
Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts - dolel22
https://medium.com/@kurtgessler/facebooks-algorithm-isn-t-surfacing-one-third-of-our-posts-and-it-s-getting-worse-68e37ee025a3
======
marricks
When I had Facebook I was passionate about several topics, but I limited my
posting to only 1 - 2 times a month. Initially when I started I got some
engagement, questions, etc. As the years wore on I gained some friends who
cared about those topics too, who liked my posts, shared, etc. Dozens of likes
at times.

Well, turns out people paid less attention over time, or seemed too. Those
posts got fewer likes and shares. Well, perhaps people just got turned off to
my "activist" posting, bored, etc? If I posted a stupid life update about
getting a new strainer though, fucktons of likes of course... Decided to ask
my girlfriend and a couple family members if they even saw my posts on privacy
or what have you, nope. It was buried or not shown on the feed when it came
out.

It's not just the feed either, the _ordering_ is bleeding elsewhere. When I
asked my girlfriend if she could see specific posts she went directly to my
profile and couldn't even find them often times because _Facebook now controls
the order of items on someone 's feed_. They show "trending items" and them
semi ordered older ones.

I think this article, and some personal experience, shows some of the
consequences of being tied to a social platform that controls just _the order_
of news on your feed. It is trivially easy for them to bury topics either
because they just don't like them or think they "hurt user engagement." It's a
sort of super stealthy shadow ban, where sure, you content is "visible" but
only in the loosest meaning of the word.

I had misgivings about Facebook initially from a privacy standpoint, but how
much power they have to moderate content, _virtually imperceptibly_ , was one
of the final straws that got me off of it. We're not just giving away personal
information, we're giving away our ability to persuade and connect in
meaningful ways.

~~~
mikeash
Why is it so terrible that they control the order of the feed? If the feed was
just sorted by date then it would be unusable for most people. I feel like a
lot of objections to how Facebook does things come down to thinking Facebook
is something different from what it is. It is not, nor is it intended to be,
something that shows you every single post from every single friend.

~~~
marricks
I tried to spell out why, but here you go, my personal experience is this out
of order sorting meant that if I tried to post anything besides vapid updates
few people saw them. If Facebook wanted to go from chronological to some other
transparent metric, like hotness, I'd be more okay then whatever this is. The
fact this is on the feed, my profile, and heck, even searching for events last
I saw, is disturbing.

Also, sorted by date was great for many years when they initially got
popularity. I (and others IIRC) were pretty unhappy when it changed to this.

~~~
ncr100
Hypothetical solution: Wrap your serious posts in vapid trimmings.

~~~
L_Rahman
I have actually started doing this. I write a text post, but then include a
topical, memey, feed friendly image with it. Engagement is much higher.

~~~
majewsky
I'm seeing this with blog posts, too. Where a serious topic is discussed, but
it's illustrated with appropriately-captioned meme images. I wonder if they do
it to please today's meme-craving reader, or just to avoid overly long
sections of text without any breaks (what Germans lovingly call "Bleiwüste",
i.e. "lead desert").

------
ivanbakel
It's interesting to see how Facebook is taking increasing control of news and
publicity on its service. In a sense, we're long past the point of questioning
whether it's ethical, since they've obviously been influencing content for a
long while, but this is one of the strongest arguments for FOSS alternatives
like Mastodon.

Hopefully, if this continues, big businesses will push the shift to open
instances for a more level playing field, and the users will follow.

~~~
dickbasedregex
I left FB ~4 years ago. One of the straws that broke the camel for me was that
it was obvious FB was "curating" my feed for me. Without notifying or
consulting me. Posts from friends wouldn't show in my feed and vice versa. The
privacy issues were bad enough but when I couldn't trust the platform to
fulfill the only need I had for it, I walked.

I'm far better for it.

~~~
logicallee
Given that you were frustrated by not seeing all of your friends' posts and
their not seeing all of yours, how are you better for it now that you see 0.0%
of your friends' posts of any kind and now that you can now share your own
content with only 0.5% of them (personally or through email etc)?

