
Facebook's Adam Mosseri on Why You'll See Less Video, More from Friends - sus_007
https://www.wired.com/story/facebooks-adam-mosseri-on-why-youll-see-less-video-more-from-friends/
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CPLX
Why don't they just give us the ability to customize what we want to run on
our feed?

Like we could choose chronological, controversial, event based, whatever, I'm
sure they could be creative, some could be algorithms. They could keep the
default they have now which most people wouldn't change. Then they could
inject ads by whatever means they want and we could check them out or click on
them or ignore them as we see fit and they could make a little money.

This isn't one of those "Why don't they just..." type posts where it's obvious
why not. It's a serious question, like why can't they do this? I mean
presumably there's some answer where they say that they have tested it and the
current scheme increases engagement, or something like that.

That seems unconvincing though, clearly there's a problem here they are trying
to address. It's a piece of software, can't they add some controls to how
people use it?

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rhizome
_Why don 't they just give us the ability to customize what we want to run on
our feed?_

It has to be the same for everybody; they have to maintain a consistent UX
because it's harder to sell random reach to advertisers. Remember that you're
not Facebook's customer, so this is a move to keep eyeballs from leaving.

Take away the tools that can be used for political manipulation and Facebook
starts looking a lot more like Snap/IG/TWTR/some new thing.

~~~
nradov
There's nothing random about Facebook advertising sales. Regardless of how
your feed is customized, they know exactly who you are and what you're
interested in.

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fogzen
Not being in control of what I see is why I stopped using Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram. I want to control what is in my feed, and I want it in
chronological order. Twitter and Facebook make me feel passive and helpless.

I use reddit because I’m in control: I only see what I subscribe to, and I can
switch between popular and chronological.

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skshogun
You can still switch between algorithmic and chronological order on Twitter.
At least on their mobile website

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fogzen
Are you sure? I have “show best tweets first” turned off and my tweets are not
in chronological order after signing in to check right now.

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skshogun
From time to time, it shows 5 random older tweets on top. But everything else
is in chronological order.

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fogzen
I have tweets out of chronological order 20-30+ tweets down from the top...

I’m assuming it’s different for you because you check Twitter often? In either
case the feed is most definitely not in chronological order, but determined by
an opaque, secret algorithm.

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skshogun
I check Twitter maybe 5 times a day. "Algo ordered" tweets show if I won't
check my feed for two days. I'm from Slovakia so maybe that's the reason -
Twitter is testing different features in different countries. In fact,
Slovakia has new FB feed for months now.

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kardos
This just reinforces the idea that Facebook has long jumped the shark -- they
think their role is to orchestrate your interactions with friends. Not looking
forward to 'ostracism-as-a-service'...

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cryptoz
Never forget that Facebook has "tweaked" its newsfeed to specifically make
hundreds of thousands of people feel sad and depressed for days or months,
just to see if they could. And then they bragged about how great they are in a
published paper that violated all ethics and morals worldwide.

Why will I see less video, and more from friends? Because I won't be on
facebook.

Edit: From FTA:

> But the other is a lot of the research that we've done and the research
> that's out there in the field and in academia that we've read suggests that
> online interacting with people is positively correlated with a lot of
> measures of well-being, whereas passively consuming media content online is
> less so.

They do their own research on users, by modifying their news feed and
measuring their emotions with sentiment analysis. You are not just a product
they sell, you are also a product they experiment on. It's not worth it.

Edit 2: On the secret psychological experiments that Facebook executes to
torture your mind: [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-
tinke...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinkers-with-
users-emotions-in-news-feed-experiment-stirring-outcry.html)

The real kicker, is that by using Facebook they argue that you give consent to
them to conduct unlimited psychological experiments on you in secret.

> It argued that its 1.28 billion monthly users gave blanket consent to the
> company’s research as a condition of using the service.

