As one of the people who initiated the hidden likes test on Instagram, I can confidently and authoritatively say you're incorrect. There was no ill intent. It was solely to see if we could make people feel less self conscious by decreasing social comparison. Our hope was to decrease the pressure normal people feel about sharing their lives with their friends and family. We thought this might improve some long-term metrics, but once we discussed the rationale for the test with leadership, the well-being opportunity trumped any impact on metrics--positive or negative.
Also, we [IG] did this first, and we started it for the right reasons. Blue followed our lead. Believe it or not, there are people who give a shit about well-being at FB.
[edited because jazzy was right that I was too harsh]
Besides, even if it was proposed with good intentions there could have been other, aligned agendas that helped it make it into the product
Reddit has been fuzzing scores for years to trip up bots, it’s a good strategy, prevents your enemy from having accurate information. [1]
Also demetricating was conceived 7 years ago (!) by Ben Grosser [2]
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/eaqnf/pardon_me_but_50... [2] https://bengrosser.com/projects/facebook-demetricator/
[edit Thanks for the edit]
This is undoubtedly true of most maligned corporations out there, they are enabled by many well-intentioned people, but the physics of the situation remain. If something makes a meaningful dint to the bottom line (in a way that can't be offset by intangibles like public-relations wins etc.), someone at a higher-level is likely to veto it. This is where organized labor can be a force for good by facilitating internal protest.
Also there might not be any explcit intent for your team to impelemt the above but sometimes these things emerge as slow influence that comes from the guiding hand of top level influence over time. A healthy dose of skepticism regarding social media is more than warranted, you can't be upset that anyone would be led to think that after the 2 decades of such decisions made by social media giants
Especially given Facebook's atrocious track record
I don't presume to know the full story of how this feature came to be inside your company, I'm assuming from your comment that this initiative was created organically by employees for noble reasons. Do you admit the possibility that management may have had different motivations to agree to this idea? There's no reason why both of us can't be correct. You might have your own incentive behind this idea, management might have another.
Under the assumption that you place yourself among them, I'd suggest not writing "you are full of shit" when you disagree with what someone wrote. They simply stated that it was their suspicion, and went so far as to highlight that it may sound conspiratorial.
edit: comment has been edited - appreciated
My question is: do you honestly think that people should share their private lives with their friends and family through a public, global platform owned by a giant corporation? Maybe that's part of the problem.
You can have your IG posts set to private and only those who follows you see them. You just have to make sure those you accept their follow request are people you want to share with.
Same for Facebook. One can't have 5,000 Facebook friends and worry about their content being public when you chose to accept friend requests from thousands of people you don't know.
For a very very long time, my Twitter feed was my private journal for things I didn't want to forget because my account was private and wouldn't accept follow request from anyone while I'm able to follow accounts that interests me.
This isn't Facebook's problem as far as I can tell.
While I trust and respect your stance, you may have been just a "useful idiot" in this.
It'd be a good thing, if it's left to stand. You _should_ be happy/proud about _that_. But I'd not waste my life going out of my way to advocate for the rationale behind it.
I don't agree with a LOT of what Facebook (and Instagram) does, but I also don't think everything they do is with the intent of evil.
However, I think I was pretty clear.
"It was solely to see if we could make people feel less self conscious by decreasing social comparison." - the main goal
"Our hope was to decrease the pressure normal people feel about sharing their lives with their friends and family." - if we achieve the main goal, this ~might~ happen.
"We thought this might improve some long-term metrics" - on the off chance this happens, we ~might~ benefit in the long run.
Is this really different from "I suspect that the recent trend of social media platforms hiding engagement metrics has less to do with fighting 'envy' than simply allowing for more authentic looking proliferation of promoted content" ?
I think so. Seems like a pretty indirect way of driving user engagement.
Yup, I've found its a typical reaction from Facebook employees on this site to attack commenters and rationalize any time negative critiques are brought up, although the extreme defensiveness is pretty telling
I don't know what makes you certain you know the answers even though you've looked at none of the data. Do you have some other sources?
As somebody who followed the stories about FB and it's practices in the recent years, I can confidently tell you that by now it is obvious that FB as a company is acting like a sociopathic entity. Even if the individuals working there believe they are doing good, the outcome as a whole always tend to look the opposite.
So even if GP is full of shit, it is way more believabe than what you are saying simply because fits the general narrative about FB - every single thing FB does is about exploiting pesonal data and human behaviour.
If people really cared about the well being of others, they wouldn't work at Facebook. I'm sure the fat checks are nice though
When I realised what this thing is, I realised it's a nothingburger for me.
Pity I can't control the monster instead of having some decisions, made in a remote conference room, that are no use to me, rammed down my throat.
You have your feature turned on? Well that's because you're a big shot and you feel you'll get the likes to show it off.
You have your feature turned off? Well that's because you know you simply won't get any likes and we all know that. Now you're 'depressed'.
I'd say it also helps the platform hide a potential fake users problem. For instance, you can no longer see the low engagement on users' posts who paid for followers.
Don't "risk" sounding conspiratorial. Embrace sounding conspiratorial!