~~~
twelvedogs
i'm in this situation as well, i've moved to a slack group with my work
friends and direct messaging with others, facebook was just a shitty way to
talk to people i don't really care about where my posts were spirited away
almost immediately

0.5% is being generous, i had almost no interaction with people i cared about
while i was on there and i'm glad i've switched to other platforms where they
aren't as interested in feeding me their stuff and just letting people talk

~~~
inetknght
FYI Slack could easily do the same thing. And indeed, being a closed system,
what protection do you have against it?

~~~
VLM
That would utterly annihilate its corporate use if there was even a rumor they
randomly censored content like operations and QA/QC discussion. My company
also pays extra money to slack for the "we log everything for your e-discovery
enjoyment" so there would be substantial legal issues if they randomly started
hiding stuff we're paying to be e-discovered. Slack has problems, but weird
censorship stuff isn't one of them.

Weird as it probably sounds, FB sucks for humans because its users are people
not corporations.

------
strict9
FB has always prioritized content which doesn't lead them to see ads elsewhere
(like photos instead of links), but maybe it's something else.

I live in Chicago and subscribe to the Sunday edition. I also read the digital
edition, and have found it lacking, particularly since inauguration. In recent
months Michael Ferro became the majority shareholder in the Tribune, a person
obsessed with celebrities and not so much in local or even national news
coverage. He's the guy that fired all the Sun Times photojournalists and
mandated reporters use their iPhones instead.

The paper has struggled to find its place in trying to be like the NY Times or
Washington Post, covering important national issues, but without the same
resources. Meanwhile, hyperlocal sites like DNAinfo have filled the niche,
which has strong FB engagement because it provides content people are
interested in, but the Tribune isn't providing.

Instead of blaming a third party which bears no obligation to send traffic,
the Tribune would be better served in providing better local news coverage and
less in areas which aren't compelling (celebrity gossip) or where it can't
compete (national coverage like NYT).

~~~
padseeker
I work for the Trib, and read it every day. While your comment about Ferro is
true, being interested in hanging with celebrities, I have not noticed a
change in the content with Ferro in charge.

The Trib has always focused on very local stuff - city and state politics, the
midwest, local sports teams, the spike in murders, etc. I don't think that is
going to change. I think the editorial board would like to believe it has a
higher national profile since we live in the 3rd largest city in the country
but in reality we're very regional. We also own the LA Times which actually
does have a higher national profile. But I digress.

I'm not going to dispute some of your legitimate gripes. I'm not a fan of
celebrity gossip either. I only know a couple of journalists but I suspect
they would agree with you. Facebook or other 3rd party does not have any
obligation to us.

But the simple truth is our print circulation is declining at a rate faster
than our digital circulation is rising. All newspapers are dealing with this
issue.

The NYT and WashPo has done much better with revenue and digital circulation,
2 papers that do an excellent job of covering subjects of substance. However
those rises are directly related to Trump. Even we have seen a rise in
subscriptions at the CT as well as LA Times due to Trump. And The LA Times
does a really great job of the kind of coverage you are looking for.

I feel like you are missing the point of the article. More eyeballs hopefully
leads to more advertising revenue, which leads to more money for better
coverage, or at least pays the salaries of reporters who provide that
coverage. If a third party that previously was delivering more eyeballs is
declining that is a concern. All the quality coverage in the world will not
change that. It's a legitimate concern for us.

~~~
strict9
I don't disagree with the type of local content (crime, politics, sports) you
describe. But that's only a small part of what people are interested in.
Though the writing is sometimes sensationalist and click-baity, DNAinfo is
eating the Trib's lunch for local engaging content. The number of links to DNA
in my fb or twitter feed vastly outnumber Trib ones because friends
share/click articles about their city or neighborhood -- that go well beyond
only the crime/politics/sports staples.

