shows past memories. I love my feed. I
highly recommend it.

~~~
dTal
Sounds like Facebook, and indeed the internet, is an unneccesary middleman for
you.

~~~
tgragnato
Internet is an interconnection medium. People use this tool in very different
ways.

I understand this is an hyperbole, but it sounds really too far fetched.
Facebook is not the internet.

~~~
drewmol
True, unless your from a country where "free basics" is you're only offering
;-)

------
minimaxir
Mark Zuckerberg's post on this change:
[https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104413015393571](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104413015393571)

Facebook press release: [https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/news-feed-fyi-
bringing-...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/news-feed-fyi-bringing-
people-closer-together/)

~~~
w00b4
The very first sentence of Zuckerberg's FB post says:

> One of our big focus areas for 2018 is to make sure that the time we all
> spend on Facebook is time well spent.

"Time well spent" is also the name of an organization that is one of
Facebook's strongest critics:

[http://timewellspent.io](http://timewellspent.io)

I wonder if the phrasing is deliberate.

~~~
ipsum2
The name originally came from Facebook (and earlier uses by other companies)
and was used by timewellspent.io.

------
alexkavon
I'm guessing that this change won't affect the dopamine-release strategy they
were engaging with before. There are far more issues with Facebook rather than
the need to tweak the network to ad post ratio in the news feed.

------
luckydata
It's remarkable how closely the evolutions of the facebook "the product" track
the evolutions of facebook "the founder". Zuckerberg starts his professional
life as a college bro making tools for college bros, then a few steps later
he's married and has kids and it's all about family and true connection, less
about broadcasting to the world.

------
taurath
Wait, Facebook cares about engagement between people instead of between people
and ad-supported lowest common demoninator content? Could have fooled me over
the past several years. I’m really cynical about FB but it really has earned
it.

I hope it becomes more useful, because for me their original value proposition
to users was great but has totally lost its way as they’ve monetized.

~~~
jcadam
Yea, at this point I'd be willing to pay $10/month for a social network that
respected my privacy, didn't bombard me with ads, and just generally treated
me as a _customer_ , rather than _product_.

The trick of course is convincing anyone who isn't me to pay :)

Heck, maybe it should be a non-profit.

~~~
eckza
Just... get your real friends to text you.

If they won't text you, they're not your real friends. (This isn't always
true, but I'd say that it's 95% accurate.)

I'm not being condescending or pretentious. I have done this, over the last
few months, and it's helped me to realize who's really worth having in my life
on a daily basis, and who's not.

~~~
freehunter
I don't want my friends texting me everything. That's far more disruptive than
a passive feed I can glance at. And I don't want to text my friends everything
either.

One of the great things about Facebook is the unexpected social interactions.
I post a picture and someone I haven't talked to in a while comments something
really great on it and sparks a conversation and rekindles the friendship.
That's not going to happen over text.

People in my life on a daily basis are in my life on a daily basis. People in
my life occasionally are on Facebook.

~~~
DashRattlesnake
> I don't want my friends texting me everything. That's far more disruptive
> than a passive feed I can glance at. And I don't want to text my friends
> everything either.

Real friendships aren't passive.

~~~
freehunter
You have a very restrictive view of what a real friendship is. I'm sorry, but
you don't get to define my relationships, that is not your right.

------
guy98238710
This change was tested for months in several smaller countries including mine.
I am not on facebook, but I know that media here hate the change. They lost
tens of percents of traffic overnight.

~~~
hkmurakami
This plus the Adblock wars makes me wonder if there's anything that would make
both consumers and media happy at the same time, or whether the relationship
is pseudo adversarial by nature now.

~~~
Terretta
I was super happy mid-90s when we spent our own money to self-publish, as both
a consumer and publisher.

Publishing a static set of lightly styled HTML pages to massive audiences is
shockingly cheap.

------
masterleep
The FB feed has been terrible since it changed from a chronological list.
Doubt this will improve anything.

~~~
gumby
Unless you have a small number of FB contacts (AKA “friends”) chrono is
probably rapidly overwhelmed. I wanted chrono too, but it’s just too much.

OTOH it’s absurd that if you want to see again that post you saw last week —
or this morning! — you probably can’t find it. That can be true in the HN
firehouse too though sometimes you can dredge it out of your browser history.
Good luck trying that w/FB

My gf works on this at FB (don’t know if she works on _this_ particular
change) and she says her group talks every day about the difficulty of finding
stuff. I don’t know if those discussions are part of her work or it’s just
they have the same problems. I just know that when I gripe about any UX issues
or the shittiness of their app she just sighs and says, “yeah, we know”

~~~
cryptoz
> OTOH it’s absurd that if you want to see again that post you saw last week —
> or this morning! — you probably can’t find it.

