Facebook Tweaks Its 'Trending Topics' Algorithm to Better Reflect Real News | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Tweaks Its 'Trending Topics' Algorithm to Better Reflect Real News

npr.org

125 pointslizardFiend126 comments

This trending topics is pure clickbait. Just like yahoo.com trending topics. Kill it https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/remove-trending-fa...

You can do this with uBlock Origin and avoid installing an extra extension.

Yep. I block pretty much all of Facebook besides the chat functionality at this point.

If you only want chat, there's always http://messenger.com :-)

They just started embedding adds into messenger too (thankfully not in the US, yet)

...Eww... What do these ads look like?

Be sure to check out https://mbasic.facebook.com/messages/

I've already got whatsapp, email and normal texts, facebook messenger has literally nothing that I want and poisoned any interest I might have had by removing itself from the mobile website in an attempt to force me to use the app whilst demanding my phone number.

With the amount of junk that's on there nowadays, it's even easier to 'quit Facebook'. The Messenger app makes it easier to do so.

I find that's getting harder and harder to do as they change/randomize the class/id of many elements at each page reload.

Their column container classes/ids are pretty static. I try to keep my custom stylesheet updated to nuke the left and right column sidebars, and expand the actual newsfeed to use the reclaimed width.

No more useless trending topics and clickbait news for me. I do not need to see the outrage-generators or the Kardashian headline of the day.

how you do it?

There's a little eyedropper thing in that popup when you click the uBlock button. Use that to select elements you want to block.

Sometimes what you click is a few levels deep in a container. After you select one, you can click through the items in the "Cosmetic Filters" box until you get to the right level to block the entire element.

Thanks!

Thanks!!! I've had uBlock Origin installed, but it never occurred to me to do this. I should've read the feature list. I've removed everything except for newsfeed (which is all I personally care about).

guide on how to use the "Element Picker": https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Element-picker

This made Facebook usable for me: https://github.com/jordwest/news-feed-eradicator

I can still use it as chat, address book, check events or particular updates/mentions, but I am not fed and infinite stream of mind sugar whenever I log in...

I still would love to completely quit... I tried a couple of times but I ended going back to contact particular people or to check out events. Facebook is turning into a basic social survival tool for foreigners living in metropolises and it kinda annoys me a lot.

It's amazing how pleasant the Internet can be when you cut out Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google/YouTube, et al. "Social Media" has become a cesspool.

I stick to the my trade (tech) and hobby related sites. Political discourse creeps in occasionally but for the most part the discussion is more constructive.

I've ditched facebook recently do to some mental health issues and it's pretty refreshing. As a bonus I find myself not constantly looking at my phone when I'm with other people. I honestly think I had some kind of dopamine addiction to facebook.

Although Facebook knows that I haven't logged in for a long time so they send me teaser emails: "X just updated her status and got 17 likes". People still tend to tag me since I didn't actually deactivate the account.

Conversely, I was off all social media for 5 years and it's surprising how pleasant life can be when you re-introduce FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. I no longer have to fill in someone when we grab a coffee, there's a lot more shared subtext and inside jokes right off the bat. More emotional growth.

I've been using FB to develop a good troll sense / wit & humor bone. For example:

I was dancing salsa but then I stopped because it's weird being a taco sauce and moving your hips at the same time.

Surprising how quickly you calibrate to what's actually funny by using likes as the loss function.

This highlights something I think a lot of people sometimes forget: Social Media is efficient! It's easier for me to write out a story once, and post it so others can see, than it is for me to tell the story anew each time I meet up with someone. It's also easier for me to keep up with what's going on with distant relatives, who I normally wouldn't talk to.

As a privacy enthusiast, I dislike Social Media and wish we went back to things like blogs, but I get how, for most people, social media is the quick and simple way to get this done.

That's exactly right! The first 5-10 times an interesting story is fun to tell but eventually it sinks into your bones and it becomes a performance, even robotic. Better to share the general picture once and discuss the details that are relevant to your mutual friendship and unique to each conversation.

