"i see this post more than i see my own family"
February 15, 2018 9:47 AM Subscribe
"Last Saturday – 12 days ago now – I shared a cringe-worthy video on Facebook: A 6-minute clip of a twenty-something white woman showing off her small, blandly decorated Brooklyn apartment [...] Ever since, this video has been waging a reign of terror over my friends and family, showing up at the top of their feed every single day, over and over and over. They are complaining to me on Facebook. They are complaining to me in real life. They are tweeting me about it and emailing me. Begging me to remove this cursed video that greets them each time they open Facebook.
And of course, they commented on my post. And then people commented on the comments. The more people commented, the more the video showed up on other people's’ feeds. As the rage around this post intensified, so did the comments. Coworkers I sit next to commented. College friends commented. Someone I went to preschool with commented. A vicious, algorithmically delicious cycle."
How I Cracked Facebook’s New Algorithm And Tortured My Friends [Katie Notopoulos, Buzzfeed]
And of course, they commented on my post. And then people commented on the comments. The more people commented, the more the video showed up on other people's’ feeds. As the rage around this post intensified, so did the comments. Coworkers I sit next to commented. College friends commented. Someone I went to preschool with commented. A vicious, algorithmically delicious cycle."
How I Cracked Facebook’s New Algorithm And Tortured My Friends [Katie Notopoulos, Buzzfeed]
Back when I was still on Facebook I had approximately 100 friends, but the same half dozen or so would dominate my feed by name-dropping products in their status updates. "Here at my desk with the screenplay I'm working on and a Coke!" "Grabbing a bite to eat and then it's off to see The Avengers!" And so forth.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:56 AM on February 15, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:56 AM on February 15, 2018 [3 favorites]
So what the hell did she do with this video? Just post it and ask a question that would spark someone to respond in an aggravated way?
posted by sciatrix at 10:01 AM on February 15, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by sciatrix at 10:01 AM on February 15, 2018 [3 favorites]
Cracking the algo code is a game of whack-a-mole. FB for a while really drove the publication of listicles which, for a period, made lots of money for certain publishers. So this may get you to the top of the dune now, but the dune will shift.
posted by k5.user at 10:02 AM on February 15, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by k5.user at 10:02 AM on February 15, 2018 [4 favorites]
I really want the video link. Not that I want to torture my family and friends or anything.
posted by theora55 at 10:02 AM on February 15, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by theora55 at 10:02 AM on February 15, 2018 [8 favorites]
We’ve come to accept non-chronological feeds in our social media.
No.
posted by ckape at 10:10 AM on February 15, 2018 [140 favorites]
No.
posted by ckape at 10:10 AM on February 15, 2018 [140 favorites]
I have a friend whose job is to 'crack the social media feed' - she's a content manager for a bunch of brands and runs their social media accounts
she's since used this skill to get herself a bunch of free shit on the internet from other companies who run contests for their followers - most recently she won a free wedding dress, shower, and videographer for her upcoming wedding by curating a perfect Instagram photoset of her and her fiancé that she hashtagged with some bridal company's contest tag
internet famous people do this all the time and for reasons beyond just posting a video. I like that a Buzzfeed writer wanted to reveal the secret sauce to the rest of us - now it's just a matter of how we want to use it. I just hope the people using it are less Logan Paul and more my friend who has dealt with one too many rich, white manchildren who fancy themselves successful CEOs, whose money is intergenerational and made off the backs of much more talented folks than themselves
posted by runt at 10:10 AM on February 15, 2018 [4 favorites]
she's since used this skill to get herself a bunch of free shit on the internet from other companies who run contests for their followers - most recently she won a free wedding dress, shower, and videographer for her upcoming wedding by curating a perfect Instagram photoset of her and her fiancé that she hashtagged with some bridal company's contest tag
internet famous people do this all the time and for reasons beyond just posting a video. I like that a Buzzfeed writer wanted to reveal the secret sauce to the rest of us - now it's just a matter of how we want to use it. I just hope the people using it are less Logan Paul and more my friend who has dealt with one too many rich, white manchildren who fancy themselves successful CEOs, whose money is intergenerational and made off the backs of much more talented folks than themselves
posted by runt at 10:10 AM on February 15, 2018 [4 favorites]
We’ve come to accept non-chronological feeds in our social media.
No.
I'm still pissed that twitter moved to this a while ago.
posted by drezdn at 10:13 AM on February 15, 2018 [19 favorites]
Back in my blogging days, I wrote a post that was simply "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King tickets go on sale tomorrow at noon! I'm so excited!"
My friends managed to get into a stupid argument about something in the comments, so the page was being updated every minute or so.
At the time, Google's algorithm really liked frequently updated pages and ranked them highly in their search results.
So when people started Googling "Lord of the Rings tickets" or "Return of the Kings tickets" guess whose blog came up?
Those people left comments asking where to buy tickets, which meant the page continued to be updated every few minutes.