Try 2 seconds ago. Open facebook, browse, start to close facebook, see
something interesting, but it's too late the tab is closing, oh well, re-open
facebook, too bad it's gone forever you'll never see it again.

~~~
lemoncucumber
Worse yet, if you use the Facebook app to follow a link someone posted and
leave it open for awhile, when you then hit the back button to close the
browser and return to your feed, the post containing the link will no longer
be on your screen, or even easy to find. Makes it near impossible to comment
on it, re-share it, etc.

------
treyfitty
I believe this is step 1 in entering/dominating another industry: influencer
marketing. Hear me out. I have 3 friends who have started “influencer
marketing” companies that fly out 20 or so influencers, and brands pay for
posts during their trip. I’m not too well attuned to the economics of it, but
from what I can see, it’s profitable.

Facebooks move of doing this is probably to ultimately purposefully change the
incentives for advertisers. Now, advertisers, who have went all in to social
networks will have to retain that channel, since it happens to work so well.
And they’ll be paying more per ad, as a result of the economics of this new
marketing paradigm. Influencers (when FB takes over this market, I’m sure
they/we won’t be called that) and Facebook is, please excuse my use of a
buzzword, a true synergy. I mean, who wouldn’t want free stuff* (with the
catch that you have to post about the product x times in a given time frame)?
By using the whole network as a conduit for advertising, I think this is going
to be huge.

~~~
dude01
I think you're right, influencers are going to get bigger. They're kind of
like a contracted-out or part-time sales team. Or another way of looking at
it, they're living commercials.

Eventually FB will see influences as a challenge to their own ad network (the
only ads on FB must go thru FB!), so I agree with you, FB will try to take it
over. PS I wonder why you got a downvote.

------
roadbeats
Too late. Noone around my family and friends share nothing in Facebook for
long time. In 2018, it’s probably the worst platform to connect to people. The
best thing I did in 2017 was to permanently delete my Facebook account.
Thankfully they now allow you to divorce with their app at least.

------
cratermoon
So, like it was in the beginning? That's some innovation right there, boy.

~~~
hkmurakami
Everything old is new again.

------
prh8
Sounds like they're returning the feed to what it was back around 2007-2009
ish (when I first remember it). Or at least attempting to do so.

------
hitgeek
I looked through my newsfeed this week for the first time in several months.

I thought the amount of trash posts and videos (which caused me to leave
Facebook) had greatly declined, but wasn’t sure why. If it’s related to this
change, it’s a good start.

While I’m skeptical of Facebook, I appreciate their attempt to improve if it’s
genuine.

~~~
eckza
What's your criteria for "genuine"?

~~~
hitgeek
from the article: “We want to make sure that our products are not just fun,
but are good for people,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “We need to refocus the
system.”

genuine for me, is making changes that are good for people, even if they are
bad for advertisers.

------
intrasight
You can of course do that "overhaul" yourself by installing a filter like
F.B.Purity

------
natural219
I welcome the changes, and am open to giving Zuckerberg's pledge to
investigate decentralization this year[1] a fair shake.

He has a _lot_ of work and convincing to do to fulfill these lofty goals and
inspire us to take him seriously. Nothing against Zuckerberg specifically,
even -- just that corporate incentives and business momentum are mighty forces
to be contended with, even assuming Mark is acting in good faith and full
capacity.

[1][https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104380170714571](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10104380170714571)

------
milankragujevic
Important to note, Facebook has been hiding posts by pages in the feed to
users in Eastern Europe (Serbia, where I live), and it results in a much
cleaner and less noisy feed, but people can still go to the Explore Feed and
see posts by pages...

More on this: [https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/23/facebook-page-
feed/](https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/23/facebook-page-feed/)

------
dvcrn
yes please! The reason I don't use facebook anymore is because it doesn't
present me anything I care about. Just memes, news and updates in some sale
groups I am part of. I'm not complaining that it doesn't hog me as much as it
used to, but the reason why I still have a account is to keep in touch with
friends and acquaintances and see what's going in in their life

~~~
a_imho
it is pretty easy to curate your own feed though, just unfollow/unfriend the
people posting noise. I see maybe 1-2 new posts a day on average.

