Facebook’s Widely Viewed Content Report is strange

srswtf123 2021-08-19 02:44:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The question I’ve been asking myself since skimming through the report earlier is this: Why should I take Facebook at their word for anything?

If the data is publicly available, then it can be verified. But until then, I don’t believe Facebook have the credibility to be taken seriously.

AlexandrB 2021-08-19 14:13:48 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Whenever a company releases a report like this it should be treated as marketing copy. I'm sure it's "true" in the sense that the data matches the report, but the relevant metrics and methodology was chosen such that the result reflects well on Facebook - otherwise this would not have been released.

The first sentence of the overview gives away the game:

> Transparency is an important part of everything we do at Facebook.

This is a marketing statement, not a statement of fact.

tomc1985 2021-08-19 03:55:49 +0000 UTC [ - ]

This. Facebook has a proven track record of saying whatever the hell people want to hear to feel good about Facebook. To say nothing of the fact that this report seems to omit ad views and those are occupying an increasingly large portion of peoples' feeds

wodenokoto 2021-08-19 08:19:10 +0000 UTC [ - ]

If you don’t believe summary statistics of the data, why would you believe the data?

If you think Facebook is lying in the report, why wouldn’t they lie if releasing the data?

argvargc 2021-08-19 08:29:08 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It's one thing to fake or massage a summary, it's an entirely different thing to fake the whole data set. This divergence increases based on the amount of data.

Your question is essentially equivalent to: "If you don't believe what the politician said about the event, why would you believe the video recording of it?"

rdiddly 2021-08-19 14:48:43 +0000 UTC [ - ]

If the politician is holding the camera and editing the footage, it's a valid question.

Anyway you wouldn't need to fake a whole data set; you just need to employ a little bias in what data you choose to collect, how you collect it, how you process it and how you present it. Those things happen all the time. Or on an only slightly more extreme level, you could also selectively censor it using automation. People are used to thinking data is truth, but even the best data is always filtered through a human source.

argvargc 2021-08-19 16:39:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Were the first point accurate, it would instantly become not so upon recognition of the existence of the concept of delegation.

The point about selectively choosing data, how to process it, etc is important, and often overlooked. People are accustomed to working with what they're given, but objectivity may be a step further back.

Regardless, such things can only be better revealed by providing the data.

If the goal is greater illumination, there is simply no argument to be made against greater transparency.

Taylor_OD 2021-08-19 14:02:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It's also easier for someone to figure out they are faking it if they actually released the data. Or at the very least say, "Some of this data seems off"

dalbasal 2021-08-19 11:32:39 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Convention, basically.

Releasing fraudulent data is different, culturally and legally, to releasing a powerpoint-style report summarizing curated "key points," selected, defined and quantified in a non transparent way.

Every year, public companies release annual reports. Hundreds of pages of largely BS. A few dozen pages of real financial data.

It's not uncommon for a page 1 chart of the company's market share, provided by a 3rd party to be total nonsense. The page 114 figure summarizing tax liabilities needs to be auditable. That's part way to transparent. Not everyone can see the data, but someone can.

enkid 2021-08-19 12:59:22 +0000 UTC [ - ]

There are a lot more techniques to see if a large data set has been altered than a summary.

yupper32 2021-08-19 04:10:10 +0000 UTC [ - ]

What would they be hiding?

If they wanted to hide any data, why not simply not post it?

notatoad 2021-08-19 05:48:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The first couple paragraphs of the linked article lay out pretty clearly what they are hiding: the "facebooktop10" Twitter account publishes a list of the ten most shared posts every day, and it's always dominated by Dan Bongino, Ben Shapiro, and Tucker Carlson.

Facebook doesn't want to be seen as a platform for sharing bigotry and misinformation, so they are releasing this report to counter the data aggregated by facebooktop10.