And that's how my silly little personal blog ended up being the #1 hit on Google for two weeks for people trying to buy tickets to that movie.
(I ended up editing the post to direct people to either Fandango or MovieTickets.com. Sadly, this was before I knew about affiliate links, or I could have made bank.)
posted by Jacqueline at 10:15 AM on February 15, 2018 [47 favorites]
My friends managed to get into a stupid argument about something in the comments, so the page was being updated every minute or so.
At the time, Google's algorithm really liked frequently updated pages and ranked them highly in their search results.
So when people started Googling "Lord of the Rings tickets" or "Return of the Kings tickets" guess whose blog came up?
Those people left comments asking where to buy tickets, which meant the page continued to be updated every few minutes.
And that's how my silly little personal blog ended up being the #1 hit on Google for two weeks for people trying to buy tickets to that movie.
(I ended up editing the post to direct people to either Fandango or MovieTickets.com. Sadly, this was before I knew about affiliate links, or I could have made bank.)
posted by Jacqueline at 10:15 AM on February 15, 2018 [47 favorites]
drezdn: "I'm still pissed that twitter moved to this a while ago."
I gave up trying to make sense of Twitter a while ago but I'm freshly pissed that Instagram has gotten more and more algorithmic in the last year or two.
posted by octothorpe at 10:17 AM on February 15, 2018 [7 favorites]
I gave up trying to make sense of Twitter a while ago but I'm freshly pissed that Instagram has gotten more and more algorithmic in the last year or two.
posted by octothorpe at 10:17 AM on February 15, 2018 [7 favorites]
Is it just me, or did that article about what happened, not actually describe what happened?
posted by humboldt32 at 10:19 AM on February 15, 2018 [9 favorites]
posted by humboldt32 at 10:19 AM on February 15, 2018 [9 favorites]
A couple years back I started using "fbpurity.com", a freeware extension that lets you customize and filter Facebook - including, doing things like screening out the stupid "pokes" and game requests, killing the animated "likes", turning off the colorblock on text posts, and (gasp) making the "most recent posts first" the default sorting order for your feed.
they do a pretty good job of catching the stupid when Facebook dishes it up and adding it to the code so you can adapt with it. Facebook really doesn't like it - each time I make a post on Facebook recommending it, it gets blocked by Facebook itself for being "dangerous". But I've had no problems with it (at least not major ones; there is another extension that doesn't play nice with it and it doesn't always automatically switch to most-recent-first feed, but I can manually adjust that when it doesn't kick in and it's fine).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:24 AM on February 15, 2018 [23 favorites]
they do a pretty good job of catching the stupid when Facebook dishes it up and adding it to the code so you can adapt with it. Facebook really doesn't like it - each time I make a post on Facebook recommending it, it gets blocked by Facebook itself for being "dangerous". But I've had no problems with it (at least not major ones; there is another extension that doesn't play nice with it and it doesn't always automatically switch to most-recent-first feed, but I can manually adjust that when it doesn't kick in and it's fine).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:24 AM on February 15, 2018 [23 favorites]
If you're using FB on the desktop, click on the ellipsis next to News Feed at the top of the left column, and choose "Most Recent." Since FB doesn't really want you to flaunt the algorithm, "most recent" view still doesn't give you everyone's posts, and if you refresh it will switch back to the default "Top Stories" view more often than not. And new comments will push posts back up to the top. But at least what you do see is in chronological order, and the post-that-will-not-die problem seems to be lessened.
posted by me3dia at 10:24 AM on February 15, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by me3dia at 10:24 AM on February 15, 2018 [4 favorites]
Related to annoying things about Twitter: Does anyone know if it's possible to mute a specific conversation in your feed without having to mute the person or people participating in it? Day-long threads with constant little updates are the bane of my Twitter existence.
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:27 AM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Atom Eyes at 10:27 AM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
Does anyone know if it's possible to mute a specific conversation in your feed without having to mute the person or people participating in it?
On the first tweet of the thread click the timestamp to go to the tweet itself, hit the dropdown menu that looks like a "V" and click "mute this conversation." This should stop the notifications about that thread.
posted by griphus at 10:31 AM on February 15, 2018 [8 favorites]
On the first tweet of the thread click the timestamp to go to the tweet itself, hit the dropdown menu that looks like a "V" and click "mute this conversation." This should stop the notifications about that thread.
posted by griphus at 10:31 AM on February 15, 2018 [8 favorites]
People are being served the same stale content from a friend for 12 days straight, just because it happens to have a lot of comments. No one wanted to see my post several times a day, but the algorithm had, once again, misjudged what people want. In fact, people really hated this video — they wanted it to go away. Facebook took their pleas for it to stop as a sign that they should be shown it more and more.
