Facebook Is Recycling Your Likes To Promote Stories You've Never Seen
forbes.com
forbes.com
When Google started with Pagerank, making a link was technically hard, so each link was a vote of confidence made by a person, who is on average technically literate, and so on average is well-educated. As the first CMS systems emerged, they were still a pain to use, so only the most motivated people were making links, presumably those people also put some effort into researching their subject. The community of less educated and/or motivated people then could use Google to discover information that was effectively hand-sorted for them by the more educated and motivated. As adding weight to the link graph became easier, the quality of information began to fall.
Enter Facebook - liking a page is the easiest thing you can do, takes no effort and there are no educational barriers. On the contrary, the most educated people will see this sort of shenanigans and they will stop "liking" anything at all. The less educated will continue to "like" things left and right, making it even more repulsive for the educated. Long term the entirety of information Facebook has in their possession is filled with celebrity gossip, urban legends, chain letters, cute kittens, horoscopes, feel-good wisdom quotes, etc - all that information that is heavy on emotional engagement, but light on actual information.
There in lies the problem with "social search" - garbage in, garbage out.
Main reason was that I don't have the time or patience for their changes in privacy. I couldn't even remember some of the things I had liked back when the feature was first introduced and I didn't want that to come back to haunt me at some point when I am not paying attention to their privacy policies.
On top of that misrepresenting the opinions of its users like this to promote content that they have never even seen to their extended network is misleading in the extreme. Most people would not agree to this sort of manipulation, and there are even questions about how some likes have been generated: http://readwrite.com/2012/12/11/why-are-dead-people-liking-s...
Facebook have to be careful here, as if they lose the trust of their users by continually abusing it, people will just shut down their accounts. Their actual site offers little that can't be easily done with other services, their only pull with users at present is the network effect, which works both ways as if trust starts to slip and people notice others leaving, it can easily snowball.
That choice and the responses of people removing all their previous "likes" suggests that this amounts to a drive-by monetization rather than sustainable model.
Basically, what is happening (per his example) is that "Johnny" liked "Vice", and what Facebook is saying is "Johnny liked Vice", and it's pulling in a recent/popular "Vice" article to expand more on the brand. To help get more likes for the brand (which is a good thing, for pages/brands). It's NOT saying "Johnny liked this Vice story", which is what he [the guy in the video] is implying. That's why it says "Related Stories", that story is related to "Johnny" liking "Vice", because it's a "Vice" story/post.
Facebook should just make it more clear that you like "Vice" as a whole, and because Facebook wants to promote that you like "Vice" they should phrase it like it's a recent "Vice" post and NOT an article "you" specifically liked. They currently have a horizontal rule with "Related Story" to show this, but that probably isn't enough since everyone is getting confused. That's the confusion here.
It's just a confusing UI/UX element, it's not like they are saying you "Like" this weird article that you never liked.
People need to take a "chill pill" over this, because it's not as bad as it seems.
Why they don't just make the search facilities work better and attach adverts to those instead of these sorts of shenanigans is beyond me.
People just need to watch what they 'like' and maybe go back through those 'likes' to do some cleaning. I actually like this, because it puts the full blame on the user to be more responsible on what they 'like', and not to just 'like' everything possible.
Stuff liked years ago can now clutter the feeds of friends and family and look like you wanted to show it to them right now.
They've changed the consequences of choosing to 'like' stuff without any indication to the user.
I'm very skeptical that this was accidental. Even if it was, it looks intentional: users don't see the promoted posts that are associated with their past likes so they don't have any intrinsic feedback that would make them curate their likes. That looks underhand. If it didn't we wouldn't be seeing the fuss.
That doesn't change the fact that the intention of the UI is to imply a person has endorsed a product or message when in fact they've only endorsed the messenger
To put it bluntly, advertisers are spending those dollars because they know the majority of their "fans" won't go so far as to "like" the product or message in question if approached to do so, which would put a message in their friends' newsfeed at no cost. It's an opt-out system that works because it's poorly understood, and Facebook and their advertising partners have identified that and put a dollar value on it.
If we reach a situation where we're discussing who is to "blame" for an inadvertent endorsement, there's a problem.
Have you heard of "surfacing," as a data-product?
It is painfully obvious this company is desperate and undaunted it its efforts to "package peer pressure as a service" they can sell to bring more exposure to brands, with or without users' consent, knowledge or approval. It's not merely confusing UI to pull in some random post from a site you "liked" once and post that as part of an endorsement. It is part of an established pattern of ethical melt-downs and trust. Moreover, it's been established that Likes can be derived from simply sending a link in a PM or posting one to your timeline, even in a negative context.
