
A friend of mine died and I didn't know because of algorithms - emsy
https://twitter.com/Hellchick/status/942863353403150336
======
zkms
> All because FB's algorithm presumably decided that he didn't post much, so
> he didn't warrant enough attention in our feeds.

This is the oddest thing to me. I would imagine that people who post rarely
should be given preferential treatment and have their post included more often
than if the feed was just a chronological timeline.

~~~
wpietri
Having interviewed people who worked at Facebook, I'm convinced that nobody
there really understands how it works. (Or, at best, a very few people do.)
There are just too many people running around trying relentlessly to improve
micro-metrics by fractions of a percent for the system to have much in the way
of intellectual coherence.

~~~
greggman
you may have seen it but there is a really scary Ted talk suggesting that it's
possible Facebook is using deep learning techniques to optimize for engagement
and they have no idea why it picks what it picks but it's possible making
people choose sides and argue happens to be the best way to meet its goals

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iFTWM7HV2UI](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iFTWM7HV2UI)

~~~
nautilus12
Wait, so theoretically, suppose that a deep learning algorithm figures out
that if they bombard someone with tons of images of other people happy during
an acutely sad event of their life that they can drive them to suicide, and
that this causes a massive peak of engagement from all the people expressing
sympathy on their wall, would it do so? Given the fact that facebook is
engineered to be addictive and holds the dopamine button on so many people's
brains, wouldn't this practically be manslaughter?

~~~
civilitty
IANAL but based on my understanding, manslaughter generally includes some form
of negligence (instead of premeditation like homicide) so until our laws and
culture catch up to the power these developers/decision makers actually hold,
it's unlikely that a jury would blame the developers (or that a judge would
even be sympathetic to the argument). Our society has agreed long ago that
drinking and driving is irresponsible so thats why drunk driving fatalities
are often prosecuted as manslaughter but the same is not true of software
engineers and their creations. We need a sweeping cultural change outside of
software engineering just like we had with civil engineers in the 20th
century.

Nowadays, a professional engineer (a phrase with a precise legal meaning) can
be held criminally and civilly liable for negligence even when they are "just
following irders." Unfortunately, we're at the very early wild wild west
stages of the industry, before some big exposé or calamity completely shakes
up the industry (i.e. Sinclair's _The Jungle_ did for food, Carson's _Silent
Spring_ for pesticide use, or the 1906 SF earthquake for building codes).

~~~
nautilus12
If you build a machine that builds random types of robots but are negligent to
make sure it doesn't create robots that kill people, isn't that still criminal
negligence?

I think of these algorithms as being algorithms created and vetted out by
algorithms, therefore, its negligent to not understand what they are doing.
Since its difficult to know what they are doing, then the risk to use them in
this way should be viewed as too great

~~~
dorgo
It's the point of machine learning that no human needs (or often even can)
understand how the machine is doing something as long as the target metric is
optimized. We are building black boxes which translate input into desired
output. And tomorrow we will have black boxes building other black boxes.

The only way to ensure nobody is killed is to add "0 people killed" to the
target function of the black box.

~~~
doomjunky
Every heuristic algorithm needs a tollerance

    
    
        peopleKilled() < ε

------
kapad
The news feed is terrible. On Facebook or on Twitter. I don't like unfollowing
people, but I have on occasion unfollowed people that post too often. For some
reason, Facebook thinks I need to see all of these posts, and drowns out other
stuff in my news feed. I've missed congratulating friends on getting married,
having a kid, getting a degree or sending my condolences on the death of a
loved one. It's terrible, that these people who post less often, but post only
the bigger things in their lives get drowned out by Facebook's algorithms. I'd
infact want it the other way around. The folks who post often should simply be
treated as fillers.

Finally there's the bugs in facebook that randomly causes my feed to refresh.
And on these refreshes, I'm shown an entirely new/different feed. Maybe
Facebook thought they showed me a post, but the bug and auto page refreshes
caused me to miss that certain post.

~~~
thirdsun
If I understand you correctly you're suggesting to simply hide someone else's
posts. However wouldn't that potentially lead to the very same outcome, as in
missing an important event? What if Facebook decided the marriage of your
frequent poster friend was the one post that had to disappear?

~~~
Grue3
Presumably the frequent poster will post several times about their important
event, so at least one of these will get through the filter.

------
pgrote
A week or so ago Facebook removed the ticker feature they had in the bottom
right corner. This is how I worked around the predetermined algorithm showing
me what Facebook thinks I wanted to see. It allowed me to keep up with people
I wanted to without Facebook intervening.

Now that it is gone, the value of Facebook to me is near zero. Even if I saw
MOST RECENT, posts are missing. When I come back it's switched back to TOP
STORIES.

I have no idea why companies decide to make users work hard for what they
want.