For those who wanna jump straight to the action twitteryoutubegooglesearch style.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:32 AM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
For those who wanna jump straight to the action twitteryoutubegooglesearch style.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:32 AM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
For Twiiter, let me once again recommend lists. I basically never look at my default feed, I just look at the lists I've made. Pure chronological order, and oddly, no ads. You can even break out the people you want to follow by subject - I have one for my friends, one for politics, one for science, etc.
posted by tavella at 10:33 AM on February 15, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by tavella at 10:33 AM on February 15, 2018 [6 favorites]
Also Tweetdeck is a first-party Twitter interface that's still serving tweets chronologically. Plus no ads (still promoted tweets though.)
Now if they only fixed turning off RTs.
posted by griphus at 10:34 AM on February 15, 2018 [4 favorites]
Now if they only fixed turning off RTs.
posted by griphus at 10:34 AM on February 15, 2018 [4 favorites]
Social Fixer has greatly decreased my engagement with Facebook. In addition to ad blocking, it do other things like hide stories that only show up because a friend liked something or commented on it. I see original posts from friends (without those stupid background effects) and that's about it. I also use it to block memory posts and 'trending' stories.
posted by jedicus at 10:36 AM on February 15, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by jedicus at 10:36 AM on February 15, 2018 [8 favorites]
If you're using FB on the desktop, click on the ellipsis next to News Feed at the top of the left column, and choose "Most Recent."
No. This is broken too. What gets surfaced is still algorithmically chosen, just ordered by date.
Also, neat trick - if you hide enough posts, FB will give up and keep showing the hidden ones to you anyway, rather than surfacing what you haven't yet seen.
Also, hidden posts are not synced between mobile and the desktop.
The FB news feed is broken. Badly fucking broken.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 10:49 AM on February 15, 2018 [21 favorites]
No. This is broken too. What gets surfaced is still algorithmically chosen, just ordered by date.
Also, neat trick - if you hide enough posts, FB will give up and keep showing the hidden ones to you anyway, rather than surfacing what you haven't yet seen.
Also, hidden posts are not synced between mobile and the desktop.
The FB news feed is broken. Badly fucking broken.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 10:49 AM on February 15, 2018 [21 favorites]
If you're using FB on the desktop, click on the ellipsis next to News Feed at the top of the left column, and choose "Most Recent."
No. This is broken too. What gets surfaced is still algorithmically chosen, just ordered by date.
It's not sticky either, it reverts back the default the next time you log in.
posted by octothorpe at 10:53 AM on February 15, 2018 [5 favorites]
No. This is broken too. What gets surfaced is still algorithmically chosen, just ordered by date.
It's not sticky either, it reverts back the default the next time you log in.
posted by octothorpe at 10:53 AM on February 15, 2018 [5 favorites]
Right now, it seems that FB really likes to surface things with a lot of comments, so my friends have all taken to these, "Question of the day! What is your favorite thing about X?" (or something like it) and the feed gets SO CLOGGED DOWN with people responding to it. I mean, the conversation is fine, but it's like being in an endless icebreaker game at a conference.
posted by xingcat at 11:00 AM on February 15, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by xingcat at 11:00 AM on February 15, 2018 [3 favorites]
Periodic reminder that
https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr
will take you straight to the "most recent" page, which as has been noted isn't really quite the most recent posts or comments but at least is closer to it. Not not bullshitty, but less bullshitty.
At least on chrome, if you use this consistently a few times it will pop up as the autocomplete so just fa[enter] works then
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:09 AM on February 15, 2018 [2 favorites]
https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr
will take you straight to the "most recent" page, which as has been noted isn't really quite the most recent posts or comments but at least is closer to it. Not not bullshitty, but less bullshitty.
At least on chrome, if you use this consistently a few times it will pop up as the autocomplete so just fa[enter] works then
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:09 AM on February 15, 2018 [2 favorites]
In FB what I did is make a list- this will show you just those people's posts in the right order, and not stuff they clicked "like" on. I only have people on there who actually say stuff and/or post photos, and I remove people who only share junk. I have the list bookmarked so I don't even look at my regular news feed.
posted by bleep at 11:21 AM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by bleep at 11:21 AM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
My biggest take away from this article is that now I want to see that decorating video. Could the writer possibly have gone from trolling her friends by forcing them to see that video for days (item: don't they know how "hide post" works?) to trolling us by making us want to see it, while withholding it?
posted by orange swan at 11:22 AM on February 15, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by orange swan at 11:22 AM on February 15, 2018 [3 favorites]
bunch of nooooooobs
best of the web and don't know how to find a viral video on the web
noooooooooooooooooooooobs
Microstudio viral video
(granted it's Manhattan's Upper West Side and not Brooklyn, but pretty darn sure this is it.)
posted by fraula at 11:27 AM on February 15, 2018 [7 favorites]
best of the web and don't know how to find a viral video on the web
noooooooooooooooooooooobs
Microstudio viral video
(granted it's Manhattan's Upper West Side and not Brooklyn, but pretty darn sure this is it.)
posted by fraula at 11:27 AM on February 15, 2018 [7 favorites]
Could the writer possibly have gone from trolling her friends by forcing them to see that video for days (item: don't they know how "hide post" works?) to trolling us by making us want to see it, while withholding it?