Another aspect to fighting the "waste of time"ness or politics nature is to just treat social media like a game / party that teaches you how to be a funnier and better human being. Here is one of my recent posts:

>>> In case you haven't noticed I'm trying the whole active social media thing after 5 years of blackout.. I will probably hate it and myself shortly but in the meantime feel free to grab your slapping gloves if I say something dumb or emo... and use them to smack yourself in the face. Seriously I know where your thought was going, why would you slap someone for something they said on the internet? You should be ashamed of yourself, sit in that corner with a dunce hat. I will probably join you in a sec

Followed by several days of troll statuses followed by:

>>> In case you haven't caught on I'm treating FB like a giant indefinite party and going around trolling every one of you. If that's a problem it's a good thing literally all of my closest friends aren't on here so I don't care if all you beautiful f*ers defriend me (3 already have but 4 added me so shh bb is ok). Oh wait. You're reading this. On FB. I didn't mean to insinuate that you aren't special to me. I uhh.. love you? I'll buy ya flowers (flower emoji) friends? (bear emoji)

I recently cut out fb/twitter and feel less aggravated all the time. I do feel like I'm less on top of emerging news etc.

After the Snowden revelations my social media presence dropped precipitously. I enjoy Hacker News for the generally high quality of discussion, but otherwise I find forums and social media to be a timesink.

It has always been interesting to me that so many people allow Facebook to be the main curator of their news, though I suppose it's no different than people allowing network news or one newspaper to be the gatekeeper. I suppose it's human nature to take the path of least resistance.

It's literally yahoo! People use it as their front page to the internet. If it ain't on Facebook, it's not on the internet!

>People use it as their front page to the internet.

Maybe someday they'll learn about reddit, the real front page to the Internet. /s

A newspaper at least might have some sort of moral obligation to tell the truth.

However the masses of Facebook have no such obligation.

Don't we all?

> A newspaper at least might have some sort of moral obligation to tell the truth.

Very few people read newspapers. And even then, newspapers aren't news anymore either, it's entertainment, using emotion to deliver "news", not facts nor reason. It's all about getting the audience "triggered".

This whole "fake news" thing is so hypocrite, what "trusted" news don't understand is that they lied so much in the past people stopped trusting them. That's why people check "alternative news sources". Main stream media needs to stop taking readers trust for granted, and ask themselves why they lost that trust at first place.

Would you kindly point me to a lie anywhere on the current front pages of the New York Times, Guardian, Atlantic, New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, or Economist?

Like, right now or in general?

Like, anything reaching the level of "Obama is a muslim commie anti-christ" that i have seen coming from right wing click-bait pages?

How about: 'Trump is nazi, against lgbt, racist, rapist, russian agent, going to nuke the planet' etc.

Source showing this in "New York Times, Guardian, Atlantic, New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, or Economist".

Did you not follow the election cycle? It has been all about false accusations about Trump.

Russian agent: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/world/europe/donald-trump...

And the golden shower thing is fake news.

That story came from a leaked report written by a well-respected former intelligence officer. The article does not state them as fact, instead remarks on the source of the unverified information, and gives background on Russian blackmail intelligence operations.

That's not fake news. And the whole reason anyone was writing about it was because Buzzfeed published the memo - other news organisations had a copy of it for months but didn't publish, specifically because they couldn't verify the information.

That report was completely fabricated.

Talk about fake news.

Like I said, the report was compiled by a respected former intelligence officer. It hasn't been possible to verify all the claims (as secret operations often aren't, which is why these supposedly untrustworthy media outlets didn't publish it) but that means it is unverified, not that it is completely fabricated.

He's building a huge wall, wants to deport millions and specifically make a list for migrant crimes, a similar thing done to Jews by the Nazi's. He's banning people from specific places from entering and generalizing them all to be terrorists or rapists.

There are recordings of him talking about casually committing sexual assault. Allegations of rape etc that occurred long before he ran for president.