~~~
carlivar
Users? You're the product. Advertisers are the users.

~~~
hunter2_
More typically than in response to someone saying "user," I see this in
response to somebody erroneously saying "customer" or similar. I think "the
user" is pretty valid, but "the used" makes for a good smirk.

~~~
astrodust
There's only two industries that describe their customers as users: Software
and drug dealers.

------
DoreenMichele
_It seems like "a good friend is in serious health trouble" warrants top
billing on any feed._

I have had a lot of online friends, though not through Facebook, which I
mostly don't use. But I can agree with this logic. I would also be horrified
to learn that an internet friend had died or had been hospitalized without me
getting the memo, even though they posted about it.

I think this is a reasonable assertion, regardless of what people here think
about whether or not this was a "real" friendship.

~~~
hirsin
This is something that's been on my mind as well, and I think an issue to take
seriously by those at the levers.

A friend recently took his life, and his FB account was deleted so I can't
verify anything, but I can't help but wonder. Was there anything he had posted
that I didn't see, that could have told someone (me) how he felt? It was
loneliness apparently, and took all by surprise - how much did Facebook play a
role in that? I'd do anything to have been there for him - I'd be devastated
if an algorithm had prioritized my alt-right classmate's latest infowars share
over a quiet plea for help because it generated more engagement.

~~~
DoreenMichele
If it is any comfort, people who are suicidal typically have pretty serious
problems, often including brain wonkiness.

I am sometimes suicidal. I have extremely good support. My adult sons don't
leave me alone when I am suicidal, because most suicides occur while alone, so
simply having company is a deterrent.

But they also don't bother to try to reason with me because I am not rational
at such times. There is no convincing me that my warped perception of my life
is completely unrealistic. Rebutting my crazy statements with facts to the
contrary makes zero difference.

I'm sorry for your loss. And I agree that this is something social media has
an obligation to do better on.

~~~
hirsin
I appreciate the kind words. Yes, it's certainly not social media's sole
fault, and as others have said down thread, there have always been other ways
of keeping in touch. I certainly don't blame Facebook for not showing me
anything that may have been posted - more, they're in a position to do so much
good for the world, and I hope they can do that instead of optimizing for
clicks.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I meant you shouldn't blame yourself. It is a very hard problem to solve.

~~~
hirsin
Very much agreed on all counts. Thank you

------
guelo
I've noticed I barely get any responses on Facebook anymore unless my posts
have pictures. They recently added a feature where you can add a big color
background to your textual posts. My guess is that they're pushing users
towards creating big flashy posts so that ads can blend in better with the
stuff from your friends.

The Facebook feed has become an awful way for communicating with friends.

~~~
Raticide
I dunno about other people, but I almost completely ignore those big
background posts. I think my brain sees them as adverts/spam and just filters
them out.

~~~
paulie_a
That style of post is reminiscent of Myspace. I will read a long text post and
immediately skip those vapid 1 sentence "glittery"posts

~~~
r3bl
Today I have published a post on my Facebook page. It was my two book
recommendations of the books I've read in 2017. The covers were added as
images to a post, and there were four paragraphs of text, first one explaining
what I'm doing, second and third one a really short reviews of the books, and
the fourth one asking my followers to recommend books in the comments. Knowing
that it won't reach anyone, I have also purchased an ad (3 euros, one day),
targeting fans of the page and their friends.

Organically, it reached 149 people (smaller posts reach 3-5x as much on
average). It reached 1,471 by a paid promotion. Number of people who liked,
commented, or even clicked to see all four paragraphs is 45.

My point is: you're a minority. And people who post like that get punished
_greatly_ by their algorithm. My ad was even postponed for like 30 minutes
because images contained "too much text for an ad" until I clicked on "manual
review" because I saw in their help pages that they let book covers slide.

~~~
paulie_a
My parent post was not referring to ads but short text posts with colorful
backgrounds.

I have no issue with preview images and preview text even for ads. Although I
wish Facebook accurately labeled them as ads

------
acjohnson55
I've had this experience a few times, when a friend has popped into mind and I
looked them up only to find old posts eulogizing them. It adds an extra gut
punch not being able to actually mourn with other people because you didn't
find out in time.

The reality is that Facebook doesn't assume your Friends are your friends. It
assumes you want to keep interacting with the same people you most recently
interacted with. It also assumes you want to see things you're likely to Like
or comment on. On the whole, this probably leads to them more reliably
providing that dopamine hit when users check in, at the cost of being useful
for actually staying in touch.