She gave an explanation for this on Twitter:
— how are you gonna publish this article without a link to see the video, katie???
I chose not to because it’s making fun of an innocent person. Fine for my private friends list but not for BuzzFeed
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:28 AM on February 15, 2018 [5 favorites]
She gave an explanation for this on Twitter:
— how are you gonna publish this article without a link to see the video, katie???
I chose not to because it’s making fun of an innocent person. Fine for my private friends list but not for BuzzFeed
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:28 AM on February 15, 2018 [5 favorites]
i just made fun of a bunch of innocent people
a bunch of innocent NOOB people
(but yeah we're not BuzzFeed :) )
posted by fraula at 11:29 AM on February 15, 2018 [3 favorites]
a bunch of innocent NOOB people
(but yeah we're not BuzzFeed :) )
posted by fraula at 11:29 AM on February 15, 2018 [3 favorites]
No. This is broken too. What gets surfaced is still algorithmically chosen, just ordered by date.
It's not sticky either, it reverts back the default the next time you log in.
...Both of which I noted in the half of my comment you didn't read. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by me3dia at 11:40 AM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
It's not sticky either, it reverts back the default the next time you log in.
...Both of which I noted in the half of my comment you didn't read. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by me3dia at 11:40 AM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
There's more to the story!
"I got evicted because of all the media attention"
"I got evicted because of all the media attention"
Today the video has had nearly 5 million views. Thanks to all the attention, Felice's landlord discovered she wasn't on the lease and evicted her (well, gave her the option to pay double the rent). Felice considered staying and paying $1300 or $1400 per month for her miniscule space, but then decided to listen to her grandparents who insisted that it was time to buy.posted by Miko at 11:53 AM on February 15, 2018 [11 favorites]
Sounds more like she got evicted for squatting? But, sure, blame it on "all the media attention".
We’ve come to accept non-chronological feeds in our social media.
No.
The number of people who still use these godforsaken services speaks for itself, and it says "hell yes".
posted by tobascodagama at 11:57 AM on February 15, 2018 [3 favorites]
We’ve come to accept non-chronological feeds in our social media.
No.
The number of people who still use these godforsaken services speaks for itself, and it says "hell yes".
posted by tobascodagama at 11:57 AM on February 15, 2018 [3 favorites]
Has Facebook ever tried just asking you what kind of thing you want to see more of? An "I want to see more of this kind of post" button? Or has it always been focused on what it thinks everybody wants to see?
posted by clawsoon at 11:58 AM on February 15, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 11:58 AM on February 15, 2018 [2 favorites]
30 comments already? I better RTFA and open up the thread to see what all the hubbub is about.
posted by notyou at 12:03 PM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by notyou at 12:03 PM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
Has Facebook ever tried just asking you what kind of thing you want to see more of? An "I want to see more of this kind of post" button? Or has it always been focused on what it thinks everybody wants to see?
Yes, in the post menu thingy where you can unfollow people etc. there's a "see fewer posts like this" item. The "Like" button and commenting serve as "show me more of this" buttons.
posted by rhizome at 12:07 PM on February 15, 2018 [2 favorites]
Yes, in the post menu thingy where you can unfollow people etc. there's a "see fewer posts like this" item. The "Like" button and commenting serve as "show me more of this" buttons.
posted by rhizome at 12:07 PM on February 15, 2018 [2 favorites]
Also Tweetdeck is a first-party Twitter interface that's still serving tweets chronologically.
but it's like, aggressively chronological such that you don't see replies as threaded conversations, the replies are just thrown into your feed whenever they are made and you have no idea what they are replies to. which is just as bad as the problem it is meant to be correcting.
however if it blocks me from seeing everyone's likes i may give it another shot
posted by poffin boffin at 12:07 PM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
but it's like, aggressively chronological such that you don't see replies as threaded conversations, the replies are just thrown into your feed whenever they are made and you have no idea what they are replies to. which is just as bad as the problem it is meant to be correcting.
however if it blocks me from seeing everyone's likes i may give it another shot
posted by poffin boffin at 12:07 PM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
In the last month or so fb has been reinserting previously read posts in most recent a la Groundhog day....when one expects to be able to scroll down to the last read post. >:-(
posted by brujita at 12:10 PM on February 15, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by brujita at 12:10 PM on February 15, 2018 [2 favorites]
"Show me stuff similar to this" is the like button. And it's open to abuse. (Now, if you like too many pages too quickly, they'll block the feature, because it's considered "abuse" to like everything on your feed.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:27 PM on February 15, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:27 PM on February 15, 2018 [2 favorites]
Has Facebook ever tried just asking you what kind of thing you want to see more of?
It seems like you think you're the customer!
posted by Miko at 12:28 PM on February 15, 2018 [24 favorites]
It seems like you think you're the customer!
posted by Miko at 12:28 PM on February 15, 2018 [24 favorites]
The best is when Twitter pushes some algorithm-driven bullshit at you ("While You Were Away", "You May Also Like", etc.) and the only option they give you for making it go away is "See less of this kind of thing" instead of "Burn this with fire."
