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Comment by newacct583 | Hacker News Reader

This is true for "ads". I also get a flood of "suggested for you" links which seem indistinguishable, are almost certainly paid content, and have no such labeling.

Some of this is benign enough, like all the inexplicable videos of rollercoaster rides or the Crafty Panda nonsense. Some of it seems somewhat nefarious, like the very family-friendly, feel-good, decidedly non-political suggestions for things like Cute Cat Content at the EXTREMELY political Epoch Times.

I mean, come on. All systems can be gamed. Facebook will still, for a fee, put any content you want in front of any user you want in a completely untrackable way. And that's why they freaked out about this extension.

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Suggested for you content is not paid advertisements, this is straight up conspiracy peddling.

highly doubt that

On Facebook "suggested for you" is not paid, all paid stuff is clearly marked. That's just the algorithm guessing at what you'll enjoy.

And it only guesses that I'll enjoy clearly commercial content and not any of the community stuff related to things I actually interact with? Really? That seems oddly suspicious.

I gotta say, I don't believe you. I've never once seen a Suggested link that wasn't to some kind of obvious click farm. Never once. If you want to make a technical argument that Facebook drives revenue via other means than direct payments, then that seems reasonably likely (if deliberately misleading).

If you want to argue that these folks aren't spending money that ends up in Facebook's pocket in order for Facebook to put their content in front of my eyeballs... then I'm just going to laugh at you, sorry.

I mean, just on first principles your argument is ridiculous. If Facebook didn't see benefit from putting this garbage in front of me that I never click on, then why would it be putting garbage in front of me that I never click on? Clearly Facebook wants me to click on it!

You're wrong but don't seem willing to have your mind changed.

> I've never once seen a Suggested link that wasn't to some kind of obvious click farm. Never once.

Great. I have had nothing but the opposite experience. What now? If I can deconstruct your argument that easily, it must not be a very strong argument to start with.

Facebook got out brained by Buzzfeed about two years ago.

Facebook themselves have no clue what they present to users: they don't like it when other entities start to form a general idea.

Is it plausible that the reason that the reason that the "Suggested" links show you commercial content is because someone other than Facebook has manipulated Facebook's algorithm (in a way analogous to SEO) rather than paying Facebook?

I've probably logged on to facebook fewer than 7 times, so I have very little experience with it, and so I wouldn't know.

Here's the list of ad formats on Facebook[1], and I've worked closely with the biggest advertisers in the world who have dedicated Facebook support staff.

There is literally no way to give FB money for formats outside those (with the single exception of when new formats are introduced they often run experiments with large advertisers).

If you are so sure it is paid for, it should be easy to show the steps you need to take to buy it. Where?

[1] https://www.facebook.com/business/ads/ad-formats

If you are so sure it's _not_ commercial content you have lost the ability to distinguish real content from adverts. That's a skill 7 years olds need to develop.

Maybe Facebook are being played, but not by anyone in my list of friends so they are complicit or we are expected to believe that they can't filter content by your social graph.

Potentially that's true: it does not paint a very good picture of The Social Network's ability to target ads.

More likely, Facebook have no real content for me because noone in my list of contacts posts on Facebook anymore and Facebook push this shitty content so thier pages are not bare. Perhaps one in ten is a real ad. It's still 100% low grade ads, just 90% is Facebook trying, and failing, to drive traffic for itself.

I imagine they logged me looking at the titles long enough to write them down as active user engagement.

I just checked my FB.

The first "suggested for you" piece is this link[1], about the Australian cycling team's bronze medal in the team pursuit. I'm a cyclist and Australian, and can confirm this link is interesting to me. It's from SBS, which is one of Australia's publicly funded broadcasters.

It's not a paid ad.

> More likely, Facebook have no real content for me because noone in my list of contacts posts on Facebook anymore and Facebook push this shitty content so thier pages are not bare.

Exactly. If you are only seeing junk content from your friends, then the suggested content is likely to be junk stuff that is globally popular too. That doesn't somehow make it some secret paid ad, it's just junk. Same way the old Buzzfeed listicles were junk, but popular.

> If you are so sure it's _not_ commercial content you have lost the ability to distinguish real content from adverts. That's a skill 7 years olds need to develop.

You say you and your friends don't use FB much. Whereas I do, and have spend 5 or so years going very deep on their advertising work.

Perhaps I do actually know what I'm talking about here? There is literally no way to pay for "suggested content".

[1] https://www.sbs.com.au/cyclingcentral/article/2021/08/05/aus...

The "suggested for you" content is typically Facebook trying to cross-sell you to other parts of the app. It's not an actual ad, but it's not entirely organic content either.

One of the product teams at Facebook mistakenly believes you'd be interested in using marketplace or whatever and has enough clout internally to get their stuff added to your feed.

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