------
kiernanmcgowan
I guess it’s hard to run ads next to a post about a sick and dying friend.

~~~
Spooky23
“Flight deals to Portland!”

“Great hotel rates near the hospital! Act now!”

------
foobaw
I doubt FB will change how their feed works because of this publicized
incident. Perhaps Zuck will make a post about how they'll try and improve
because they care about people.

I know a lot of people that work at Facebook and they're all highly
intelligent. It's a great place to work at but incidents like this makes me
question if their talent is all being put to good use.

The algorithm has definitely a lot more "machine" learning to do to prevent
these incidents from happening again. Close friend, related to death and
health, gofundme campaign all scream that the statuses should've been shown.
(if FB can be so good at showing relevant ads, why can it show relevant feed)

------
syntheticnature
I've never missed someone I'd consider even a distant friend passing via FB --
a few acquaintances, though I usually found out within a week.

That said, I have experienced FB hiding something bad in someone's life for an
extended period -- a relative I'm not directly linked to passing, cancer
diagnosis, someone's dog getting very sick and having to be euthanized, etc.
Again, I found out, but not fast enough, even with friends that were in the
second ring out from my very closest friends.

------
paulie_a
I have a question about Facebook, they seem to spend tremendous effort to
create engagement. Arguably at the detriment to society.

Why are the ads so terribly targeted? They are an ad company with immense data
collection and at the end of the day the ads are equivalent to a niche cable
network

~~~
richforrester
Because company [X] thinks the target for product [Y] is [Z].

That's my guess anyway. And I work in (and/or closely with) marketing.

.edit:

Come to think of it, I want to elaborate on that.

Think about search engine optimisation. It's in a similar vein. "A guy walks
into a bar, bars, pub, tavern, pulic house, irish pub, drinks, beer, acolhol,
bar stool" etc.

My point is; people that are trying to sell 1 thing, might focus on reaching
AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE, over focussing on getting the right (but smaller)
audience.

~~~
paulie_a
That happened in the late 90's with online ads. It's just weird that Facebook
is a juggernaut of data collection and hasn't been capable of doing anything
new or better for targeting ads

~~~
richforrester
Again, it's not Facebook. It's the companies using the platform.

Don't blame the tool. Blame the person wielding it.

~~~
paulie_a
So Facebook as an advertising company has not made a better tool?

------
danso
How does the OP know that she actually peruses FB for all of her new feed's
content?

[https://twitter.com/Hellchick/status/942864030649036800](https://twitter.com/Hellchick/status/942864030649036800)

> _Now, I 'm a meticulous FB feed peruser. I always set it to Most Recent and
> browse until I see the stuff I saw last time. I keep up._

Despite her claim here, it's possible that she missed her friend's post
because her surveillance of her own feed is likely to be imperfect, especially
if she has a non-trivial number of friends.

edit: I bring this up because, ostensibly, the whole point of FB's (or any
social network's) "most important" algorithm is to mitigate the problem of how
"most recent" can be too overwhelming to consume if you have a non-trivial
number of friends. If OP has a lot of friends, such that there are a few dozen
new items per day on her newsfeed, even if she were meticulously reading her
feed, daily, there's no guarantee that she didn't miss the post because of
imperfectly skimming them. That no one else in her social circle noticed isn't
much proof since, as a mutual friend admits, they don't know how many of them
are active on FB:
[https://twitter.com/FRENDEN/status/942918637576441857](https://twitter.com/FRENDEN/status/942918637576441857)

That said, I swear I've seen FB's algorithm point out users who have posted
for the first time in a long while. This kind of notification/signal
presumably would not be part of a "Most Recent" timeline:

[https://www.quora.com/Why-am-I-getting-notifications-on-
Face...](https://www.quora.com/Why-am-I-getting-notifications-on-Facebook-
that-X-a-friend-has-posted-for-the-first-time-in-a-while)

~~~
u801e
On another slightly related note, has anyone else noticed that Facebook will
reset the feed's sort setting to "Top Stories" no matter how many times it's
set to "Most Recent"?

~~~
trendia
Even when I enable "Most Recent", it doesn't show every post from all of my
friends. There are posts that show up on "Top Stories" that don't show up on
"Most Recent."

How does that make sense?

~~~
u801e
I just tried changing the feed sorting order to "Most Recent" and found that
it only displays 4 posts. One post from a page I follow, one advertisement
whose sponsor was liked by one of my friends, one post that links an article
from one of my friends, and a series of posts on a friend's wall for their
birthday.