------
krisgenre
Funny this was reason I've been using G+ to share photos with friends and
family since they 'stay' in the news feed.

------
stuffedBelly
I see. FB is adopting a similar model to Tecent's WeChat Moments in which
users primarily see content shared by friends and family. It worked for WeChat
but let's how it goes for Facebook.

------
archiepeach
I have long critiqued Facebook for chasing after ad revenue at the expense of
the experience they offer users. In light of this news, the following quote
comes to mind: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained
by stupidity."

I generally feel that Facebook has traveled so far in the wrong direction,
coming back to any sense of morality will be an extremely hard job. That being
said, I wonder if they truly understood the extent of their "shady" tactics.
It's all too easy to focus on shareholders and forget about the real people
using your service. All told, this does at least feel like a step in the right
direction.

~~~
freyir
0

~~~
dannyw
As much as I dislike Zuckerberg, I do feel like early IM chats made over a
decade ago while he was in college is not meaningful anymore.

------
musage
Just show all things from all subscribed sources in chronological order, add
pagination, filtering and sorting, and you might have yourself _something_.

------
cconstantin
The newsfeed should be a cronological list of posts from your sources. Then
you could have some filter functionality that YOU control

~~~
Double_a_92
I remember when Google+ was like that. It was so perfect. You could even set a
frequency (with a slider!) for posts from each individual source.

------
qao
Facebook = weapon of mass disinformation Smartphone = weapon of mass
distraction The 'perfect' storm.

next? AR/VR = weapon of mass delusion?

------
Marazan
I just want a date ordered list of everything my friends have posted. Is that
too much to ask for?

------
nepotism2018
The fact that I'm not allowed to order my newsfeed by latest permanently is a
big problem!

~~~
mrweasel
I have the same issue, I wouldn't call it a big problem, just annoying. What
it does is show us where Facebook believe there's a possibility to make a
profit, and it's not by keeping you up to date with your friends lives.

~~~
nepotism2018
Sure, at minimum it is annoying. For me i'm always checking latest political,
sports or technology news, although this might come across pretty bad but I
put my facebook "world" in the same category so I want the latest updates all
the time

------
zghst
Zuckerberg is painfully slow. Makes me really question his so-called “genius”.

------
kerpele
I just wish they would stop tracking me and everyone I interact with whenever
and wherever

------
te_chris
Install newsfeed eradicator. Best decision I ever made.

The news feed offers nothing.

~~~
rad_gruchalski
The best decision ever was to log out.

------
zitterbewegung
I think Facebook is basically the replacement of the newspaper at this point.
Oh well....

~~~
alexkavon
Years ago they pitched this exact idea/goal at F8 I believe.

------
fiatjaf
Horrible news. Now this stupid thing will be less horrible and will keep
people who were leaving.

Or maybe it will just go back to the point it was when I left, in 2013, which
was already very unbearable.

------
qao
Facebook = weapon of mass disinformation Smartphone = weapon of mass
distraction

next? VR/AR = weapon of mass delusion ?

------
Demoneeri
I don't understand, here is my news feed right now: \- A beautiful video from
Patrick Seabase (person that I follow) \- A post from a friend asking a
question I don't know the answer to, but already 8 comments. \- A post from
The Economist (that I follow). This article is not relevant to my interest but
sometime they are. \- A post about about a comment that one of my friend left
on another post (this the kind of post I don't want to see) \- A friend posted
a video of something funny happening in my home town. \- A post from my mayor
telling us that the snow removing in the street is nearly done. \- A post from
CityLab relevant to me.

So on and so forth. If your feed is irrelevant, it's your fault...

------
Jedi72
I am very surprised by the general vibe in here that FB are doing this for the
users or to promote responsible social networking. IMHO They poisoned the well
by disrespecting their users [1] and are now trying to undo the damage. Just
like Apple were very sorry _after_ they got caught slowing iPhones.

[1] [https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/facebook-sharing-
crisis.h...](https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/facebook-sharing-crisis.html)

