Facebook will start showing some of its users less political content (cnn.com) 45
Facebook will start reducing the amount of political content users see while scrolling their primary feeds. From a report: The social media platform will "temporarily reduce the distribution of political content in News Feed for a small percentage of people" in Brazil, Indonesia and Canada this week, it said in a blog post on Wednesday. The changes will be applied to a limited number of US users in the coming weeks. "During these initial tests we'll explore a variety of ways to rank political content in people's feeds using different signals, and then decide on the approaches we'll use going forward," Aastha Gupta, product management director at Facebook, wrote in the blog post. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hinted at the changes during the company's earnings call last week. "One of the top pieces of feedback that we're hearing from our community right now is that people don't want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services," he said.
The company, which has come under fire for its shortcomings in combating election misinformation and its political ad policies, claims that political content makes up only 6% of what people see on Facebook in the United States. When asked how it defines political content, Facebook said it will use artificial intelligence known as machine learning trained "to look for signals of political content and predict whether a post is related to politics." The test will include news stories about politics as well as political posts by family and friends.
The company, which has come under fire for its shortcomings in combating election misinformation and its political ad policies, claims that political content makes up only 6% of what people see on Facebook in the United States. When asked how it defines political content, Facebook said it will use artificial intelligence known as machine learning trained "to look for signals of political content and predict whether a post is related to politics." The test will include news stories about politics as well as political posts by family and friends.
Waste of an algorithm (Score:5, Insightful)
They should just show what your friends post.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Right?
I logged in the other day, first time all year. Saw a couple of nice photos of old friends, then a mess of ads, pages my friends like, and crappy memes.
It's a wonder people use that site anymore.
Re:Waste of an algorithm (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a wonder people use that site anymore.
Pretty sure they mostly don't.
I used to use Facebook to keep in touch with a bunch of people from high school and college. Most of them have stopped posting (as far as I know, it's also possible Facebook is just filtering them out) and I basically stopped posting stuff on Facebook entirely. The only reason I still have a Facebook account is that I still occasionally need to use it. (Some people still only plan things via Facebook Messenger and Facebook Events. It's annoying.)
Sometimes I remember back to when Facebook was a legitimately useful method of keeping in touch with people and, especially during the pandemic, I really miss that. But it's just not that any more, and that's entirely Facebook's fault.
Re: (Score:2)
I used to have a Facebook account, used it a bunch in college and post-grad to stay in touch with friends who moved on. Recently, I tried to log into the account after many years of inactivity, only to find that Facebook disappeared me. They claim to have no record of the account, despite me having emails from them about the account... I cannot log in, reset password or in any other way access my account because it apparently no longer exists... I'm sure that if anyone were to search for me, they would find
Re: (Score:2)
Sometimes your friends post political shit.
I've pretty much de-facebooked myself. I just keep my profile active in case someone wants to contact me. But I don't log on anymore.
Truth be told, I don't mind facebook ads. Heck, the whole ad market has actually led me to make all kinds of purchases. Natural soaps, tools...
But I got turned off by political ads. Friends posting political stuff. First i just started unfollowing, but still keeping them as friends. I started gutting various news sources. Eventually,
Re: (Score:2)
They should just show what your friends post.
That's precisely the issue. Some friends incessantly post political content, whether shared news stories, memes, or anguish over the latest outrage. The option to "Hide post. See fewer posts like this." doesn't seem to stem the current tide of political content.
Re: Waste of an algorithm (Score:1)
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Facebook is just doing targeted advertising (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't wind up seeing a lot of expensive (eg. Gucci) fashion items, because my marketing profile says I'm a waste of ad dollars for these views. Similarly the foreign disinformation services and other FB customers that want to persuade uses don't want their ads (masquerading as content) shown to people they aren't trying to influence.
So, saying that you're going to show less political stuff to some people just means you're refining the delivery system to serve their real customers better in that product area.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, I have started letting Facebook know that I do not want to see any political content, it has reduced the amount of garbage that I have to see.
I started doing this in Google News, and suddenly all of the Fox News posts have the ability to "not see this source" removed... I think that this is a reaction to MANY people wanting right wing media removed from their feeds
Change of government? (Score:2, Insightful)
Facebook's sudden willingness to start moderating content has nothing what-so-ever to do with the change of government, no nothing.
No conservative content for you! (Score:2)
Re:No conservative content for you! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think there is an actual conservative in the republican party today. Rand Paul may be closest but that isn't saying much. Is he a severe autist or just mentally ill? The jury is still out. Republicans didn't say a word about the deficit under Trump but the week Biden takes over it's suddenly an issue. No abortions for you either, we are pro life! Oh the baby needs healthcare and food? Well tough shit that's your problem for some reason.
Some info.. (Score:3)
I haven't been on facebook for a long time.
What are they talking about. It used to be that what you saw was a timeline of posts by people on your friends list. ( I think there were adds on the sidebar).
Comments from people I know were in time based order on the main feed.