At the bottom, it says "there are no more posts to show right now." If I
change the sorting order back to "Top Stories", it shows far more posts and
the first four are in the same order as the ones shown in the other sorting
order.

Given that, I don't have much incentive to use the "Most Recent" sorting order
it seems.

------
ben_jones
So we've given our "Make sure my friends aren't dead" check to Facebook, and
we're blaming Facebook? Isn't this our fault? Isn't the rational thing to take
back the rights we've given to Facebook?

~~~
mclightning
I am astounded that this comment is not receiving more upvotes and comments! I
can't believe we are taking someone seriously for blaming Facebook for not
telling them their friend has died. If you care about someone, call them, be
present in their life every once in a while. Caring is a proactive act!

~~~
jmcqk6
The key value proposition of facebook to me is that it makes those types of
connections easier to scale up. Do I really need to call 200 people a month to
see what they're up to and how they're doing? It's much better to have a
constant feed of information that you can interact with as you can and want.

But it doesn't provide that value any more. It shows me ads and posts from a
handle of the hundreds of people I'm friends with.

So you're right that caring is a proactive act, but that doesn't invalidate
that initial value proposition at all.

------
electriclove
I wish these social media sites just gave me everything in reverse
chronological order and allowed me to fine tune the results..

~~~
confounded
If Facebook did this, people would stop using it pretty fast!

~~~
shriek
I wouldn't say people would stop, people would stop engaging as much but I'd
still find it useful. I most often use facebook with `?sk=h_chr` query string
to give me the content in reverse chronological simply because that makes
sense to me most.

------
Arbalest
I would have thought a lower frequency of posting would be an indication of a
greater weighting of the content when something was posted. Of course, as far
as keeping eyeballs for a long time, that's not what keeps people on the feed.
Maybe because those kind of posts are more likely to get people out of the
feed and onto direct messaging instead? Rather than lots of stuff (reposts and
shares) to scroll fast by and thus more space for ads to also scroll by.

~~~
hinfaits
That's a (self-admitted) assumption made by @Hellchick. The Facebook post in
question could have been relegated off of feeds for a different reason.

~~~
danso
What reason could that be? I thought maybe there was a way for a user to post
something on their profile timeline that wouldn't show up in their newsfeed,
but it appears that you can only do the _opposite_ , i.e. post something that
is seen in the newsfeed but won't be attached to your profile timeline:
[https://www.cnet.com/how-to/facebook-now-lets-you-post-to-
th...](https://www.cnet.com/how-to/facebook-now-lets-you-post-to-the-news-
feed-and-not-your-timeline/)

------
edgarvaldes
Before any comment about "real friends" keeping in touch outside the social
media, the second tweet:

>A friend I've known mostly online for 15+ years died this weekend. Our
friendship started on an old gaming forum, but continued on Facebook.

~~~
gremlinsinc
So you can't have 'real friends' that you met online? Hell, guess my wife is
imaginary then, met her in 2005 online.

~~~
skeleton
I think GP was saying that this story can be seen as evidence that a real
friendship does not need face to face interaction to be valid.

~~~
Johnny555
I think the evidence in this post suggests that a real friendship needs to go
beyond some curated communication system where some one else (or some
algorithm) decides what you hear from each other. Otherwise you may miss
significant events in each other's lives.

~~~
princeb
> curated communication system

yes. curated is the keyword.

fb used to be a legitimate communication system - you could write on walls,
you could poke, you could do a lot of stuff with fb apps that solicits an
immediate response.

fb today is not the fb of 2007. I know a lot of users grew up with fb but fb
did not grow up with us.

------
ekianjo
Quick fix: don't rely on Facebook to be in touch with your friends.

~~~
touristtam
Easier said than done.

~~~
ekianjo
To do it, you just have to try. Once you are off Facebook you are back to
having a proactive experience towards friends instead of simply browsing feeds
and clicking "Like!" icons.

------
pelario
From all the reasons to claim that "the Internet is broken", I think the worst
is that most services today apparently do one thing; but in reality do a
different one. And if you want it to do what "is supposed to do", it is
extremely laborious, or literally impossible.

The facebook feed is one example.

Recent changes in google search, another.

------
sandov
I've always fantasized about people switching from FB to an easy-to-use RSS
platform. Kinda like Mastodon, but bloggy/facebookey instead of a twitter
clone, and obviously: chronological feeds.

I'm sorry for her loss.

