

Facebook Is Recycling Your Likes To Promote Stories You've Never Seen - wyclif
http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2013/01/21/facebook-is-recycling-your-likes-to-promote-stories-youve-never-seen-to-all-your-friends/

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DenisM
This sort of thing can only further degrade the quality of information that
Facebook has at their disposal. Let me elaborate:

When Google started with Pagerank, making a link was technically hard, so each
link was a vote of confidence made by a person, who is on average technically
literate, and so on average is well-educated. As the first CMS systems
emerged, they were still a pain to use, so only the most motivated people were
making links, presumably those people also put some effort into researching
their subject. The community of less educated and/or motivated people then
could use Google to discover information that was effectively hand-sorted for
them by the more educated and motivated. As adding weight to the link graph
became easier, the quality of information began to fall.

Enter Facebook - liking a page is the easiest thing you can do, takes no
effort and there are no educational barriers. On the contrary, the most
educated people will see this sort of shenanigans and they will stop "liking"
anything at all. The less educated will continue to "like" things left and
right, making it even more repulsive for the educated. Long term the entirety
of information Facebook has in their possession is filled with celebrity
gossip, urban legends, chain letters, cute kittens, horoscopes, feel-good
wisdom quotes, etc - all that information that is heavy on emotional
engagement, but light on actual _information_.

There in lies the problem with "social search" - garbage in, garbage out.

~~~
balbaugh
A couple of months ago, I un-liked everything except for a couple of bands.

Main reason was that I don't have the time or patience for their changes in
privacy. I couldn't even remember some of the things I had liked back when the
feature was first introduced and I didn't want that to come back to haunt me
at some point when I am not paying attention to their privacy policies.

------
grey-area
There's a serious issue of integrity here - Facebook is already appropriating
people's identity for use in advertising, which in itself is disconcerting.
The real world equivalent to their ads where you have 'liked' a page would be
something like a ski resort using your ski pass photo on a billboard next to
an endorsement of their resort.

On top of that misrepresenting the opinions of its users like this to promote
content that they have never even seen to their extended network is misleading
in the extreme. Most people would not agree to this sort of manipulation, and
there are even questions about how some likes have been generated:
[http://readwrite.com/2012/12/11/why-are-dead-people-
liking-s...](http://readwrite.com/2012/12/11/why-are-dead-people-liking-stuff-
on-facebook)

Facebook have to be careful here, as if they lose the trust of their users by
continually abusing it, people will just shut down their accounts. Their
actual site offers little that can't be easily done with other services, their
only pull with users at present is the network effect, which works both ways
as if trust starts to slip and people notice others leaving, it can easily
snowball.

~~~
RexRollman
Integrity is something FB does not seem to concern itself with. And sadly, FB
will largely get away with it, as everyday people just keep coming back for
more.

------
bluetidepro
To clear it up a bit, it's NOT what everyone is making it seem like. Facebook
is NOT auto 'liking' a post on your behalf.

Basically, what is happening (per his example) is that "Johnny" liked "Vice",
and what Facebook is saying is "Johnny liked Vice", and it's pulling in a
recent/popular "Vice" article to expand more on the brand. To help get more
likes for the brand (which is a good thing, for pages/brands). It's NOT saying
"Johnny liked this Vice story", which is what he [the guy in the video] is
implying. That's why it says "Related Stories", that story is related to
"Johnny" liking "Vice", because it's a "Vice" story/post.

Facebook should just make it more clear that you like "Vice" as a whole, and
because Facebook wants to promote that you like "Vice" they should phrase it
like it's a recent "Vice" post and NOT an article "you" specifically liked.
They currently have a horizontal rule with "Related Story" to show this, but
that probably isn't enough since everyone is getting confused. That's the
confusion here.

It's just a confusing UI/UX element, it's not like they are saying you "Like"
this weird article that you never liked.

People need to take a "chill pill" over this, because it's not as bad as it
seems.

~~~
dcminter
The suspicion - and I think it's a reasonable one - is that the confusion is
completely intentional. In which case it really is as bad as it seems.

Why they don't just make the search facilities work better and attach adverts
to those instead of these sorts of shenanigans is beyond me.

~~~
bluetidepro
I would argue that it's not intentional. I will agree they are trying to bring
more exposure to a brands by pulling in a related story in a confusing UI way,
but I think they could argue that they don't force you to 'like' anything. If
you don't like the things pages you 'like' are posting, 'unlike' them. It's
that simple. I tested it with a few test accounts and if you 'unlike' the page
there will be no posts like this. So, I will keep with my statement that it's
not as bad as it seems.