The Vice President he selected advocated electroshock therapy for LGBT people.

His son admitted in a recording they get a lot of money from Russia and love Russia has been his only consistent policy.

He has been arguing for increased nuclear proliferation.

On the Golden showers Russia & Trump threw a fit over this accusation way out of proportion of what would be a reasonable response if it wasn't true.

"wants to deport millions and specifically make a list for migrant crimes, a similar thing done to Jews by the Nazi's"

Obama actually deported millions, so by your logic here, he is a Nazi. http://www.wnyc.org/story/no-one-thought-barack-obama-would-...

Let's say now or any time in the past 10 years...

More specifically: point us to a lie of the kind of severity that http://usainfonews.com and http://usapoliticszone.com peddle. Do a WHOIS on those sites or visit them in a sandbox; they're Macedonian in origin, demonstrably falsified, and have been spotted in the wild on Facebook.

what does the phrase "Macedonian in origin" mean? I googled that and google is telling me about the historical origins of Macedonia. Are you making up that phrase? Are your trying to imply that the sources are ancient from a long time ago? Or do you mean they have "questionable" origins. If so, just say "questionable origins".

Macedonia is still around, that's a literal phrase. I don't know how you would tell from WHOIS, but apparently a lot of people in Macedonia are responsible for the most egregious fake news sites: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38168281

thanks for clarifying!

Here's what I get from `whois usapoliticszone.com`. It's possible that the information is falsified, but it's hard to understand why a legitimate well-researched news site would list an individual in Macedonia with ICANN when they registered a domain:

Domain Name: usapoliticszone.com

Registry Domain ID: 2060737897_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN

Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com

Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com

Update Date: 2016-09-20T18:54:39Z

Creation Date: 2016-09-20T18:54:39Z

Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2017-09-20T18:54:39Z

Registrar: GoDaddy.com, LLC

Registrar IANA ID: 146

Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse@godaddy.com

Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +1.4806242505

Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientTransferProhibited

Domain Status: clientUpdateProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientUpdateProhibited

Domain Status: clientRenewProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientRenewProhibited

Domain Status: clientDeleteProhibited http://www.icann.org/epp#clientDeleteProhibited

Registry Registrant ID: Not Available From Registry

Registrant Name: Angelina Gjorgjievska

Registrant Organization:

Registrant Street: Vera Ciriviri 177

Registrant City: Veles

Registrant State/Province: Macedonia, Veles

Registrant Postal Code: 1400

Registrant Country: MK

Registrant Phone: +389.78459172

Registrant Phone Ext:

Registrant Fax:

Registrant Fax Ext:

Registrant Email: healthyclub247@gmail.com

I mean literally do a WHOIS query on those domains. They're registered to Macedonian citizens using addresses in Macedonia (a.k.a. the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia).

ok, thanks for clarifying that it is literal expression.

I can't understand why you are being downvoted here, except perhaps the political distraction. On this issue, the whole Trump / Obama / US politics angle really shouldn't be the point. It's pretty easy to find articles I would consider the original definition of "fake news" (conspiracy theory clickbait) that have nothing to do with Obama / Trump or US politics.

To put it this way, I find nothing in more sober "mainstream news" that compares to headlines like "CDC works in collusion with vaccine manufacturers... can you really trust their “fake science?”" (http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-01-26-cdc-history-of-fake-sc...).

Or, in one of the sites you linked: "ONLY ONE SECRET IN FOODS CAN LITERALLY SAVE YOU FROM EVERYTHING" (http://usainfonews.com/index.php/2017/01/19/one-secret-foods...). (The secret... antioxidants can "cure" the "malignancy of oxygen" that causes all diseases... ???)

It is the conspiracy mindset -- not necessarily the political angle -- that to me distinguished the original definition of fake news. Generally the original "fake news" tends to (as above) take small nuggets from questionable sources and utilize boogeymans based on institutional mistrust to weave their narrative.

