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curious_af 3 hours ago

International flight attendant. So the algorithms for people that travel internationally a lot are drastically different from the people who remain stationary. If Facebook wanted to prevent themselves from negative publicity, they might have a different experience for the people who have political power (international travel might be the best proxy for that)

What you're referring to may also be part of their XCheck program which came to light back in 2021

Aurornis 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> So the algorithms for people that travel internationally a lot are drastically different from the people who remain stationary.

I can confirm the same experience as the parent commenter for my family who still use Facebook even though most of them don't travel internationally.

> If Facebook wanted to prevent themselves from negative publicity, they might have a different experience for the people who have political power (international travel might be the best proxy for that)

I think the much simpler explanation is more likely: People who use Facebook for engaging with friends and family content will see more friends and family content. I don't think this is Facebook playing 4D chess trying to hide content from politicians by detecting who is traveling internationally. I mean, if Facebook did want to have a separate algorithm for politicians, don't you think they could come up with something better than triggering on international travel?

afavour an hour ago | parent [-]

I do think it’s that but with a dangerous slippery slope embedded within. FB will optimize for engagement no matter what so if you linger on one political post they put among 99 friends and family posts they’ll immediately amp up the ratio. You need to somehow maintain a perfect ratio of time spent on FB to fresh family and friends content, otherwise FB will fill the space for you.

My mother in law is an example of this. She’s always been “mildly” political, e.g. she liked Planned Parenthood’s FB page. Now her feed is a mess of anti-Trump stuff. I’m anti-Trump myself but a lot of these posts are barely coherent and she’s mentioned before now when she meets someone new her first thought is whether they voted for Trump or not. To my mind it’s a direct result of her slipping down that slope. She frequently has interactions (“fights” is too strong really) with friends and neighbors on her feed who are clearly off piste in the other political direction.

I even had an example of it on my own profile. For some reason I had a post from a local (NY) radio station in my feed, about Mamdani. Curious to click into the comments I saw a cesspit of vitriol by boomer age users, attached to their real names, sometimes with smiling photos with their grandchildren… for weeks after whenever I logged in there would be a new post by a different conservative leaning radio station, ready to make me angry. Engagement > user happiness.

0x457 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Could it be due to someone actually using facebook so algorithm works in their favor. When I worked in REDACTED when you not frequent user you'd get generic "what is popular for everyone" feed because empty-feed = bad-feed.

nindalf 4 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The XCheck program has nothing to do with anything you’re thinking of. You read some old misinformation and didn’t read the post debunking the misinformation.

Source: me. https://nindalf.com/posts/xcheck/

bko 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think you're overthinking it. She probably just has a lot of real people connections and drives the algo to meaningful interactions. When a ghost logs in, they don't know what to show so default to "general" spam which is just AI generated woman.

twelvedogs 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The algorithm is not optimised for meaningful interactions, even 10 years ago i couldn't get it to even mostly show friends and family after fighting it for a week

underlipton an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I've been convinced for some time that access to some resource component that determines the quality of search/AI results is divvied up likewise. Why waste resources on users who have no audience or influence? If they're frustrated, who cares? Instead, identify the people who people already listen to, and make sure their experience with the platform is optimal. Even if the service is horrible for the vast majority of users, the gatekeepers and tastemakers will insist that they're just imagining things.