------
conductr
Before social media how long would it have taken to find out this loose of a
connection had passed away? My guess is months to years if ever.

~~~
stuartcw
Before social media people religiously read the local obituaries column in the
local newspaper and called their friends if someone they both knew had died.

Families would call all the close contacts and relatives to make sure that
they knew.

For several years after my father died in 1985 people called our house to
speak to him. Most were not close acquaintances but some were still pretty
shocked to hear of his death.

~~~
cbr
> Families would call all the close contacts and relatives to make sure that
> they knew.

I think people generally still do this? When my mother died a few years ago we
took turns calling her relatives and close friends. We wanted them to hear the
news verbally.

------
huffpopo
As far as I can tell this is a side effect of optimizing the algorithm to
encourage greater usage by discouraging limited usage. Asking FB, Twitter etc.
to do any different is the same as asking them to make less money.

~~~
kelnos
You'd think that FB would want to pull "wayward" people in, though. If I
haven't posted in a while, and then suddenly post, FB should give that post
wider reach, with the hope that I get a lot of engagement, come away with a
positive feeling, and then post/engage more.

I just did a sort of impromptu 2.5 month posting hiatus from FB (which also
included no commenting or liking), and when I returned I got a ton of likes
and comments on my fist couple posts.

------
bdreadz
Why isn't there a setting that you can just choose to see everything in
chronological order. That's fine if you want to default people to the
algorithm feed. It's just such a simple thing to add.

------
jeandejean
Sorry for your loss but... Wake up! Facebook doesn't owe you the
prioritization of information flow you wish. It's like TV: you must watch tons
of crap, commercials etc. and often you miss important information...

~~~
touristtam
Maybe FB doesn't, but the newsfeed display has significantly changed over the
years, that expectation based on initial experience aren't matched anymore to
the current format. For a significant portion of the user base, this seems to
be detrimental to the experience, and one might argue to the engagement sought
after by this company.

------
InclinedPlane
Think of facebook like an organism subject to evolutionary pressures. The
evolutionary pressures that matter to facebook are maintaining "engagement"
and through that ad revenue. Note that what matters to FB isn't engagement
between you and your friends, just between you and it. So it doesn't matter to
them how poor the algorithm is. The only thing that matters is how many
minutes or hours a day you spend on the site.

------
NightlyDev
A Facebook user who thinks Facebook is ment for keeping in touch?

I wonder how people can avoid noticing what Facebook has become after all this
time and still use it.

------
txt
Today I got an email from a female friend of mine who passed away 4 years ago.
Apparently they used her facebook info (email, display name) with the subject
being 'Fwd for 'my facebook display name' followed by terrible spam .. Ohhhhh
how I long for the days that we weren't hooked on social media.

------
taylodl
The irony is FB isn't a very good way for staying in touch with your friends,
not when they suppress posts about the most important events going on in their
lives. If that's the case then what's the point of social media? What function
is actually being served?

~~~
k3a
Ads are being served and FB makes money from advertisers. It's good that some
people are slowly starting to see that...

------
Molaxx
Blaming Facebook in this is really weird. You didn't know about it because you
weren't really friends. You were acquainted, yes, but you didn't actually keep
in touch. If it weren't for Facebook you'd never consider him a friend, just
some guy you knew. I'm sorry this seems insesnsitive, but Facebook isn't
reality, and it's a company trying to make money. It should be accountable for
the damage it does for society, but it can't be accountable for the way we
manage our friendships. That part is our responsibility as humans.

~~~
RickS
> If it weren't for Facebook you'd never consider him a friend, just some guy
> you knew.

If you re-read the post, this is inaccurate. The friendship began elsewhere.

>Facebook isn't reality, and it's a company trying to make money

It is a company whose value proposition (to non advertisers) is its being
reflective of or enhancing reality. This as opposed to, say, warcraft.

>it can't be accountable for the way we manage our friendships

Managing friendships is exactly facebook's purpose. If it claims to be the
best way to manage a friendship, and bad things happen as a result of
presumptions the company makes in the course of managing said friendship, it's
sane to associate facebook's tooling around friendship management with the
actual management of friendships.

If I sign up for facebook under the pretense of "see what happens to my
friends", and then sort by recency, if recent things that happen to my friends
do not appear, that is, IMO, a legitimate grievance.