For instance, the "CDC is fake science" article seems to provide scant evidence for their narrative, other than testimonial from one scientist whose stance is... um... controversial (http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/cdcwhistleblower.asp), a mis-characterization of flu shots as "vaccines", and Evil Shadowy Big Pharma corporations who coerce "fake science" for profit.

The antioxidants article uses an extremely clickbait-y headline to peddle a pseudo-scientific promotion of antioxidants.

This type of stuff has been around for a while ("conspiracy theories") so really it's nothing new. Still, for this reason, personally, I have issues with people lumping in the New York Times and Wall Street Journals of the world in the same "fake news" boat as these type of sites.

Is this true?

It reminds me of the talk about how "diet advice changes constantly" but even given the very human foibles in any recommended diet (e.g. genuine mistakes, oversimplifying to communicate better, industry pressure, inertia in the face of new evidence) I still don't remember anyone saying "fruit and vegetables are bad for you" or "eat as many calories as you like, it's cool", "don't exercise, that's for suckers" or anything on that scale, so while you can bring up specific issues, they'll be blips in the big picture.

I'd guess the same applies to attacks on "the mainstream media".

> fruit and vegetables are bad for you

Fruit is very easy to eat to excess, especially when you labor under the delusion that it couldn't be bad for you, as you seem to be doing. The problem is that it has a ton of sugar in it. You can gain weight and raise your blood sugar to unhealthy levels pretty quick just eating extra fruit.

This is a perfect example of the kind of hyper-focus that loses track of the big picture and just becomes nonsensical as a result.

Fruit is not a threat to your health, even diabetics are encouraged to eat more fruit. On the list of foods that can cause you to gain weight and raise your blood sugar to unhealthy levels it's way down the list, with a low glycemic load, and it actually provides fibre and other benefits that many things on that list don't.

This doesn't stand up to evidence.

A large portion of the fake news in closed political Facebook groups is actually fake – it's Macedonian in origin, tends to use throwaway domains like http://usainfonews.com and http://usapoliticszone.com (seriously, do a WHOIS on those), uses plagiarized and/or demonstrably false content, and results in compensation for the people who post it. The purported compensation often far outstrips what anyone could reasonably expect from advertising revenue. You can join these groups and watch Americans comment on the stories – apparently believing the blatantly false news stories, by the thousands.

1: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/fake-news-how-partying-mac...

2: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fake-news-macedonia-teen-shows-h...

3: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38168281

4: https://www.ft.com/content/333fe6bc-c1ea-11e6-81c2-f57d90f67...

5: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/macedonian-teen-claims-t...

6: http://www.npr.org/2016/12/14/505547295/fake-news-expert-on-...

7: http://www.msnbc.com/kate-snow/watch/macedonian-teen-capital...

8: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2016/...

> A newspaper at least might have some sort of moral obligation to tell the truth.

But really? As far as I can tell, they optimize solely for inducing outrage, because this drives sales/pageviews.

The quality of your Facebook feed depends on the quality of your friends, which I find more reliable than regular media.

> However the masses of Facebook have no such obligation.

Assuming you're in the U.S. and part of the majority culture, "thou shalt not tell a lie"?

As an American, I would argue that's an ideal that we don't generally expect most people to keep all of the time.

> A newspaper at least might have some sort of moral obligation to tell the truth.

A newspaper ultimately has an obligation to its stockholders. If the stockholders demand that the newspaper tells the truth, then so be it...but most stockholders would want to maximize profits. If they believe telling the truth will maximize profits, then they will probably encourage that, but it likely doesn't.

This website is "the main curator of my news" at the moment. (I am in head-in-the-sand moment regarding brexit and trump, which make me too angry for words, so it is sort of self preservation).

> As of Wednesday, the company has once again changed its trending algorithms. Personal preferences are now out of the equation. "Facebook will no longer be personalized based on someone's interests," Facebook says in a press release. "Everyone in the same region will see the same topics." For now, a region is considered a country, so everyone in the U.S. should see the same topics.

