Hacker News Reader

Comment by jb775 | Hacker News Reader

I noticed during the election that whenever I glanced at the fb "watch" video section, it was videos of guys getting into fist fights, or videos containing disturbing violence. I don't ever watch or search for videos like this, so it's not like it was selected based on my watch history or something.

At the time, I figured it was a psychological trick to suck me into viewing more ads since violence has that "can't look away" nature to it...but now that I think about it, they could have been intentionally stirring up angry emotions within the general population during the election cycle. Anyone else notice this?

View on HN

I worked at Facebook on ranking systems at that time. No, facebook was not trying to intentionally provoke any emotional response. They were trying to increase product metrics like number of videos watched, subject to constraints on the % of watches that include things like violence or bullying. Ultimately the goal is to make the Facebook product good so they can continue selling ads.

Facebook would make all its users happy and positive if that were possible to do. Nobody at Facebook is trying to manipulate you, except by trying to show you content that keeps you coming back to Facebook.

> Nobody at Facebook is trying to manipulate you

Except when they’re running psychological experiments to purposely manipulate you into being sad

I rarely use facbook but when I do they show me some woodworking projects. I have never said anything about woodworking or joined any wordworking groups on facebook. They are just making a guess that someone like me would find those interesting.

You're breaking some data scientist's heart by calling their model "just making a guess".

I watch fight videos all the time. I enjoy them and I know many guys that do. It doesn't surprise me at all that it might suggest them for you if you are a young man and i don't think it has anything to do with the election

Much of that content is based on other people's watch histories.

It's similar to the process of trending topics on Twitter (and one of the reasons that space is such a garbage fire).

Social media algorithms are designed to show you things which make you upset because that type of content is highly likely to "engage."

aren’t they designed to optimize for most engagement, in whichever way they can (which turns out to be with upsetting content)?

Or are people actually selecting specifically upsetting stuff?

Yes, they are designed to select for most engagement, regardless of the content.

It's not just algorithms, MSM do this too. 'Fear sells'

If it bleeds, it leads. That was invented long before social media and ML social manipulation algorithms.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com