People just need to watch what they 'like' and maybe go back through those
'likes' to do some cleaning. I actually like this, because it puts the full
blame on the user to be more responsible on what they 'like', and not to just
'like' everything possible.

~~~
dcminter
There's a big difference between what Facebook _could argue_ and what
Facebook's _actual intentions_ are.

I'm very skeptical that this was accidental. Even if it was, it _looks_
intentional: users don't see the promoted posts that are associated with their
past likes so they don't have any intrinsic feedback that would make them
curate their likes. That _looks_ underhand. If it didn't we wouldn't be seeing
the fuss.

------
valgaze
Why is this simple idea so hard: I don't want _anything_ posted on my behalf
unless I say so- ads, apps, likes, anything

Old Feb 2012 story on this about a guy who became associated with a "personal
lubricant" via Amazon:
[http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57386733-71/facebook-ad-
pu...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57386733-71/facebook-ad-puts-
lubricant-joke-on-slippery-slope/)

~~~
neumann_alfred
_I don't want anything posted on my behalf unless I say so_

Maybe they know that. Maybe it turns them on? Just consider people who grope,
or even rapists. They know their victims don't want it, and in presence of
physically fit people who pay attention they hold their feet quite still; but
as soon as the attention or the ability for self-defense wanes, they come
a-creeping again.

Sure I could have used a less loaded comparison, but for me that's what is
going on here and elsewhere. Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft to name just
those who certainly will not stop unless they've been disabled.

But of course, it's really hard to knock someone out for good when for anyone
adding 2 and 2, there are ten people with Stockholm Syndrome doing their best
to stop them; so that's why we're still _here_ , instead of, say, the
information age. Bill Hicks kindly asked advertisers to kill themselves; they
didn't. So can we at least fucking stop putting food on their table? I'd like
to know how an information age, as opposed to a naked emperor advertisement
age, would actually look like. Since they won't do the decent thing, let's do
it for them.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me a hundred
times, and people get confused and think that's just how it is. Well no, and
it isn't over until the heat death of the universe, either.

------
conradfr
I have recommended a article on an alt FB account. I never did this (I just
logged on the website with FB connect), I can't see it on my wall and remove
it, and I revoked any rights for this website on FB preferences.

I would be a lot more annoyed if it was in my real account.

Following that I removed most of my infos and page likes. Seeing the new Graph
Search, I'm glad.

------
dvo
The quality of content on my Facebook feed has taken a turn for the worse
lately. I regularly see sponsored or related posts that I have absolutely no
interest in, leaving me with a more negative impression of that business and
of the value of the Facebook experience. I don't mind ads, but they should at
least be relevant. If you are putting ads directly in my feed that are as far
from relevant to me as possible, then you've got a problem.

It all started when I saw a post about purchasing country-style boots from a
discount country store. Then it got worse with posts promoting Walmart. I
believe those posts suffered from the problem noted in this article. It looked
somewhat like a friend promoting Walmart.

Does anyone know if there is a way to hide this stuff?

------
petsounds
There's been a running joke with my friend who always shows up as liking
T-Mobile in my timeline (along with the timeline of everyone he's friends
with) with whatever the latest T-Mobile update is, but he "unliked" T-Mobile
over a year ago - pretty trivial, but also pretty annoying

------
ccorda
'It turns out that Facebook also adds likes any time a user messages a link to
a “likable” page.'

Is this true? If I share a link so something on HackerNews, can PG now run
social ads against that action?

~~~
alexwebmaster
yep, this is true, basically every shared link inside a message counts as a
vote

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ajhai
I'm not sure if this is the case with just me or something really changed got
changed behind the scenes, I've been seeing less of these 'sponsored' stories
lately since this news created buzz sometime back.

~~~
dcminter
If the difference is real (I've not seen it) then perhaps it's a result of
more users becoming aware of the option to disable "Pair my social actions
with adverts" via settings:
[http://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=ads&section=social&...](http://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=ads&section=social&view)

In my own case I've come to see "likes" as a liability and removed all
existing "likes" for commercial organizations or any uncommercial org for
which I see these paid-for posts. Hardly the desirable outcome for Facebook or
the organizations! I hope my reaction becomes more prevalent.

~~~
paulgb
I did the same and removed all my likes out of fear of showing up in ads.
Whether the ads were misleading is irrelevant; I don't want my friends to
associate me with ads.

~~~
joshrotenberg
Me too. Just went in and unliked everything I could.

------
naner
Sort of a meta question: If you manage to use Facebook without ever "Liking"
anything, will your face never show up in advertising for your friends?

~~~
duggan
Interested to know, since I've never "liked" anything other than friend's
status updates, (and I "unliked" all the autoliking they did when they
converted a bunch of profile fields into likes a couple of years ago).