You're right in that I did miss the point of the article, but not entirely.
The fb engagement on what the Trib seems to cover (national/international
focus) has likely decreased because of Trump, while resulting in more clicks
on WaPo/NYT. While it's likely fb changed their algorithm, content also makes
a big difference in what gets surfaced. And I think the original article
ignored the role that it may have played.

It sucks that journalism and livelihoods can suffer because of a monolithic
walled garden, but there is probably more to the story.

~~~
padseeker
There is active discussion right now internally about this issue. We're not
the only newspaper seeing this decline in views from facebook.

I'm not here to whine. The news business is what it is. We rely on outside
sources to drive our traffic. Traffic means eyeballs which translates into ad
revenue, hopefully anyway.

When google changes its algorithm that might hurt our web traffic we have to
respond accordingly. SEO people have all kinds of discussions, and write
articles, when google makes a change. This article is something similar.

It seems like facebook has been changing their algorithm determining what
appears in a user's feed, which is effecting our traffic. The same efforts we
put in 6 months ago using facebook are having diminishing returns. The point
of the article is its effecting us, and apparently not just us.

Whether facebook will address this issue, either in public or private remains
to be seen. However I see there is an advantage of talking about it publicly,
to determine if it is just us (it's not) or if its affecting others
(apparently it is) and what can be done to remedy the situation.

On a side note I like DNAinfo as their content is hyperlocal. It's probably
harder for the Chicago Tribune to do that.

------
bhhaskin
I find it fascinating that media companies like news papers have completely
tied their success to a 3rd party platform like Facebook. They have
essentially given all of the publishing power to Facebook. AMP is another one
that comes to mind.

~~~
smt88
They didn't do it willingly. Facebook drew the news readers away from the
publishers, and the publishers had to follow the readers.

~~~
kevin_b_er
Then they're not publishers anymore. Facebook decides what _can_ be seen, and
thus facebook is now the publisher.

~~~
mtberatwork
Facebook isn't the publisher. They aren't producing the content. They are just
another distributor...albeit a very large one.

~~~
backtoyoujim
Distributor is not quite right.

If I run a shop that sells magazines, and I order a four magazines to fill
some rack space in the shop the distributor does not decide to send you two
and black hole the rest of your order.

They send you what you ordered.

Facebook is not a distributor. They are acting as gatekeepers, too.

------
toddmorey
Facebook's model of popularity and personal relevance to the top will never be
the right platform for news. It alarms me that it's the #1 news source for
like 70% of adults in the US.

More alarming is how this trend is matched with the move away from hard news
towards 'pundit celebrity' commentary by almost all networks.

I think there's something in the human psyche where the best feelings come
from confirmation of your own biases. This hack wasn't useful when only a few
network news programs had to appeal to mass audiences, but it's provided
really useful as media has splintered and become personalized.

I have this weird personal exercise where I pull up 5 different news tabs all
at once. It's AMAZING how different the world looks from different websites,
all coving the same events from drastically different perspectives. There has
always been slant, but it's become 10x worse in the last decade.

------
jschuur
People simply like too many pages that produce too much content. There has to
be prioritization and people have a natural limit to how much time and
attention they have to scroll down all the way.

So this is a fundamentally hard problem to solve. You can already prioritize
posts from a page to appear at the top of your feed if you really don't want
to miss posts.

The real issue is that people underestimate the amount of content they're
going to get with a like.

~~~
leejo
This. From the article:

> We went from roughly 20 posts per day to 24 posts per day.

If you post that many articles to Facebook then I'm simply going to unfollow
you. Imagine I have ten sources posting that much, or one hundred sources. You
think I'm going to engage with everyone? Heck no. Post one thing a day, two
absolute tops. Ideally one thing _a week_ but obviously that's not many
sources ideal model.

If I really want to follow you I'll add your RSS feed to my reader. Facebook,
Instagram, et al, have become one big screaming match and this is only going
to get worse until people realise that less is more. If they decide to change
their feed algorithm, well, sucks to be you.

~~~
jschuur
There are Twitter accounts (I'm looking at your Politico) that constantly
repost their stories. I swear they're actually automating deleting their
tweets and simply tweeting them every hour (disclaimer: I haven't validated
this hypothesis). I don't even follow political Twitter accounts anymore, over
tactics like this. I keep them all in a (private) list and browser the list
when I want to see what's going on in US politics.