Putting "full blame" on the user fits nicely with the CEO's view during college that we're all just "dumb fucks" for using the thing.
I hate to be so negative, but I find this outrageous and indefensible. Because of it's scale and the many talented people working there, I think Facebook holds promise in lots of areas, but it is profoundly creepy the way they are always trying to lull us all into gradual acceptance of using our information however they damn well please for a mythical valuation sustaining cash cow that has as of yet to materialize.
*credit to Jaron Lanier & his book You Are Not A Gadget book for some of my phrasing and ideas here. He articulated this when Beacon was their only offense, and his predictions about their direction have proven completely and totally accurate.
Anecdotally, I had a friend who 'liked' an apartment rental company, and it took me a number of postings to realize that he was not suddenly looking at 7500/mo Beacon Hill palaces on a bartender's wage. At first, I thought he was just clicking like on a beautiful apartment regardless of cost, but as "liked" listing after listing showed up over the course of about two weeks, I realized something was up. It can be that confusing.
If Facebook creates the appearance that this has happened are you annoyed? If not why not?
Suppose the latter was intentional. Does that affect your annoyance?
Yes, I would be annoyed because it's an action on my behalf that I did not do.
> If Facebook creates the appearance that this has happened are you annoyed? If not why not?
As someone who gets what they are doing, I realize it's just an appearance so it doesn't bother me. I'm a UI/UX designer for a living, so I see a lot of ways things that are done differently and/or badly. I see what they are trying to do, and while it's a poor job, I get it. And because I get it, it doesn't bother me.
> Suppose the latter was intentional. Does that affect your annoyance?
I don't think there is really a way to prove if it was intentional or not, but I get your overall point. I personally don't believe it was intentional, but that is just me.
Almost every single designer I talked to thought the changes I made were "broken" or a "poor design job." As an example, bolding the title of the last form field to give users the impression that it was important would decrease abandonment rate. It looked ugly as hell, but worked.
The fundamental problem with monetization on a social platform is that it is near impossible to make an advertisement that is more compelling than your friends. You just can't compete with the emotional response of jealousy of your friends ski trip, or the desire from seeing your high school crush in swimwear. What Facebook has done here is broken that barrier and involved your friends in the advertisement. They need to create an assumed connection that Bob likes this article on CNN, so you'll go read it and find out why.
In my professional opinion, this is absolutely intentional. It's not a mistake, it is exactly what I would tell them to do if I was hired on to solve engagement problems with brands.
Are you serious?
To rephrase your question, how many times must a "not that bad" mistake be overhyped before people realize that reporters are trolling for hits?
They employ some of the world's best UI designers… and marketers… and ad sales people. It's disingenuous to pretend they just "oopsied," especially when all their oopsies happen to benefit them and not their users.
But Joe Schmoe user on Facebook?
He's definitely going to think Johnny liked the Vice article. And Facebook damn well knows that.
Old Feb 2012 story on this about a guy who became associated with a "personal lubricant" via Amazon: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57386733-71/facebook-ad-pu...
Maybe they know that. Maybe it turns them on? Just consider people who grope, or even rapists. They know their victims don't want it, and in presence of physically fit people who pay attention they hold their feet quite still; but as soon as the attention or the ability for self-defense wanes, they come a-creeping again.
Sure I could have used a less loaded comparison, but for me that's what is going on here and elsewhere. Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft to name just those who certainly will not stop unless they've been disabled.
But of course, it's really hard to knock someone out for good when for anyone adding 2 and 2, there are ten people with Stockholm Syndrome doing their best to stop them; so that's why we're still here, instead of, say, the information age. Bill Hicks kindly asked advertisers to kill themselves; they didn't. So can we at least fucking stop putting food on their table? I'd like to know how an information age, as opposed to a naked emperor advertisement age, would actually look like. Since they won't do the decent thing, let's do it for them.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me a hundred times, and people get confused and think that's just how it is. Well no, and it isn't over until the heat death of the universe, either.
I would be a lot more annoyed if it was in my real account.
Following that I removed most of my infos and page likes. Seeing the new Graph Search, I'm glad.
It all started when I saw a post about purchasing country-style boots from a discount country store. Then it got worse with posts promoting Walmart. I believe those posts suffered from the problem noted in this article. It looked somewhat like a friend promoting Walmart.
Does anyone know if there is a way to hide this stuff?
Is this true? If I share a link so something on HackerNews, can PG now run social ads against that action?
In my own case I've come to see "likes" as a liability and removed all existing "likes" for commercial organizations or any uncommercial org for which I see these paid-for posts. Hardly the desirable outcome for Facebook or the organizations! I hope my reaction becomes more prevalent.