Facebook might not owe this user anything, but that doesn't mean they can't
wish for better service. A person missed the death of their friend because
they were second guessed by an algorithm that has gradually torn control from
the hands of users and downgraded reality and chronology to foster
"engagement". That sucks.

~~~
randomThoughts9
There is this principle that I always bring up when it comes to our
interaction with the government, but it fits perfectly here too.

You might be able to give up control over something, but never the
responsibility that comes with it. So in this particular case, we are free to
let the algorithm decide for us, but we should all be aware who will suffer
when the algorithm goes haywire. It's that simple.

------
Myrmornis
I was quite un-cooly positive about Facebook for the first 15 years or so, but
recently it has become extremely apparent that the algorithms are getting in
the way of what I'm trying to do (communicate with a predictable set of
friends).

------
renegadesensei
I had a similar experience a few years ago.

[https://righteousruminations.blogspot.jp/2015/06/hating-
face...](https://righteousruminations.blogspot.jp/2015/06/hating-
facebook.html)

------
omarforgotpwd
Advertisers don't want to put their ads next to a post about someone dying.

~~~
arduanika
^ this.

------
rocho
Utterly ridiculous. The feed cannot show every possible post, otherwise it
would be a mess rather than a feed.

I really dislike Facebook, but blaming it in this case doesn't even make
sense.

------
TekMol
This is in line with my Facebook experience. I only post every few weeks on
FB, sometimes only every few months. And FB treats me as a second class
citizen. My posts often don't even appear in the default feed of my friends.

They do appear when my friends switch to 'Most Recent'. But most recent is
pretty much unbearable for friends with many friends because it shows every
tiny thing like 'Mike is interested in an event' and stuff.

------
StanislavPetrov
One of many reasons you shouldn't depend on algorithms or facebook to keep you
informed and aware of anything, let alone life and death issues. The
unwillingness and/or inability for people to access, process and understand
information is endemic in our society and one of the core reasons we are in
such bad shape on so many levels.

------
sixstringtheory
This post reeks of entitlement. The time the author spent writing this would
have been better spent _actively_ cultivating another relationship than
complaining that something didn’t perfectly spoonfeed them life experiences.

------
k3a
People shouldn't rely on these services for anything important. FB is
primarily ad serving business and entertainment website. It doesn't make our
life better, it also takes away our time and reduces productivity. :(

------
sixdimensional
Very sorry for her loss as well.. and her pain in not knowing...

It's interesting from a social science perspective to have the expectation of
the system / algorithms that it would have notified you of a friend's passing.
This is an expectation that the model understands what is important to the
user - something I doubt the model is optimized around completely.

Before Facebook, I think not knowing would be even more common than we realize
- unless you had frequent contact with your friend. In a world disconnected,
no email, no Internet, maybe only a telephone, or even further back, a
telegram, or even less - it might be many, many times much less likely you
would find such a thing out. Going back to the times of villages with no
electronic technology at all, communication would have been only through
immediate knowledge, written / recorded information or word of mouth.

I used to work for a website that tried to digitize obituaries, to serve as a
replacement for the newspaper, way before that was really a "thing". It never
really took off, because, the people who wanted to publish death notices in
newspapers just kept doing that. Most people who wanted to read them preferred
holding a newspaper than reading a website (although, it did help disseminate
information quickly). Eventually, newspapers simply published the obituaries
and death notices online themselves, and it all went to a big aggregator of
obituary postings (or got indexed by Google), and then it was no longer much
of a thing.

The most interesting thing, for me, having worked in this area, was seeing how
users have taken to Facebook as a sort of memorial to those who have passed,
help spread the news, etc. But with the conflux of marketing and so much
personal news... I'm not surprised that this information slipped through the
cracks.

I recall a book on this topic - "Bowling Alone"[1] published in 2001, before
social networks. The excerpt from Amazon.com -

"Once we bowled in leagues, usually after work—but no longer. This seemingly
small phenomenon symbolizes a significant social change that Robert Putnam has
identified in this brilliant volume, which The Economist hailed as 'a
prodigious achievement.'

Drawing on vast new data that reveal Americans’ changing behavior, Putnam
shows how we have become increasingly disconnected from one another and how
social structures—whether they be PTA, church, or political parties—have
disintegrated. Until the publication of this groundbreaking work, no one had
so deftly diagnosed the harm that these broken bonds have wreaked on our
physical and civic health, nor had anyone exalted their fundamental power in
creating a society that is happy, healthy, and safe.

Like defining works from the past, such as The Lonely Crowd and The Affluent
Society, and like the works of C. Wright Mills and Betty Friedan, Putnam’s
Bowling Alone has identified a central crisis at the heart of our society and
suggests what we can do."

Even with Facebook/social media, I wonder if the same thing is still true, or
if we have begun to heal the broken bonds of our disconnected nature the book
identified.

