

The Manipulators: Facebook's Social Engineering Project - razorburn
http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/manipulators-facebooks-social-engineering-project

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bsbechtel
Only tangentially related to the article, but I've been trying to understand
lately why Facebook wants us to view our 'top stories' feed over 'most recent'
stories. Facebook has gone from setting 'top stories' as the default when you
log in, to hiding 'most recent' stories on the mobile app to the 'more' tab,
to pushing old stories that get a random like or comment to the top of your
'most recent' stories feed. This is incredibly annoying, as when I log in to
Facebook, I want to see news that is new, not the same posts I've already seen
multiple times. Does anyone know why they do this? Does it somehow drive
increased user engagement?

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danso
I'm guessing they've done at least some A/B testing on this...so yes, I
imagine that despite what users _think_ they want, FB has found that their
imperfect "Top Stories" algorithm is more engaging than just the raw feed by
"Most Recent".

As a user's FB usage grows over time, it's likely that their network of
friends will grow, sometimes exponentially. What does not grow is the screen-
space for the newsfeed, nor the user's ability to scroll through the increased
number of updates. While it's true that some newsfeed updates get tracking
because of advertising play...such as "Jon Smith Likes Candy Crush!"...that's
still less annoying than, "Jon Smith scored 54304 points in Candy Crush and
earned Legendary Candy Cane +1!"...which could feasibly dominate your newsfeed
depending on the gameplaying habits of your friend.

Now, of course you could manually filter these things out, e.g. "Ignore all
Candy Crush posts by Jon Smith" or even "Defriend Jon Smith"...but this
requires manual work by the user...and if it becomes more work than leisure to
enjoy one's news feed...then it's likely that FB's A/B tests have found users
preferring the filtering to be automatically done, even if it lets some shit
through.

Keep in mind that FB has long had the ability to create custom groups...so
that you could, for example, see your feed according to people you've put in
the "My university friends" group. There is even a "Close friends" group that
you can manually curate, or that FB automatically fills for you. FB has
basically buried the group filters...probably because users weren't actively
filtering things themselves...and in terms of the "Close Friends" group...FB
considered manual filtering to be redundant...after all, FB can detect how
often you message/chat with another user, how long you wistfully page through
their photo albums, etc. etc...if those metrics aren't key factors of the
people whom you really care about...well, it's pretty damn close.

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walterbell
Berkman Center recently held a workshop on FB algorithm awareness & social
science audits, [https://civic.mit.edu/blog/natematias/uncovering-
algorithms-...](https://civic.mit.edu/blog/natematias/uncovering-algorithms-
looking-inside-the-facebook-news-feed)