~~~
leejo
Possibly they're trying to game the algorithm. I follow a few photo sources on
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and RSS feeds from their sites (when offered).
The consequence is that I see the same posts multiple times, not just across
the various feeds but from a single feed. It's not them deleting and
reposting, it's more posting slight variations of the same article (again,
possibly trying to game the algorithm).

But the screaming match drives me nuts. What good is 100,000 views anyway if
only 100 people actually click through and engage? Better to have 1,000 views
and 200 click through/engage. Target better, stop throwing shit at walls.

Just as an example - I recently had a little project featured on one of the
top 10 photo channels on YouTube - 300k+ subscribers. The video currently has
had 13,000 views in three weeks, and in it I get a full minute long feature +
a link to my site. How many sales have I made through the feature? Zero. When
I first posted the project on a niche site, a couple of years ago, I had ten
sales within the space of a couple of days.

------
kristianc
So, Facebook has a vast cache of data on what people do and don't like and
respond to in their feed. Facebook also has any number of 'features' in ML
language they can slice and dice this data by, from likes and shares through
to time spent on article before returning to the main feed.

Browsers of the Facebook feed themselves have any number of ways of accessing
information, which they did not have before. If I want sports news on teams
from Chicago, I'm no longer beholden to Chicago Tribune or even Facebook for
that, I can download something like Bleacher Report TeamStream and have a
customized feed of what I find interesting and nothing else.

It's probably not massively difficult to work out the kind of content that
makes people like, share and click at scale on Facebook - humans are humans
after all - but it's probably not consistent with the output of the Chicago
Tribune (national stories that are covered in greater detail elsewhere and
content which is probably only of any real interest to Chicagoans).

This is probably even more the case at the moment with so much of the action
politically happening at a national level - Trump is a once in a generation
kind of news story.

It seems they have two options:

\- Accept that Facebook is a pay-to-play platform and that they will have to
pay to narrowcast news to Chicagoans

\- Accept that Facebook is going to account for an ever-declining share of
their traffic.

Either way, I'm not sure there is a way forward for online media that doesn't
involve a huge rethink about what the product they serve up is. Blaming the
algorithm seems incredibly fruitless.

------
davidf18
I wish FB let you select certain categories. For example, only postings from
Friends.

Or only postings from other feeds that I follow.

There is all of this garbage that I don't want, so as a result I rarely look.

Twitter use Tweetbot seems to work a lot better in this regard as I can follow
those groups I wish to follow without the junk.

------
douche
I miss the days when Facebook (and Twitter) just had a chronological timeline.
At this point, I only see posts from my actual friends if I've set up
notifications for their new posts. If this curation is supposed to make me
stay on Facebook more, I don't think it's working, because the same post will
stay at the top of the feed for six or eight hours, which makes me less likely
to check it.

------
cbr
It sounds like FB is taking the posts that are getting low engagement and
cutting them off quicker. This makes a lot of sense!

~~~
rtkwe
Hopefully they're taking into account the actual active times of the fans of a
page. If your fans are fairly local, which would map a lot of sense for a
newspaper, a page could have huge swings in engagement throughout the day on
the same content.

~~~
cbr
If they're smart they have a model of how they expect a post to behave given
who they've shown it to, and show posts more/less widely based on whether it's
over/underperforming their prediction.

------
diminish
At some point, a Google search or a Facebook timeline will be covered 100%
with very smart, personal, native ads next to your organic search result or
your mom saying you "Happy Birthday".

Because, Quarter after quarter post-IPO management (at Facebook, Google and
others) are denting the returns and eating into ROI margins across worldwide
industries and services of an endless spectrum by converting free organic
"reach" or "impressions" or "time spent" into advertiser ones. At some point
GOOG and FB will stabilize at some market capitalization, defined by their
ability to maintain a steady revenue stream from advertisers.