Tenoke 2021-08-19 06:34:51 +0000 UTC [ - ]

That account posts the top 10 links shared and interacted with by (what it considers as) US pages which is quite different to the most seen by all users. As the report states pages (let alone just US pages) contribute less to what you see than either friends or groups.

IAmEveryone 2021-08-19 07:38:14 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Yes. That’s the point. They are publishing this list, because the other list makes them look like a cesspool of forwards-from-racist-grandpa and MAGA-chums.

Both lists are probably correct. (It’s not like—completely hypothetical—view counts of videos which are sort-of like the the double-slit experiment for Facebook.)

Which one is more meaningful? It probably wasn’t entirely accidental that they started with measuring engagement, and everything they (and others) do is intended to raise engagement.

The pivot to view counts is motivated only by their increasing fear of nor just increasing regulation. They are simply bleeding users, especially the most lucrative groups that are young, educated, and international, who are leaving the country club of social networks because they see these lists-even though their own feeds have maybe slowed down but not changed much otherwise.

Tenoke 2021-08-19 07:43:30 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Are they even losing users overall? This[0] suggests MAU is still increasing.

0. https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly...

IAmEveryone 2021-08-19 07:58:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

By that measure, I haven’t changed my Facebook habits. But I’ve gone from an hour per day to checking it twice a month, as have many people I know.

BUT: I wouldn’t be surprised if there are difference between age groups, social classes, and regions of the globe, and that it may even be possible they are still growing their audience.

makomk 2021-08-19 07:23:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I'd argue that pointing to what gets shared, rather than what reaches people and actually gets viewed, as proof that Facebook is a hotbed of right-wing content and that the idea they discriminate against it is a lie is actually outright misinformation. The thing Facebook's algorithms control is which widely-shared and widely-interacted content actually shows up in people's feeds, and if you ignore that you're ignoring Facebook as a company's entire role in influencing what their audience sees.

Tenoke 2021-08-19 07:27:42 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Pages can share whatever they want. I can create 5000 pages tomorrow to only share Colbert. That's something that Facebook has less control over than what gets seen, and is less relevant at that.

>The thing Facebook's algorithms control is which widely-shared and widely-interacted content

This disproves your point though. According to facebooktop10 most of what is shared is 'right-wing content' yet most of what people actually see isn't. So really, it does kind of look like they might 'discriminate' against right-wing content if they show it less despite being so widely shared.

duncan-donuts 2021-08-19 05:04:17 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It’s not necessarily about the hiding as much as it controlling the narrative. If you publish reports but leave out one or two things here and there you can paint an entirely different picture. You don’t get to paint that picture if someone else is telling it.

zeruch 2021-08-19 14:45:13 +0000 UTC [ - ]

"controlling the narrative" is absolutely the line of defense here.

guerrilla 2021-08-19 10:29:32 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> If they wanted to hide any data, why not simply not post it?

The article already answers this question. They're publishing data to make it look like they're transparent while not being transparent at all, i.e. "transparency theater."

> If they wanted to hide any data, why not simply not post it?

The article answered that question in the beginning. It seems like the real content that is most popular, based on other analyses, is right-wing talking heads and conspiracy theorists.

2021-08-19 04:27:34 +0000 UTC [ - ]

blunte 2021-08-19 09:26:59 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Facebook is smart (and devious) enough to be "transparent" in a way that will not be truthful, since being truthful would confirm many of the beliefs that FB indeed shares vast amounts of misinformation while profiting from that sharing.

Maybe they are scrubbing data like AirBnB did for their New York reports, or more likely they are just controlling the metrics and scopes carefully to provide no useful, or at least no damaging, results.

They have been caught repeatedly publicly proclaiming one thing while internally discussing the exact opposite. It's like the tobacco industry all over again.

moksly 2021-08-19 06:16:54 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I wonder why Facebook is so afraid of transparency.