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:33 PM on February 15, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:33 PM on February 15, 2018 [3 favorites]
We’ve come to accept non-chronological feeds in our social media.
I have a GREAT idea for a Metafilter April Fool's joke...
posted by Therapeutic Amputations at 12:34 PM on February 15, 2018 [26 favorites]
I have a GREAT idea for a Metafilter April Fool's joke...
posted by Therapeutic Amputations at 12:34 PM on February 15, 2018 [26 favorites]
rhizome: Yes, in the post menu thingy where you can unfollow people etc. there's a "see fewer posts like this" item. The "Like" button and commenting serve as "show me more of this" buttons.
So they ask you what you want... but do they listen?
posted by clawsoon at 12:37 PM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
So they ask you what you want... but do they listen?
posted by clawsoon at 12:37 PM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
I have a GREAT idea for a Metafilter April Fool's joke...
Don't. You. Dare.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 12:53 PM on February 15, 2018 [14 favorites]
Don't. You. Dare.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 12:53 PM on February 15, 2018 [14 favorites]
So, the "cracked code" is posting content that drives engagement via comments? That's bonkers!
posted by defenestration at 1:05 PM on February 15, 2018
posted by defenestration at 1:05 PM on February 15, 2018
"While You Were Away"
WE'RE NEVER AWAY
THE INTERNET IS IN OUR POCKETS ALWAYS
I HATE YOU TWITTER
posted by poffin boffin at 1:11 PM on February 15, 2018 [8 favorites]
WE'RE NEVER AWAY
THE INTERNET IS IN OUR POCKETS ALWAYS
I HATE YOU TWITTER
posted by poffin boffin at 1:11 PM on February 15, 2018 [8 favorites]
but do they listen?
Absolutely, but what they hear is open to interpretation.
posted by rhizome at 1:12 PM on February 15, 2018
Absolutely, but what they hear is open to interpretation.
posted by rhizome at 1:12 PM on February 15, 2018
While you were away
Nothing of consequence occurred.
Here's a detailed re-cap...
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:14 PM on February 15, 2018
Nothing of consequence occurred.
Here's a detailed re-cap...
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:14 PM on February 15, 2018
If you're using FB on the desktop, click on the ellipsis next to News Feed at the top of the left column, and choose "Most Recent."
No. This is broken too. What gets surfaced is still algorithmically chosen, just ordered by date.
The best way I found so far (which is not 100% foolproof, but a huge improvement) is to mark every single friend of yours as "Close Friends" -- then the algorithm tends to show you nearly every post of theirs.
1. Use FB Purity, have it default to chronological order
2. Mark *every* friend as a close friend
3. ???
4. Profit
posted by tclark at 1:17 PM on February 15, 2018
No. This is broken too. What gets surfaced is still algorithmically chosen, just ordered by date.
The best way I found so far (which is not 100% foolproof, but a huge improvement) is to mark every single friend of yours as "Close Friends" -- then the algorithm tends to show you nearly every post of theirs.
1. Use FB Purity, have it default to chronological order
2. Mark *every* friend as a close friend
3. ???
4. Profit
posted by tclark at 1:17 PM on February 15, 2018
*reads through all these sure-fire ways to get facebook to mostly show actual posts by friends in mostly-chronological order*
*sips a cup of tea with the quietly superior look of someone who has been giving up for-profit "social networks" designed to serve as many ads as possible for the people's glorious social network*
Throw off your chains, citizens. You have nothing to lose but conversations with that one racist uncle back home.
posted by egypturnash at 1:31 PM on February 15, 2018 [12 favorites]
*sips a cup of tea with the quietly superior look of someone who has been giving up for-profit "social networks" designed to serve as many ads as possible for the people's glorious social network*
Throw off your chains, citizens. You have nothing to lose but conversations with that one racist uncle back home.
posted by egypturnash at 1:31 PM on February 15, 2018 [12 favorites]
The FB news feed is broken.
Broken? No. I think it's working exactly as Facebook intends it to.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 1:48 PM on February 15, 2018 [4 favorites]
Broken? No. I think it's working exactly as Facebook intends it to.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 1:48 PM on February 15, 2018 [4 favorites]
I have taken the opposite approach with Facebook. I unfriended everybody except my wife and kids. My wall frequently is the same few posts for days at a time. If I want to see what is happening in a friend's life I click through to their wall and catch up on my terms. It's reduced my FB usage 95%, and I swear I haven't missed anything important since I started this last September. It turns out vacation photos are still interesting 1 week after they were posted. Who knew?
posted by COD at 2:00 PM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by COD at 2:00 PM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
Throw off your chains, citizens. You have nothing to lose but conversations with that one racist uncle back home.