~~~
officemonkey
"Contagious" by Jonah Berger talks about how anger and anxiety makes people
share memes. I find that Facebook and the organizations that use it are NOT
interested in my mental health. They're interested in triggering my sharing
response.

I quit FB and my mental health improved.

I don't mind using Goodreads because Amazon and I have the same goal: they
want me to buy and read books, and guess what? So do I.

~~~
tzakrajs
I also have experience a drop in my basal anxiety since cutting out Facebook.
I also learned, since being gone for a month or so, that many of those people
aren't really interested in talking with me if it takes leaving the Facebook
ecosystem. They can stay. Good riddance to all of it.

~~~
officemonkey
It also turns out that group text messaging is included on your phone. So
anyone you _really_ want to talk to is _always_ nearby.

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skybrian
If they wanted to put users in control they'd let us filter out all videos.
Instead it's ranking algorithm knows best.

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sgwealti
This! I don't want to see any video content.

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giarc
I'm fine with video, but I'd like the volume control to be single video
specific. Right now, if you watch and listen to one video, the volume remains
on for the remaining videos that autoplay when you scroll by. I'd prefer that
volume is off unless I tap on a video.

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balls187
My interpretation is this: Facebook is now going to charge advertisers a lot
more money to appear on Newsfeeds.

Eventually the newsfeed will become polluted again, and Facebook will announce
sweeping changes to address this and the cycle will continue.

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bogomipz
>"Video is, primarily, a passive experience. You tend to just sit back and
watch it. And while you're watching it, you're not usually liking or comment
or speaking with friends."

And how is this different than the passive experience of scrolling endlessly
through people's vacation pictures, food pictures and baby pictures? Is
clicking on a blue thumb icon really an "active" experience. Is writing a one
lime comment about the picture of someones hamburger or their vacation shots
really engaging with friends? This is no more of an active social interaction
than a bag of potato chips is a meal.

I feel like the genie is out of the bottle and it's not going back in,
regardless of these PR contrivances to convince us otherwise.

However, I'm sure in the next 6 month'z Zuckerberg will be on a press junket
telling us all that "the problem is fixed" and that their data shows that
people are having meaningful experiences on FB and that FB is bringing people
together.

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bwb
Thank god, maybe I will actually want to use FB instead of feeling like I have
too because everyone is on it for uses x y and z. It used to actually be a fun
place to go and catch up with friends who are in different time zones etc.

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ikeboy
Haven't seen any mention of it, but it would be in line with these goals to
rank posts with lots of angry reacts or angry reacts to comments worse. Wonder
if that's going to be a factor.

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lostmsu
So they figured people tolerate irrelevant posts about their friends, which
their friends did not share (Facebook users them to retain attention), more,
than irrelevant videos?

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DocG
this correlates a bit. In my circle common is to use fb only as messaging
service. most friends dont have fb app even installed anymore as the news feed
is trash. I assume this move is to try to get these users back.

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nacho2sweet
They obviously have metrics that long time users like myself are quitting and
opting out and are getting scared. Their own employees probably hate the feed
and the product, and I can't see how they couldn't. Everyone in that office
probably feels shitty and raged up all day.

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tzakrajs
I second your sentiments, albeit unfounded by a source. The employee morale at
Facebook must be suffering. I have stopped caring about being hirable there
ever since I realized the negative impact their product has had on my life.

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muppetman
Bit late Facebook. Most people have mostly given up on Facebook now.

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giarc
1.4 billion daily active users. Your use of the phrase "most people" is not in
line with reality.

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tzakrajs
I don't believe those are real users after the crazy amounts of bots I saw
during the US election.

~~~
giarc
I'm not sure how you could see enough bots to actually put a dent in the 1.4
billion user number. Maybe you suspect you saw 100, maybe even a 1000, maybe
100,000 bots. Which is 0.007% of their users.

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tzakrajs
My experience is just a small sample, like a thimbleful of water from a
firehose, but it may be representative of the larger picture.