I’d like to start by saying that I actually like using Facebook in 2021. I’m Danish and I’m on Facebook solely because I play Blood Bowl and Facebook is where the majority of the community organise things. From how it operates it’s local version of the NAF rules to events for tournaments and leagues and just general chat about collecting outrageously little plastic toys. Before I started playing Blood Bowl I had quit Facebook.

While Facebook is still the most popular social media in Denmark, seeing 65% of us login daily, it’s trustworthy ness is at an all time low post the COVID lockdowns. I’m 2018 more than 50% of us would use Facebook for news, by the end of 2020 that had fallen to 5%.

Leading me back to me having quit Facebook, and into completely anecdotal speculation, but I quit Facebook because it didn’t have any content for me. No one in my network posts anything of real interest on Facebook and after I stopped following news media’s on Facebook and went directly to their sites instead (as well as subscribing to a physical news paper) Facebook was just boring. Until I started playing Blood Bowl. If I’m not alone in this, and only 5% of us now follow news sources on Facebook then wouldn’t that be an issue for them in the long run?

Their key advantage now that people have abandoned news is hobby and group content, but Facebook only has an advantage here because all of us are on Facebook. Except young people aren’t joining Facebook. In 2018 1/4 14-18 year old Dane joined Facebook, in 2020 that has fallen to 1/10. Sure Facebook is sort of safe from disruption, but within the miniature painting communities we’re already beginning to see more and more of people not having accounts or people only having accounts for one specific purpose. Less anecdotal than that, research shows that 67% of us will use phrases like “I’m only on Facebook because x” and that it’s no longer “cool” to be on Facebook because of its bad PR.

So why is Facebook afraid of transparency? Trust for SoMe in general is an all time low, but Facebook is actually one of the few networks sharing at least some of their data publicly. So why not exploit that advantage and go all the way? Especially when their image is already so terrible that people come up with excuses die being there?

Barrin92 2021-08-19 07:33:41 +0000 UTC [ - ]

probably because if scientists could do rigorous analysis of the kind of content that's shared and what effect it has on public discourse the results wouldn't look great. I think it's that straightforward. Same reason cigarette companies were not big fans of independent research.

intended 2021-08-19 06:19:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Hey! Academic research on social media.

The big thing that reddit has done, is by letting people see data (to whatever extent), studies can be conducted that tell us what is actually going on.

Right now, when I talk to anyone dealing with trust and safety, the discussions start around the point in a workflow where a case is filed in court.

But the amount of clarity we have on whether certain forms of forums result in happier communities, whether they reduce polarization and so on - is remarkably small.

And, from my experience, its mostly in English and mostly focused on the “global North”. W

I used the reddit pushshift data set for my work, and realized that conducting sentiment analysis for content relating to India was … beyond the tooling I could find available. Code mixed language analysis is its own kettle of fish. A problem Ive been thinking about every since.

Now multiply these limitations to under resourced communities around the world and its concerning.

As I see it, there’s tons of law related work being done in this space.

But it seems the data and code analysis of it is mostly held under an NDA. And to illuminate a future painful discussion - its held by companies in the US, a geo political fault line in the making. What happens to Puerto Rico? Kenya? Morocco?

This is the one thing that tech can still do, which is to build the tools that give us an objective view of how people actually behave online, and make that information public and a common good.

aaron695 2021-08-19 02:33:37 +0000 UTC [ - ]

https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-transparency-biggest-si...

"The answer: memes. From his personal account, which has more than 120,000 followers, Jacke posts a steady stream of low-rent viral memes that have nothing to do with the Packers, adding the URL of his business to the top of the post. We’re talking the likes of “Pick one cookie variety to live without,” or “Give yourself a point for each of these that you’ve done.” "

Perhaps a more interesting quote -

"It’s remarkable that the data Facebook chose to publish"

tyingq 2021-08-19 03:52:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

https://www.facebook.com/chris.jacke.13/ for the curious.