I joined a few Mastodon instances a while ago but I don't know anyone else on there so anything I post is just yelling into the wind.
posted by octothorpe at 2:09 PM on February 15, 2018 [4 favorites]
I joined a few Mastodon instances a while ago but I don't know anyone else on there so anything I post is just yelling into the wind.
posted by octothorpe at 2:09 PM on February 15, 2018 [4 favorites]
Here's what I see using the official Twitter phone app:
"Ten or fifteen tweets from yesterday because Twitter prefers to be manually refreshed*
WHILE YOU WERE AWAY...
"a bunch of tweets from yesterday, many of which are the same ones I scrolled through*
"as I keep scrolling, I see repeats of both the first batch of tweets I saw, plus many of the tweets I was shown in While I was Away"
"Twitter stops loading more tweets and shows me a little dot at about 10:00 yesterday morning, because I couldn't possibly want to see anything from the day before yesterday"
I think they're trying to tell me I don't follow enough people. I have made sure I'm not just seeing retweets of the same content by different users; I'll see the same top-level, original content, tweets over and over until I'm not allowed to see any more Tweets at all. I started using a non-Twitter twitter app called Plume because it would just show me things chronologically, although it has the same problem about going back further in time becoming impossible. Maybe I'm just not Twitter Target Market material.
posted by AzraelBrown at 2:20 PM on February 15, 2018
"Ten or fifteen tweets from yesterday because Twitter prefers to be manually refreshed*
WHILE YOU WERE AWAY...
"a bunch of tweets from yesterday, many of which are the same ones I scrolled through*
"as I keep scrolling, I see repeats of both the first batch of tweets I saw, plus many of the tweets I was shown in While I was Away"
"Twitter stops loading more tweets and shows me a little dot at about 10:00 yesterday morning, because I couldn't possibly want to see anything from the day before yesterday"
I think they're trying to tell me I don't follow enough people. I have made sure I'm not just seeing retweets of the same content by different users; I'll see the same top-level, original content, tweets over and over until I'm not allowed to see any more Tweets at all. I started using a non-Twitter twitter app called Plume because it would just show me things chronologically, although it has the same problem about going back further in time becoming impossible. Maybe I'm just not Twitter Target Market material.
posted by AzraelBrown at 2:20 PM on February 15, 2018
I unfriended everybody except my wife and kids.
Ugh. Missed the edit window. That should be unfollowed, not unfriended.
posted by COD at 2:23 PM on February 15, 2018 [2 favorites]
Ugh. Missed the edit window. That should be unfollowed, not unfriended.
posted by COD at 2:23 PM on February 15, 2018 [2 favorites]
I didn't delete my Facebook, because I want to talk to my Swedish cousins easily, but I have entirely cut down my usage of it over the past few months to only using it to talk to them every once in a while. Now, whenever I get on it it's random notifications like "so-and-so friend posted an update" or emails saying "did you see this post from so-and-so?" or "so-and-so added a new photo". It also badgers me to turn on notifications, same as Messenger and Instagram.
posted by gucci mane at 2:31 PM on February 15, 2018
posted by gucci mane at 2:31 PM on February 15, 2018
Tip: Go to Twitter options > Uncheck "Show the best Tweets first" which puts things more chronologically.
posted by hexaflexagon at 3:11 PM on February 15, 2018
posted by hexaflexagon at 3:11 PM on February 15, 2018
that does nothing. it absolutely does nothing. it is a pretend button to make you think something is being done. every setting offered to stop seeing things out of order, stop seeing likes, stop seeing adverts, they are all fucking lies.
posted by poffin boffin at 3:17 PM on February 15, 2018 [14 favorites]
posted by poffin boffin at 3:17 PM on February 15, 2018 [14 favorites]
the best thing you can do for your twitter experience, if you're someone who likes twitter, is to use a 3rd-party client. their public API doesn't include promoted tweets and doesn't shuffle things out of chronological order, so you get basically what twitter used to be (modulo the actual content, but that's a different discussion). the only downsides are you've got to spend a couple of bucks, and you don't get group DMs because they're not in the public API either.
posted by russm at 4:22 PM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by russm at 4:22 PM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
I wonder how difficult it would be to write a browser extension or something that visits your friends' pages and builds a comprehensive, chronological list of posts and updates from the people you actually want to see things about then dumps it all into an html document that you can read whenever you want. It could work silently (and somewhat randomly, to avoid detection) in the background while you're doing other stuff. Would this be possible? (Even if it is, my own coding skills would sadly not be up to the task.)
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 5:36 PM on February 15, 2018
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 5:36 PM on February 15, 2018
A Thousand Baited Hooks, something like that would be possible, but it'd be flaky and unreliable.
Developers can pull information about Facebook users, pages, etc. from the Graph API. However, it seems that (because Facebook is terribly concerned about users' privacy) it's not possible to access your friends' posts via the API.
So, you'd have to resort to screen-scraping – which is inherently unreliable. And whenever Facebook changes something (which they do constantly), it would break your app, and you would have to tweak it to compensate.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:09 PM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
Developers can pull information about Facebook users, pages, etc. from the Graph API. However, it seems that (because Facebook is terribly concerned about users' privacy) it's not possible to access your friends' posts via the API.
