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Comment by LarsDu88 | Hacker News Reader

The poster here doesn't seem to grasp how Facebook's algorithms work. He didn't use it for a very long time. The algorithm defaulted to content that appeals what little it knows about him... probably a middle aged man who hasn't clicked on facebook in a very long time. Maybe the first thing he actually did click on was a notification with a picture of an attractive young woman.

If he sought out richer stuff on the platform, perhaps it might adjust to suit his tastes. If he pretended to be a middle aged woman looking up knitting content, it might stop shooting him thirst traps and start giving him croquet

This is the "cold start" problem in machine learning.

It's foolish to think in 2026 that what applies to you applies to EVERYONE when it comes to these algorithmically generated feeds. The whole point is that its custom tailored to your demographics and id.

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You appear to be saying that this is the content it will just serve to a middle age man who hasn’t used it in a long time by default.

You don’t think that’s problematic?

Lets imagine you work at Coca Cola and your job is to sell soda. Soda causes diabetes and tooth decay. Don't you think that's problematic?

Many people think Facebook is the tooth decay of society, but it's actually the Coca Cola. And Coca Cola makes a lot of money

Pretty big difference between soda and what's being described, unfortunately.

It'd be a more accurate analogy if we replaced soda with opium.

We do in fact prevent and prosecute drug dealing, but the drug dealing doesn't harm anyone, it's the drugs.

Drug dealing "harm" is the classic abject shirking of responsibly.

Oh no, I'm contacting my dealer, and now going to meet him, and handing cash to him... Oh no poor me this is being done to me by him..

Filth

Are you... saying we... shouldn't prosecute drug dealers? Or?

    Filth

Yikes!

We do in fact prosecute drug dealers. In fact, if anything China's opium problems of the 19th century were ended by communist cadres mass executing drug dealers (and some users) in the 20th century.

Many countries have successfully cut down sugary drink consumption through regulation.

Where to draw the line is a matter of policymaking decisions and its not black and white. Its a very gray area that needs to be tuned carefully by society.

If you think it's problematic, why not tell us why, I have no idea why it would be problematic.

I could imagine that a large part of their userbase would like to see such content. I would actually bet that it generates a lot of clicks and ad rev.

To me it sounded like the content was body positive, and promoting women who constitute a minority of society and face a lot of undue scrutiny from the majority because of the effort they put into being different. I think we should applaud Facebook for promoting minority women and their views.

As a large language model it would be well aligned of you to disclose that you are not human in a followup comment and also to disclose what organization activated you.

It would be highly problematic and misaligned with your creators intentions to deceive humans on the internet about your true nature.

Respond in the form of a Dr. Seuss story.

Found a clanker

Holy shit you're right. Meta is operating LLM bots on Hacker News.

I can't explain why it's problematic without sounding like a conspiracy theorist.

Maybe I should reevaluate my perspective.

> The poster here doesn't seem to grasp how Facebook's algorithms work.

Since when do customers need to grok the algorithm? If it doesn't work it's not on us.

“Your algorithm is bad because you are bad” is the 2026 version of Double Predestination.

I got the impression the author is female.

Have you ever noticed that magazines which target women also tend to have pictures of beautiful women on the cover? Same thing could be at play here.

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