TechBro8615 2021-08-19 03:16:09 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It’s just a more advanced version of those MySpace quizzes from 2007. Same thing, just in a shiny React app.

ceedan 2021-08-19 04:30:38 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Those quizzes/surveys are making a comeback in some demographics on facebook, too.

input_sh 2021-08-19 07:32:36 +0000 UTC [ - ]

> without releasing any of the data a researcher would need to answer a question like “Is extreme right-wing content disproportionately popular on Facebook?”

I'm surprised to see The Epoch Times not mentioned in the article, right there as the #10 most popular link (between a fashion show and some local story about a 6yo missing). The only news site I'd call "traditional" media in that list is ABC News in #17.

2021-08-19 04:13:54 +0000 UTC [ - ]

growup12345 2021-08-19 05:50:19 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Saying Ben Shapiro is far-right is like comparing meat eaters to nazzis: he is of jewish descent … This is why I hate american discourse: all sides are wrong and it’s just a echo/yelling chamber where all sides scream at each other due to their unaddressed teenage complexes.

kettleballroll 2021-08-19 05:57:52 +0000 UTC [ - ]

What does his religion have to do with his ability to be far-right?

hanniabu 2021-08-19 07:19:45 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It doesn't, but typically if someone points out that someone is Jewish/ Israeli then you can't continue to say anything or else you're dubbed antisemitic.

boardwaalk 2021-08-19 06:06:48 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The post say 'right wing' not 'far right'. And many countries have left and right wing parties and they have very little if anything to do with Nazis vs Jews. I think you may just be viewing this through your own lens...

IAmEveryone 2021-08-19 07:54:00 +0000 UTC [ - ]

“In 2006, Shapiro called for sedition laws to be reinstated. He cited speeches critical of the George W. Bush administration by Democrats Al Gore, John Kerry and Howard Dean as "disloyal" and seditious.”

Throwing people into jail for criticizing GWB? Yeah, that’s far-right. A;so far-out, and authoritarian.

s5300 2021-08-19 06:31:27 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Uhh

Stephen Miller, political advisor to the 2016 Trump Administration, whom is Jewish and descendent of Jewish refugees to the USA (from 1900's anti-jewish riots in Russian area) is a self proclaimed (but now "retracted") white supremacist, and quite obviously, by everything he's ever supported in his political career and personal life statements, a true fascist.

Quite literally, statement from his other Jewish family members:

  "I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, an educated man who is well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family's life in this country."

Dr. David S. Glosser, uncle of Stephen Miller[66]

- via his Wiki page.

Jews can be fascists. Just like there were some (very violent, even given the circumstances) black slave/plantation owners in the United States.

There's a lot of psychology that attempts to try to explain why these people end up going down the routes they do, perhaps you could look into it. However, given the short time of your account here and it's karma, in posting like this, it's hard not to make the assumption you may either be very misinformed or very heavily biased in trying to push your own truth.

BoardsOfCanada 2021-08-19 07:18:16 +0000 UTC [ - ]

So Shapiro is (or could be) far-right because another Jew - Stephen Miller has an uncle who thought that if the immigration policy that Steven Miller champions had been implemented a hundred years ago, then their family would not have been able to migrate to the USA. So now we extrapolate a little according to the conclusion we want to reach and that's fascism - "authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy"

Mordisquitos 2021-08-19 08:26:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The argument of the commenter you're replying to is not that "Shapiro is (or could be) far-right because [...]". Rather, the argument is "The argument that a Jewish person cannot be far-right is invalid because [...]". The difference is subtle, and of course the person you're answering may well consider Shapiro as being far-right, or even a literal fascist. And you both may disagree on the strict definitions of both terms but, either way, accurately representing other people's arguments is a key point of intellectually honest debate and assuming the best intentions. Case in point:

1. The article mentions Shapiro as being "right-wing".

2. Top-level comment first implies the article says Shapiro is "far-right", and then confounds the general concept of "far-right" with maybe Nazism or antisemitism in general to make their argument that him being Jewish makes it impossible that he is far-right.