[1] ISBN-10: 0743203046

------
imh
I'm thinking about this as less of a newsfeed thing and more as pub/sub maybe
being a bad model for keeping in touch with friends. Especially when it's
curated pub/sub.

------
hateful
I posted this article on Facebook and received 0 responses. My wife, who has
me in "close friends" and on "show first" frequently misses my posts.

------
ap3
Hopefully posts like these encourage us to reach out to our friends in actual
real life way, not just through social media likes or mentions

------
kercker
Algorithms can have their downside.

Sometimes I miss some important emails just because the emails are classified
as spam and moved into spam folder.

~~~
k3a
That is not the same. You can always check the Spam folder. But you can't see
posts which FB decided not to show you!

------
Toast_25
A little birdy told me you can see tweets chronologically in lists. I've yet
to try it out though.

------
bprasanna
One day FB will say AI has taken over the algorithms without anyone's notice!

------
a3n
> All because FB's algorithm presumably decided that he didn't post much, so
> he didn't warrant enough attention in our feeds.

All because you've given Facebook responsibility for keeping in touch.

One suggestion for keeping in control and in touch: a less algorithmic address
list in email.

"Oh, but I don't want to manage that."

Well, how good is what you're using now working? Is that chance of someone
outside the list serendipitously stumbling across a post really _that_
valuable?

And, sorry for her loss.

~~~
macintux
Look, I don't like Facebook. I reluctantly caved because there was too much
going on there that I was missing, but I'd rather not be a participant.

But you're ignoring the fact that Facebook is effectively the first
opportunity in history for a universal "push" mechanism for friendship.

If your best friend died, would you really know how to contact everyone he/she
was friends with? You could dig through their Rolodex in the old days, which
would cover some percentage but also pick up a lot of outdated contact
information and business relationships with no friendship involved; you could
send email to everyone you could find in their mailbox, but that surely
wouldn't hit everyone; you could dial all phone numbers in their phone, but
same problem.

And obituaries are pull-based, and tend to be localized.

FB, for better or worse, has the potential to be the most effective way in the
history of mankind to tell everyone who knew someone that person has passed
on.

~~~
hyperbovine
> But you're ignoring the fact that Facebook is effectively the first
> opportunity in history for a universal "push" mechanism for friendship.

Only because it has defined downwards the entire concept of friendship.

~~~
macintux
I don't disagree that it has redefined "friendship" in a negative way, but
that's irrelevant.

How would all of your _genuine_ friends find out you've died, if they are
widely dispersed and to various degrees ignorant of each other?

~~~
hyperbovine
The same way they did before social media became a thing, presumably. More
pertinent is how you can now have a what’s considered a genuine friendship
entirely by interacting with someone on fb.

------
edgartaor
It's possible to create a Facebook client using the API and get a feed the way
you want?

~~~
k3a
No, that's not practically possible. And even if it were, FB could stop or
change/restrict it any time.

------
ClassyJacket
I would assume because they live in a third world country such as the United
States.

~~~
sbuttgereit
Or perhaps a country with a national medical program?

[https://www.gofundme.com/StephenSykes](https://www.gofundme.com/StephenSykes)

"Unfortunatey, the cost of the drug is above the NHS funding threshold. It is
not therefore available on prescription and the Consultants have told us that
we will need to raise the funds required to purchase the treatment that
Stephen needs to give him the real prospect of becoming well again."

~~~
kalleboo
Every healthcare system rationalizes spending. The US system lets low income
people die because they can't afford something as basic as insulin. The NHS
rationalizes on £90,000 recently-out-of-trial cancer treatments.

------
toomanybeersies
There's another story buried in the Twitter conversation:

> Pretty sure this is what killed my friend @shanecomix by proxy. I and
> numerous other friends of his never saw his GoFundMe campaign for insulin.
> He died $50 shy of his goal. I'm very sorry for your loss, especially
> complicated by such esoterica.

Why exactly does somebody need to start a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for
life-critical medicine?

~~~
colechristensen
Probably because navigating the beurocratic landscape of any government
assistance program requires levels of patience, assertiveness, and guile that
anyone fully capable of utilizing the services will already have a job that
will net enough that they don't need to use the program.

Having experienced such programs through others' experiences, I can say that
they are very often staffed by underpaid, incompetent employees whom are
trying to execute complex programs with perverse incentives designed by
compromising committees. The people that need these programs the most are the
least capable of dealing with these problems, but almost nobody knows or cares
what their troubles are.