[-] [http://www.adweek.com/digital/how-brands-and-agencies-are-
fi...](http://www.adweek.com/digital/how-brands-and-agencies-are-fighting-
back-against-facebooks-and-googles-measurement-snafus/)

------
alagappanr
Even with over 1000 friends on Facebook - the maximum engagement that my posts
reach is probably in the range of 10 to 200 or at the max 300.

One thing I have noticed is that the friends with whom you engage the most -
chat, like, comments - in turn get to see your posts often and engage with
them.

Anyone with whom you have not interacted in a long time - more than a few
months - will never see any of your posts. I don't see any point of being
Facebook friends with anyone with whom I haven't interacted in a while. You
aren't getting their updates and they aren't getting yours. Facebook is a
social network which I mostly see as a place to broadcast life events to all
my broader friend networks and acquaintances.

For close friends and family I always prefer medium of communications that are
more intimate in nature - phone calls, video calls.

------
frik
> Facebook’s algorithm isn’t surfacing one-third of Chicago Tribune’s posts

Of course. That's the whole premise of the FB Newsfeed. It started in late
2011 - up to that point the news stream was in chronological order and you saw
all posts (depending on your geographic the feature was enabled maybe on a
different date). Then the newsfeed showed what FB algorithms provided you
depending on your click-, browsing-, friend- and like-history. It's called a
filter-bubble, you suddenly see just mote of the same, no variation. It marked
the tipping point of FB as social network tool (at least for me).

------
zappo2938
I promoted posts on a Facebook page successfully a few times several months
ago. Facebook has been surfacing those posts constantly bombarding me with
reminders that they were successful and people are liking the posts and page.
Everyday, such and such person liked your page.

Maybe Facebook is targeting the smaller people by having the algorithm push
their posts over larger companies. This might be a good thing. Do you do
better with 1000 duck sized advertisers or 1 horse sized advertiser?

------
losteverything
Can someone please give me perspective?

Does the newspaper increase/decrease revenue with better surfacing?

If so, how much? Or conversely, if they don't bother tracking this (& spend $
on a human resource ) will there be any appreciable decrease in revenue.

Or is this one person asking the world, "hey, have you also seen this?"

~~~
carrier_lost
Newspapers sell ads based on impressions. Similarly, reporters want more
readers to see their work.

Better Facebook surfacing = more clickthroughs to newspaper content.

More clickthroughs = more readers, more ad impressions.

More readers also = greater pool of potential conversion to print subscribers,
email newsletter signups, etc.

Better surfacing also = greater brand awareness.

So yes there are both quantifiable revenue benefits + less quantifiable but
still important journalism & marketing benefits.

------
callinyouin
This is just a thought, but perhaps this is due to an internal effort at FB to
filter out "fake news". The changes in their algorithm might be showing some
unintended consequences, or maybe the stories from the Tribune that are
getting killed really are of dubious quality (I'm not a reader, so I really
don't know). The timing of the Tribune's downward trend in post reach would
seem to fit this narrative at any rate.

~~~
gdulli
Fake news is about determining bad sources, not individual articles. It's
about finding propaganda sites that are intentionally and maliciously
inventing false stories. A fake news algorithm wouldn't apply to a credible,
established newspaper.

~~~
callinyouin
If that's the case (and I don't doubt it is, I really don't know how this
filtering is supposed to work), isn't that sort of missing the point? The way
I understand it, plenty of "credible, established" media outlets are on the
hook for propagating unverified, "fake" news. Filtering out the obvious
conspiracy theory and propaganda news outlets seems like some really low
hanging fruit.

------
james_pm
Wonderful. Journalism is just a game to the Chicago Tribune.

"Because if 1 of 3 Facebook posts isn’t going to be surfaced by the algorithm
to a significant degree, that would change how we play the game."

~~~
Ensorceled
You do realize that's just a turn of phrase, right?

Even if you want to be uncharitable about that, it's pretty clear the author
is talking about Facebook and not Journalism.