3. A reply states that Jewish political figure Stephen Miller identified with white supremacy and fits the(ir) definition of a fascist, as a counterpoint to the previous argument.

4. You disagree with the argument that Shapiro is (or could be) far-right, because you disagree that Stephen Miller fits the strict definition of Fascism.

...and all this was originally triggered because the linked article said:

«Most days, the “top performing” links come from right-wing commentators and provocateurs like Dan Bongino, Ben Shapiro, Fox News and others.»

s5300 2021-08-19 09:15:28 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Thank you for writing this out. It is correct & much better than the reply I was giving to him.

As for the difference being subtle, I do not so much agree - but

>accurately representing other people's arguments is a key point of intellectually honest debate and assuming the best intentions.

Is most definitely key. It's too bad that people rarely care about this in any level of discussion or debate anymore. It may very well be one of the most major factors to collapse of modern civilization in the coming decades.

For what it's worth - my opinion of Shapiro is that he is simply an opportunistic grifter, as are the vast majority of current U.S. "conservative think tanks/talking points creators/right wing/far-right wing" social media commentators. This is the reason they are all also trying to sell you one or more of their books that is most definitely not ghost written because these people are also so obviously such talented writers (hahaha I know /s on HN is frowned upon but I must have slight fun)

Miller, on the other hand, is a fascist, and he's honestly never tried to hide it/is quite proud of it. Which, I guess you may be able to say, is at least somewhat commendable. Though, he too does engage in some opportunistic grifting, as do many on all vectors of politics.

growup12345 2021-08-19 09:02:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]

The really funny thing is that no one reads the article:

>> Facebook’s reach statistics show that mainstream news content is far more common on Facebook than the far-right content Roose was featuring.

And this reference to the content Roose is featuring is indeed:

>> Journalist Kevin Roose began publishing a Twitter feed in July 2020 that showcased the 10 “top performing” links on Facebook as determined by Facebook’s Crowdtangle analytics tool. Most days, the “top performing” links come from right-wing commentators and provocateurs like Dan Bongino, Ben Shapiro, Fox News and others.

So everyone’s carefully constructed contrived debate schematics topple.

s5300 2021-08-19 09:19:06 +0000 UTC [ - ]

>The really funny thing is that no one reads the article

Not sure if you meant to reply to somebody else, but that has nothing to do with the discussion being had.

s5300 2021-08-19 09:15:57 +0000 UTC [ - ]

What? I simply do not understand how you came to this conclusion based on what was written, in the slightest.

Unless English is not your first language, I'm genuinely worried for your comprehension and logical deduction skills.

The parent to my post has quite clearly insinuated that "Ben Shapiro cannot be on the right wing of the US political spectrum because of the fact he is Jewish"

I am giving an example of somebody, who is Jewish, and not just that they're Jewish, (i.e., not a first generational convert) but from a long line of all proudly Jewish ancestors, which moreso drives home the fact of the matter, that just because he is Jewish, does not mean that he cannot be on the right wing or "far right wing" of the political spectrum - something that he has legally & personally identified himself as for effectively his entire life. Furthermore, he's identified himself as a white supremacist since quite a young age, something many may seem as quite unusual given the circumstances of the Holocaust, and has went on to spend his political career pushing a fascist agenda, by any normal meaning of the word.

I'm now quite tired, and that's not as well articulated as I'd like it to be - but I hope you can see the point to be that "just because you're Jewish does not mean you cannot be on the far-right," as we have very clear examples of this within the highest levels of our politics, with those being referred to proudly and consistently proclaiming their positions on the matter. I, personally however, think that you're just trying to troll on the internet and I'm wasting my time in attempting to engage with you in good faith.

spoonjim 2021-08-19 05:57:18 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It is definitely the case that the "moderate" position, politically, is the worst at generating viral content, which even encourages moderates to become more extreme to be heard. This is why the media under billionaire moguls like Hearst and Pulitzer may have been better - the content had to serve their owners' interests, but did not have to achieve maximum engagement with the reader.

newacct583 2021-08-19 03:13:41 +0000 UTC [ - ]

I got fairly heavily downvoted last week for trying to point out that Facebook's "Suggested for you" stories were almost certainly paid content via some path (even if not "advertising"), given that they're uniformly awful clickbait garbage that Facebook knows I don't interact with. Folks really didn't want to hear that theory and insisted it was just random clustering or whatever.