Facebook dropping personalization of news. I'm really surprised.

You shouldn't be surprised. It makes it a whole lot easier to implement a whitelist for news sources (e.g. the current mainstream group hurt by blogs) without having to deal with the cognitive dissonance caused by personalization conflicts.

For example, suppose my preferences indicate that I think WaPo is basically a marketing outlet for Amazon at this point. If the powers that be tell Facebook that WaPo produces "Real News", then it's harder for Facebook to show me "Real News" if my preferences say that I think they're full of it.

Considering the complete failure it was, it would have taken tremendous amount of internal politics, and/or really poor product management, to not amend the "trending news" feature.

The surprising thing, for me, is the amount of time they required to change it. It's not like they don't have enough of smart people capable of working on this..

This is being done to create unified narratives across spaces for future political goals as a way to nullify the narratives of those who rely on personalized ads.

Bet you dollars to donuts those regions will look eerily similar to known voting districts.

They do. And a company called Cambridge Analytica helped the Trump campaign exploit these clusters.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/the-british-data-cruncher...

Only partially, unless you consider trending topics to be the entirety of Facebook's news. Presumably, News Feed content and "news" will still be informed by their preferences algorithm, right?

When you consider that the majority of their engagement almost certainly continues to come from the News Feed, this seems more like an effort to simply add in a source of news that is not influenced by any kind of self-selection effect.

You're right, it is just trending. Here is the press release this article is based on ...

http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/01/continuing-our-updates-t...

They've figured out that Cambridge Analytica used it as an exploit to swing the Presidential election in the USA, and they're panicking (rightly): https://antidotezine.com/2017/01/22/trump-knows-you/

Yeesh. I've seen the company discussed but hadn't really looked into what they were doing differently than other data-driven campaigns in recent years:

> Trump’s conspicuous contradictions and his oft-criticized habit of staking out multiple positions on a single issue result in a gigantic number of resulting messaging options that creates a huge advantage for a firm like Cambridge Analytica: for every voter, a different message. Mathematician Cathy O’Neil had already observed in August that “Trump is like a machine learning algorithm” that adjusts to public reactions. “Pretty much every message that Trump put out was data-driven,” Alexander Nix explained to Das Magazin. On the day of the third presidential debate between Trump and Clinton, Trump’s team blasted out 175,000 distinct test variations on his arguments, mostly via Facebook. The messages varied mostly in their microscopic details, in order to communicate optimally with their recipients: different titles, colors, subtitles, with different images or videos. The granularity of this message tailoring digs all the way down to tiny target groups, Nix told Das Magazin. “We can target specific towns or apartment buildings. Even individual people.”

> In the Miami neighborhood of Little Haiti, Trump’s campaign regaled residents with messages about the failures of the Clinton Foundation after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, in order to dissuade them from turning out for Clinton. This was one of the goals: to get potential but wavering Clinton voters—skeptical leftists, African-Americans, young women—to stay home. To “suppress” their votes, as one Trump campaign staffer bluntly put it. In these so-called dark posts (paid Facebook ads which appear in the timelines only of users with a particular suitable personality profile), African-Americans, for example, were shown the nineties-era video of Hillary Clinton referring to black youth as “super predators.”

In 2008 and 2012, Obama pioneered the use of A/B testing to refine campaign messages. "175,000 distinct test variations" sounds like a more ambitious effort at the same strategy.

And targeting relevant information at wavering voters seems like a common strategy in 2016. House of Cards had both fictional Presidential candidates doing something similar in their fictional election, and Bloomberg once wrote "[Hillary's] campaign is looking to build on the digital engagement strategy devised by the Obama team, customizing the messages e-mailed to the estimated 8.6 million people on its list to make them as personal as possible."

Yeah, these tactics are nothing new. It's not like older techniques like get-out-the-vote buses were careful to be bipartisan. As long as Americans are resolute in their opinions and uninterested in facts and open discourse, campaigns will be focusing of scaring them into turning out or disgusting them so they stay home.