So, you'd have to resort to screen-scraping – which is inherently unreliable. And whenever Facebook changes something (which they do constantly), it would break your app, and you would have to tweak it to compensate.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:09 PM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
Ah, I thought that might be the case. Oh well.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 6:37 PM on February 15, 2018
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 6:37 PM on February 15, 2018
My guess is that the video is one of these (either episode 4 or 8).
posted by evidenceofabsence at 7:12 PM on February 15, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by evidenceofabsence at 7:12 PM on February 15, 2018 [2 favorites]
The number of people who still use these godforsaken services speaks for itself, and it says "hell yes"
I feel like this was just addressed in people's comments on another social media post here earlier this week. There are many reasons people continue to use these services that have nothing to do with approving of the bullshit that is non-chronological feeds.
Tip: Go to Twitter options > Uncheck "Show the best Tweets first" which puts things more chronologically. ...
that does nothing. it absolutely does nothing. it is a pretend button to make you think something is being done. every setting offered to stop seeing things out of order, stop seeing likes, stop seeing adverts, they are all fucking lies.
Yepppp. I've unchecked that since it was an option, and while it may have done a thing at first, it definitely no longer does much of anything that I can tell. Along these lines, I've been periodically tracking what Twitter thinks I like over the past few months. A while back, it would show me a short section of cat-photo posts before other content. Then it started adding a second section of cats. Then it started to add in sunset photos. Then it apparently realized I like birds and surrealist art, 'cause now I see a whole lot of that too. This is all OK, but it also means I never see posts by my actual friends, or really anyone I know, for that matter. I keep meaning to take some time to curate a Twitter list of people whose posts I actually care about, but it's a lot of work to go back through nearly 1,500 accounts I follow at this point to figure that out. This is basically in the same category as the massive personal Gmail inbox labeling-and-archiving effort I keep meaning to undertake, you know, in my spare time, because I've subscribed to so many "newsletters" inadvertently by buying something that at this point my inbox is almost unusable. I tried Unroll.me, and not only did it not help, they apparently also sold my info (along with everyone else's) to Uber.
This new internet kinda sucks sometimes.
posted by limeonaire at 7:19 PM on February 15, 2018 [6 favorites]
I feel like this was just addressed in people's comments on another social media post here earlier this week. There are many reasons people continue to use these services that have nothing to do with approving of the bullshit that is non-chronological feeds.
Tip: Go to Twitter options > Uncheck "Show the best Tweets first" which puts things more chronologically. ...
that does nothing. it absolutely does nothing. it is a pretend button to make you think something is being done. every setting offered to stop seeing things out of order, stop seeing likes, stop seeing adverts, they are all fucking lies.
Yepppp. I've unchecked that since it was an option, and while it may have done a thing at first, it definitely no longer does much of anything that I can tell. Along these lines, I've been periodically tracking what Twitter thinks I like over the past few months. A while back, it would show me a short section of cat-photo posts before other content. Then it started adding a second section of cats. Then it started to add in sunset photos. Then it apparently realized I like birds and surrealist art, 'cause now I see a whole lot of that too. This is all OK, but it also means I never see posts by my actual friends, or really anyone I know, for that matter. I keep meaning to take some time to curate a Twitter list of people whose posts I actually care about, but it's a lot of work to go back through nearly 1,500 accounts I follow at this point to figure that out. This is basically in the same category as the massive personal Gmail inbox labeling-and-archiving effort I keep meaning to undertake, you know, in my spare time, because I've subscribed to so many "newsletters" inadvertently by buying something that at this point my inbox is almost unusable. I tried Unroll.me, and not only did it not help, they apparently also sold my info (along with everyone else's) to Uber.
This new internet kinda sucks sometimes.
posted by limeonaire at 7:19 PM on February 15, 2018 [6 favorites]
Mine is mostly cats which is fine, no complaints about that. But I'm also subscribed to various alert pages which facebook always shows about 22 hours after they were posted. So I know there was a major accident on the highway yesterday, or that a bushfire was closing in on X town (where I may or may not know people) yesterday. Obviously I'm not relying on facebook for life and death things, but it'd be kind of nice to get the major train delay notifications while I'm on the train and not 24 hours later. If I wanted to read yesterday's news I'd go to the library and read yesterday's paper, like I did back in the 90s when life was slower.
posted by kitten magic at 7:59 PM on February 15, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by kitten magic at 7:59 PM on February 15, 2018 [4 favorites]
evidenceofabsence, It's got to be episode 8, right? A grim, meathook future awaits us all.
posted by smammy at 9:44 PM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by smammy at 9:44 PM on February 15, 2018 [1 favorite]
Sorry I'ma interrupt this for one moment to applaud fraula for digging out the video. Which gave me my inspirational quote for the day:
And after that night I never had a panic attack again.