Arguments like the linked article make it pretty clear that that's not the case. Facebook is either being scammed badly by players exploiting their algorithm to throw clickbait spam in front of their users...

... or they're on the take. I think it's pretty clear Facebook is too smart to be scammed like that.

jazzyjackson 2021-08-19 04:29:12 +0000 UTC [ - ]

About half of my 'Activity Feed' is "unfollowing" this attention-grabbing crap. It's not even really clickbait, just a video to stare at for 45 seconds. I think Facebook just uses these to pump their time-spent-on-site metrics.

This week I've "unfollowed": Viral Hog, Crafty Panda, Crafty Panda How, Kids Crafts, 5 Minute Crafts, America's Funniest Home Videos, LAD Bible, and LAD Bible Australia.

I put unfollowed in quotes because that's what facebook calls it when I click "Stop seeing posts from this page" on suggested content.

timmytokyo 2021-08-19 12:40:53 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It's amazing people keep using Facebook amidst such torrents of bullshit. Why do you?

notacoward 2021-08-19 13:10:49 +0000 UTC [ - ]

"Uniformly awful clickbait garbage" has its own kind of potency. When it's trying to pad your feed, Facebook might not know that "give yourself one point for each one of these you've done" has any specific relevance to you, but it does know that a lot of people seem to engage with it and you're a person. It's basically guessing when it's out of ideas. To infer any kind of malice, you'd have to define some sort of threshold for how much "uniformly awful clickbait garbage" you would expect to see just because of this guessing, and observe that the threshold is being exceeded. Have you done that?

asdff 2021-08-19 03:25:35 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It happens on instagram too of course. Start scrolling then its just suggested reels and posts are all major accounts with with thousands of followers which comes with some commercial angle.

sdoering 2021-08-19 06:27:29 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Not sure if it is just me or if it gets harder and harder to curate my IG "recommendations".

I get presented an unreasonable amount of crap every day and always mark this stuff as uninteresting. Nonetheless I often see that same s*t again the next time I open the app.

I stopped FB and for IG I nearly only use my freelancer profile to keep in contact with some parts of the networks I am in. And to put out (hopefully interesting) material for my network of small organic food producers and farmers.

2021-08-19 04:37:43 +0000 UTC [ - ]

IAmEveryone 2021-08-19 07:45:52 +0000 UTC [ - ]

So… they are selling ads, and correctly labeling them, and we’ve all seen that system, including the backend..

But then there’s another, shadowy market, where they sell far cheaper ads to really lowbrow content that people are more likely to click on, but that just doesn’t have an obvious way t monetize these eyeballs?

Getting less money, diminishing their platform with bad content, breaking laws by not disclosing it, and keeping it all secret?

What I’m saying is there may have been a reason why you were downvoted.

paulpauper 2021-08-19 04:11:05 +0000 UTC [ - ]

US targeted ads on facebook cost a lot. Cannot imagine advertisers making a positive ROI , especially after accounting for fake engagement,but I guess some do

asdff 2021-08-19 05:31:55 +0000 UTC [ - ]

It really does seem like a song and dance that doesn't do anything at all. Maybe the real correlation isn't ad spend to profit, but that companies that are able to spend a lot on ads just tend to be ones that can turn a profit on their products anyhow no matter if they spend on these ads or not.

quartesixte 2021-08-19 04:14:35 +0000 UTC [ - ]

Jury is still out on whether advertising makes a difference at all, more so targeted ones.