It's interesting that "dark posts" is used to refer to "paid Facebook ads which appear in the timelines only of users with a particular suitable personality profile", which appears to describe every paid Facebook ad.

That was an interesting read. I had assumed this type of thing is what Clinton was spending all that money on. I suppose Trump got a great deal, if that $15m figure is correct.

I don't see why they'd panic. A prominent Trump supporter sits on their board.

Article sounds and reads very much like Neal Stephensons novel Interface.

Unfortunately this means I can prepare to see lots of articles about vapid celebrity gossip and sports. I actually found the personalized trending stuff moderately interesting, but now it'll just register as a dead zone once that stuff trickles in.

Personalized news sounds like a wonderful thing but it's a very dangerous weapon that is hard to wield purely for good.

Trending Topics was personalised? That really surprises me. Mine is always all celebrity gossip from UK tabloid newspapers, which I have zero interest in.

I suppose the good news is that their profiling algorithm has completely the wrong idea about me.

Am I the only one to have never seen (as best as I can tell) fake news on Facebook's trending topics? I don't think it's just a matter of them personalizing it to me, because I get all sorts of celebrity and sports news that I presume is accurate but in which I have absolutely no interest.

Nope, I haven't seen "fake news" in trending and I share your pain otherwise.

For all the apocalyptic talk of AI and non-existent privacy... I can think of nothing less relevant to my tastes and interests than the trending news feature of Facebook... except for maybe the suggested pages feature... oh yeah, and ads. I have gone far out of my way to say which stories I'm not interested in (they ask, after all) and nope... same useless crap different day. So far, if this is the edge of a dystopian future of unbounded technical tyranny: I am thus far not all that impressed. In truth, the only thing that is apparent is they've modeled an "every man" that they then use to throw stuff at me to see what sticks. Apparently, "every man" reads a lot of People Magazine and watches a lot of ESPN.

The only reason I use Facebook has to do with my friends and family that are reasonably easy to reach on the platform en masse. Everything else about the platform is useless on a good day and actively annoying on a bad one. I might add that I don't worry too much about sharing personal details with them and really, really wish they'd make a service that takes advantage of all that I've shared with them... even good ads would be welcome. I think I may well just shut my Facebook account down and put reminders in my calendar to touch base more personally with those friends and family I like keeping in touch with.

I've never seen what I call "fake news" (conspiracy theory oriented clickbait) on Facebook, personally. But I've seen a couple of really oddball conspiracy theory oriented Youtube videos as "recommended for you" from time to time. I've always wondered what triggered those.

I don't use Facebook much at all, but my general impression is that some of "trending topics" and "recommended for you" is shaped in part by what people in my friends list have clicked on / shared / liked / etc. I only have a couple people on the feed that are terribly prone to the conspiracy mindset, so to me it's not surprising I don't get too many of those type of posts in "trending topics". (I usually use Youtube without an account, so maybe it's a little more random there.)

It's good that Facebook is adding a more descriptive headline to "trending topics"; the current headline-oriented format I found fairly useless (for reasons described in the article; currently, the two or three word title that trends is not terribly helpful, you have to hover over the text to find out what the actual story is).

The fake news was targeted mostly at poor, white, republican/conservatives.

source?

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/12/02/politics/russia-fake-news-...

http://warontherocks.com/2016/11/trolling-for-trump-how-russ...

And by matter of filter bubble. The people the news (mostly negative pieces about Obama or Clinton) was likely to show up for were white conservatives.

This week David Brock was trying to raise money from donors for a new CTR type operation where he claims to have an agreement with Facebook to fight fake news. [1]

Direct link to his pitch book: http://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/media-matte...

[1]: http://freebeacon.com/politics/media-matters-says-secretly-w...

Facebook needs to accept that they're a news site and hire some editors. The first trending topic on my Facebook page is about an Indian cricket player preparing for his opening match. This hardly seems like the most important news in the US right now.

Are you Panic as in the Panic of Portland software development?