Are they talking about changing that or just the adds on the sidebar? I mean , they can do whatever they want with the irrelevant adds no one looks at, I'd be pretty P.Oed if I were a user and all the sudden I wasn't seeing my posts from grandma, which is the whole point of being on the platform.
None (Score:3)
I see no political content on Facebook, because I told it I don't want to. I see stuff on computers, music and architecture, because that's what I'm interested in. If you comment and like political stuff, then that's what you see.
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When is it "controlling the flow if information", and when is it "stemming the tide of propaganda"?
At this point it is stemming the tide of propaganda, which has occurred throughout US history
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Apparently, in a Democracy, the duly elected leaders would make decisions like that and they have done so historically during times of war and/or external conflict.
Also, in Capitalist systems, business owners would have the ability to control what is being delivered over their content systems (print, televised media, movies and now internet content)
Theoretically, both systems respond to the public whether by direct vote, or voting with their pocket books
Helpful?
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, please let us all know your libertarian (or Libertarian) solution so we can shit out pants laughing
Initial tests (Score:1)
Allow customization (Score:4, Insightful)
But what is less? (Score:1)
But what is less?
That's a vague, and ambiguous. That statement's vagueness reminds me of the advice or the "free tip" in an Infocom text adventure: "Buy low sell high." But what is low and high? I prefer opting into any political content, so zero.
(Me talking to my dealer) (Score:2)
Me: ",,, what do you mean, you cannot sell me enough for a whole day? Since when?"
Fred: "The magic 8-ball clearly indicates that's the needed approach."
Me: "You know, Wilma is right down the road, and she is willing to hook me up any time, any place."
Fred: "I know. But... you know."
Me: "Bye."
Don't be evil (Score:4)
You deciding what you want to see - good.
You asking what there is to see so you can choose - good.
Them deciding what you will see - evil
Them deciding what you can choose from - evil
You being able to make your own algorithms to see what you want - good
You being able to make your own algorithms to find what there is to see - good
Them letting you choose from their algorithms to decide what you see - not so good
Them letting you see what their algorithms do so you can decide what you see - good
Them setting their algorithms to choose what you see without telling you how they work - evil
Them setting their algorithms to choose what you see without telling you - evil
We are mostly getting the last. Evil.
Tell Us Another Lie Mark then hit us again (Score:2)
The one thing we all know about Facebook and their announcements of "change" is that they amount to (if we are lucky) almost imperceivable changes for the better and more likely will cause greater societal friction than before on implementation.
Let's all hope Facebook is regulated into non-existence soon. Mark and his family are set for a very comfy existence for the next few generations in any case.
just let me block liars unconditionally (Score:2)
there are sacrosanct accounts on Facebook that seem to be bulletproof on the right-wingnut side. you can't block them. if they're serious, let me block them.
conservatives likely want to wall off their nemeses as well.
Everyone has those FB friends (Score:4)
You know, the ones where 99.999% of what they post is unending, numbingly awful political diarrhea. Streams of memes copied from elsewhere, non-stop political stories with their commentary at the top (as if you were unsure of where they already stood on an issue), etc. Left or right doesn't matter -- I have FB friends on both sides of the aisle who do this. The only solution is to hide them for 30 days -- if you de-friend them, in real life they wouldn't understand or they'd be butthurt about it, and they're actually pretty cool to hang with when they're not on the Internet. But not only do they realize that their posts often have a negative affect on others -- they revel in it (e.g., "it's my job to make people uncomfortable") and actually consider this activity to be real "activism" and think it makes a real positive difference. Etc. It's terribly anti-social behavior from a minority of people and the vast majority of users on FB want nothing to do with it.
I would have no problem if FB starts filtering out that garbage. My guess is their political filtering probably keys on posts from people hidden by a lot of other users anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Facebook has for a long time supported 'unfollow' - allowing you to keep people in your network but never again see what they post. You don't need to wait for Facebook to do something to not see content from those weird people! ....except of course this is only part of the problem. Even though I am fortunate to have a FB network where people show great restraint and don't post political stuff, they do still interact with political things.
I have a few friends that risk their sanity to comment in FB threads o
Get 0% political content drop Fascist Book (Score:1)
Half-assed bullshit (Score:2)
Reducing violence - now and back then (Score:3)
1990s: Show kids more politics and less Mortal Kombat.
2020s: Show kids less politics and more Mortal Kombat!
A political filter would be good (Score:2)
Trouble is that they'd have to implement a fast OCR algorithm to scan the memes and text masquerading as gifs. But of course, that filter wouldn't be unbiased.
How about making it available for everyone? (Score:2)
If Facebook would just add a switch that would let ME enable a "no politics" filter for MYSELF; I'd probably go back to using it as much as I used to half a decade or so ago. Ever since the 2016 campaign and election, it's been pretty much a toxic cesspool that's driven me and many of my friends away for the most part. But take away all the political crap; and it used to be a handy too for keeping in touch current friends, getting back in touch with old friends, making new friends who are friends of frien