~~~
sn9
This may be true of US gov't bureaucracies, but isn't necessarily true of
governments in general.

~~~
bcherny
How do you structure + incentivize government orgs to prevent these sorts of
issues?

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> How do you structure + incentivize government orgs to prevent these sorts of
> issues?

The basic problem comes from making things too complicated.

For example, there are a million programs that provide subsidies to the poor.
The poor can't afford housing, so we have housing vouchers. The poor can't
afford food, so we have food stamps. Heat, school, medicine, the list goes on.

The problem with all of these programs is that they're bureaucratic nightmares
to navigate and cause all kinds of perverse incentives, e.g. inflating the
price of school/medicine/housing, forcing people to buy a specific amount of
the subsidized thing instead of spending some of the money on something they
might need even more.

And the programs are all trying to do the exact same thing, which is to give
money to the poor. Which we could instead do directly with a universal basic
income and erase all of that unnecessary complexity from existence.

~~~
andrewem
I'm not saying a universal basic income is good or bad, but notice the pivot
you did there. You criticize programs that don't just spend all their money by
giving it to the poor, then you say: "Which we could instead do directly with
a universal basic income". That's a program which probably spends most of its
money on something other than giving it to the poor, because lots of the money
goes to people who aren't poor. Such a program could well have all kinds of
perverse incentives too.

~~~
Chathamization
With the right tax structures, it would end up focusing on giving money to
lower income individuals. You have an increased progressive taxation structure
such that for upper-middle income people the UBI is a wash (IE, someone making
$100,000 a year is getting and additional $12,000 from UBI but paying $12,000
more than they would have before).

The reason why UBI works well is because it's a cash handout (like the other
person said, you're not specifying the needs of the individual), it's a
universal and not means tested program (you don't have to go through a
bureaucratic maze every time you become eligible), and it's instantaneous for
people who have sudden changes in fortune (IE, the income stream is already
set up).

------
grondilu
TL,DR: A Facebook user died and his online friends were not notified because
he did not post much so Facebook presumably assumed it was not worth notifying
them.

------
subway
This was not the failure of an algorithm. This was the failure of a person to
keep in touch with an individual they wanted to call a friend, but couldn't be
bothered to occasionally reach out to.

Facebook enables this sort of behavior in that you can outsource many of your
social interactions, but at the end of the day, _you_ as an individual have
chosen to outsource those interactions.

I quit Facebook nearly 3 years ago, and it certainly 'cost' me some
superficial relationships. At the same time, the relatively few relationships
I've worked to maintain outside of Facebook feel more fulfilling and way less
anxiety inducing than when I outsourced everything to FB.

~~~
wpietri
Victim-blaming is ugly, and doubly so when it involves such profound loss.

The text makes it quite clear she did her best to keep up: "Now, I'm a
meticulous FB feed peruser. I always set it to Most Recent and browse until I
see the stuff I saw last time. I keep up."

Facebook's whole value proposition is to make it easy to keep in touch with
people. Here they clearly failed to live up to their promises. I'm glad you're
happy with your choice not to use it, but that doesn't mean those who chose
differently are assholes.

~~~
CodeWriter23
It’s not victim blaming when you’re trying to pull a positive lesson from
someone else’s tragedy.

And I might add, Facebook’s value proposition is about getting personal
details about individuals and compiling that into billions of dossiers valued
by advertisers. If you’re not the customer, you’re the product.

~~~
dang
I don't know if it's victim blaming but it's something ugly to rub someone's
nose in their pain and tell them what a failure they are. This is brutish
behavior masquerading as moral correction, and it's deeply unwelcome on this
site.

------
msmith10101
Reading something like this: I feel like TWTR users need to find a better
product.

------
EpicEng
I guess... I don't really care.

If the FB feed is the only way you "stay in touch" with someone, you're not
friends. At best you're acquaintances. This person makes no attempt to speak
to her "friend" for who knows how long and is now outraged that she didn't see
one of his posts.

Yeesh, get over yourself. If she actually cared she would have been in touch
in other, more personal ways.

~~~
dang
> _I don 't really care. [...] Yeesh, get over yourself. If she actually
> cared_

Please don't post uncivil comments here. Instead, read
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and take the spirit of this site to heart so we can all have at least one
semi-decent place on the internet.

Edit: it looks like we've had to ask you this multiple times before. We
eventually ban accounts that ignore these requests, so would you please fix
this?

~~~
jeandejean
I don't see what's uncivil here, there are no insults. And you speak as if you
were an admin, but you obviously aren't.

~~~
dang
I'm an admin; sorry that wasn't clear.

It's uncivil because (a) it's uncharitable about a painful situation and (b)
"Yeesh, get over yourself" is a swipe.