No, I'm not that Panic (lots of respect for them though).

Just a few months ago they fired their editorial team https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/08...

This looks like classic hedging behaviour. A Zuckerberg run for office is looking more and more likely, and when he's running for Pres he won't want to face awkward questions about what did or didn't show up in the Trending algorithm.

Doesn't Zuck know that if he plans to be a politician he shouldn't use Facebook? That shit is public!

The current president could never been elected if he had used social media publicly!

Have you seen Zuck's Facebook page? Anodyne isn't even the word.

This is no less than the third time I've seen reference to a Zuckerberg political run on HN, a theory I've not seen presented anywhere else but HN, what is this based on and why should I take it seriously?

Uninformed looking to get educated here so please don't take my terse inquiry for snark.

It's an idea that keeps getting floated around, and for Zuck's sake I hope it's not true. Just because one billionaire squeaked through doesn't mean it's open season, and it's certainly not an option for someone as uncharismatic as Mark Zuckerberg.

If he wants to start small, that's one thing. City councilman, then maybe on to state senator for a few terms, then congress and we can see what kind of record he builds. But if he jumps right to some kind of bold political run, it's going to be embarrassing.

> Just because one billionaire squeaked through doesn't mean it's open season...

I'm not so sure. There are much smarter and more likeable billionaires than Trump out there.

> But if he jumps right to some kind of bold political run, it's going to be embarrassing.

As Trump's finding out, embarrassing doesn't mean you don't get to be President.

Trump won in large part because he was entertaining. Zuckerberg is not entertaining.

I enjoy watching Zuck speak because he has interesting perspectives on things that interest me too. But I don't think he has the charisma for a general audience.

I'm constantly amazed at the number of people who have started to take an interest in things like White House press briefings, rallies, nuances of the positions of the talking heads on TV and their various infamous quotes and scandals. Everything has a reality TV angle to it, and a lot of his fans are hooked.

It wouldn't surprise me. He's a smart and highly motivated and seems genuinely dedicated to improving the world. However he doesn't come across as relatable. People don't trust him and he's not a great public speaker.

> However he doesn't come across as relatable. People don't trust him and he's not a great public speaker.

Yeah, that didn't work out so well for the last person like that who tried to run for President.

Can you quantify how he is dedicated to improving the world?

Here's some speculation on bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-18/this-team...

"With all that in mind, it’s fair to wonder whether Zuckerberg wants to run for public office. He isn’t saying, but his online mix of serious business and dad jokes can’t help but feel a little political. For a point of comparison, check out Barack Obama’s social media accounts sometime."

This has been extensively reported in variety of media.

Origin comes from this 2016 coverage [1]:

In a Facebook proxy statement published by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday, the company paved the way for Zuckerberg to one day take a "voluntary" leave from his post as CEO and serve "in a government position or office."

Followed by his New Year Resolution [2] and state of affairs in the country, the public started pressing that narrative which Mark replied to [3]

[1] http://fortune.com/2016/04/29/president-zuckerberg-facebook/ [2] http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/8-photos-that-definit... [3] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-38744292

In addition to the other responses here, at the beginning of the year he announced his personal challenge for 2017 was to meet and chat with people in every state. That seemed to get a lot of people talking about the possibility of a 2020 run.

Whether or not Zuckerberg appears to be making a political run, it is clear that he certainly is politically involved. https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/15092

Personally I don't see the public invested in knowing or caring about that answer very much.

"he's running for Pres" ha. He's as awkward as Jeb! and as likable as Hillary. My bet: Facebook will go the way of MySpace before 2024.

Why didn't they just keep the news editors they started with? It seems completely rational to keep news editors on staff to run a news service.

Think about how much in this world would be different if tending news was rebranded rather than replaced with what they ended up putting out.

> Why didn't they just keep the news editors they started with? It seems completely rational to keep news editors on staff to run a news service.