posted by tirutiru at 2:44 AM on February 16, 2018
And after that night I never had a panic attack again.
posted by tirutiru at 2:44 AM on February 16, 2018
I chose not to because it’s making fun of an innocent person. Fine for my private friends list but not for BuzzFeed
Interestingly, what this comment says is that the person saying it has no problem with making fun of innocent people.
posted by Grangousier at 4:03 AM on February 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
Interestingly, what this comment says is that the person saying it has no problem with making fun of innocent people.
posted by Grangousier at 4:03 AM on February 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
I would love to try a person-centric view rather than a content-centric view. In other words, show a nice list of people who have posted new/unread stuff. I can choose one person, see what they said, and respond. My guess is that this might encourage personal interaction, longer-running conversations, and reduce feed burnout. I'd love to try this with email too. For example, to me twitter is just a firehose, and I often realize I haven't actually absorbed anything I've read. And I don't follow too much. All current social/communication systems (Facebook, Twitter, email, forums, even RSS/blog feed readers) are focused on the idea of distributing and collating messages, and then any consideration of user experience takes the "feed view is primary" assumption, and it is just a matter of how to display and scroll through the message feed.
Has anyone used a twitter interface, or email client, or similar that takes this alternate approach, or has several different equal views, rather than just "river of messages"?
posted by thefool at 7:28 AM on February 16, 2018
Has anyone used a twitter interface, or email client, or similar that takes this alternate approach, or has several different equal views, rather than just "river of messages"?
posted by thefool at 7:28 AM on February 16, 2018
Has anyone used a twitter interface, or email client, or similar that takes this alternate approach
You can approximate this in Facebook. Click on your friends' list, then click on "New Posts" and you'll get a list of friends with new posts you haven't seen. Then you can click on each friends wall to see the posts and interact. I do it by opening a tab for each friends' wall, and I can quickly check in and catch up in about 30 minutes a week, then mostly ignore Facebook until I decide to do it again.
posted by COD at 8:22 AM on February 16, 2018 [1 favorite]
You can approximate this in Facebook. Click on your friends' list, then click on "New Posts" and you'll get a list of friends with new posts you haven't seen. Then you can click on each friends wall to see the posts and interact. I do it by opening a tab for each friends' wall, and I can quickly check in and catch up in about 30 minutes a week, then mostly ignore Facebook until I decide to do it again.
posted by COD at 8:22 AM on February 16, 2018 [1 favorite]
Ah, thanks COD. Looks like you can go to or bookmark http://www.facebook.com/YOURPROFILENAME/friends_with_unseen_posts ... So kudos to the engineers who designed that aspect! I would love to see stuff like that a co-equal primary view rather than buried like that. You can also put friends in lists on FB and see feeds filtered by that (but still a post-stream), and similarly in Twitter (I may experiement there with lists + tweetdeck to make it less of a stream and more organized.) Would love to see similar flexible views in email though, I try to carry on periodic correspondence with people (every few months) but its easy to forget, best I can do is put gmail contacts into a "keep in touch" category and manually check for when the most recent message from them was.
posted by thefool at 9:34 AM on February 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by thefool at 9:34 AM on February 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
I'm a FB friend with the author and I was wondering why that goddamn video kept showing up.
posted by josher71 at 9:36 AM on February 16, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by josher71 at 9:36 AM on February 16, 2018 [8 favorites]
josher71, can you confirm that it's the same video as the one fraula linked to above? Because I keep thinking it may very well not be that one.
posted by orange swan at 4:17 PM on February 17, 2018
posted by orange swan at 4:17 PM on February 17, 2018
Ah hah, I thought it wasn't the one fraula linked to, with the woman who lived in tiny office space in Manhattan. Her video demonstrated a reasonably creative and practical use of space, and while I might have arranged that space differently or more interestingly, I wouldn't have called her efforts bland or uninteresting or expect her video to get much negative feedback. Also, not only was the location wrong (Manhattan, not Brooklyn), the length of the video was also wrong (just over five minutes instead of six).
The woman in the video for the Brooklyn apartment is preening herself obnoxiously on her imaginative decorating arrangements when her decorating and use of space is as boring and obvious as decorating gets. I can definitely understand why it irritated everyone who saw it -- and kept seeing it.
posted by orange swan at 1:44 PM on February 25, 2018
The woman in the video for the Brooklyn apartment is preening herself obnoxiously on her imaginative decorating arrangements when her decorating and use of space is as boring and obvious as decorating gets. I can definitely understand why it irritated everyone who saw it -- and kept seeing it.
posted by orange swan at 1:44 PM on February 25, 2018
By the way, the microstudio apartment video has appeared on the blue before in its own FPP, and the tone of the resulting thread was pretty mild. Post that other one and it would probably get deleted.
posted by orange swan at 2:05 PM on February 25, 2018
posted by orange swan at 2:05 PM on February 25, 2018
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posted by ejoey at 9:52 AM on February 15, 2018 [8 favorites]