I don't think it is that easy to curate the timeline of millions of people. Furthermore, people want to see what they want to see, it sounds stupid but if people were just interested in mainstream media they'd use google news. I don't know a single person that uses google news as a source of news. On the other hand, plenty of people only check news shared by their siblings,relatives,friend network... after all, Facebook is a social network, the ability to share content from the internet is what made it successful against other social networks like MySpace.

Because they were politically biased?

That is what InforWars and Brietbart claimed.

Nope, this is what people said who were on such teams before.

http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-supp...

This wont make much difference and its kinda cynical as Facebook do very little to explain how their real targeted messaging ( adverts ) can be exploited.

Other posters are correct, this is nothing new - organisations like Cambridge Analytica don't rely on trending.. They advertise directly to custom audiences, with massive A/B/C etc tested dark post campaigns ( which appear right in the users timeline not on the side). These are targeted directly at particular groups of people with specific messaging to activate them. Its often a very different message for different targets.

To avoid this kind of manipulation, Facebook, just like any ad targeting platform, would need to change its business model completely. Facebook runs off targeted ads.

Everyone in advertising who knows what they are doing uses these techniques now, as well as many startups who use it to drive cheap traffic through their platforms to enhance their user metrics and learn how to activate users. To be successful you need to poke away at the target users psychological triggers. I've done it .. its not rocket science - its just a morally questionable, scummy thing to do.

Additionally, the technology sector loves the idea of following user behaviour through analytics. Product development tightly following user behaviour metrics is a cornerstone of a lot of startup strategies. I think its quite rare that startups, especially at early stages, even pause to think about the implications of feature design decisions they make - they are simply trying to create user growth in any way possible. Once those features become successful, they are impossible to remove, because investors ( and users ) often view it as intentional sabotage of a successful product.

A significant problem now is that the messaging techniques which the right are using are cheap and effective - so they can activate more people for their bucks. They are morally uninhibited enough to appeal peoples basest fears and instincts - psychological manipulation to control their vote. The centre and left are hamstrung because doing that is less compatible with their ethical position. Combined with this - their audience is more expensive to reach as their messaging is less reactionary.

An even wider question is that if news organisations whose business model relies on targeted advertising, and is often targeted itself in its messaging, is ever going to be factual investigative journalism at all. Actually finding news which doesn't fall into that category in some way is becoming practically impossible now, and state funded organisations of course also have their own problems.

Glad to see a mention of Cambridge Analytica here. More interesting angles re: tested dark post campaigns: KONY 2012, Jade Helm, and the Columbia Chemical "leak". For KONY 2012, there are allegations that OpenOrd was used to maximize the total reach of the campaign [1].

1: http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/04/05/suspici...

"the proof will be what happens in the real world of people's Facebook pages."

Hard to say that last phrase with a straight face.

I sure miss the good old days where if you read it on the internet you KNEW it was true...

Back in the good 'ol days of alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork

The "science and technology" section of the trending news panel is nearly always empty, or has just one story.

Presumably with this homogenisation of content, this is the same for everyone else?

WTH, that would suggest they have one big list of trending topics, and then sort by category. Which sounds ridiculous, if I'm interested in science, I don't care how popular it is relative to a trending story about sports. Why wouldn't they create a list of most shared articles per category and then show the top stories in each?

(For some reason Facebook doesn't show me the trending topics, even if I turn my ad-blocker off, so I can neither confirm or deny your suspicions, sadly)

Hard to imagine getting your news from Facebook.

If you want to be better informed, read a paper or two.

The papers publish online content that ends up on Facebook.

But those links are put right next to Breitbart, the Macedonian Times, etc. and someone who's undiscerning will consider them all equally legitimate.

It's simple, go on Chinese and Russian sites for US news, and vice versa.

If you don't read the papers - you're not informed. If you do read the papers - you're misinformed.

As usual a lot of negativity and not a single positive comment about something that, in my opinion, is a good move.

So I hope HuffPo won't show up now? Right? It's almost entirely "fake news" (Breitbart has much to learn), yet it's in the trends and on Google News.

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