Technology

Using engagement for metric will ofc render algorithmic feed "better", i.e. addictive. Their value is not about mental wellbeing.

They don't "hate" chronological feeds. The study say they are more likely to disengage, and that's probably because people got what they need from the chronological feed and log off to do other things....

Proving that chronological feed is more healthy.

Less engagement is exactly what I would want. Show me my new chronological content and then I'll get the hell out of there.

I think this is bullshit. I exclusively scroll Lemmy in new mode. I scroll I see a post I already have seen. Then I leave.

From Facebook point of view, then your engagement is low. Low engagement = less ad views = they make less money

So they need to maximize doom scrolling. Turn off your brain and scroll for a couple hours with stuff the algorithm choose for you, thanks

"Spend less time once on" is different than "hate". I hated FB's feed so much that I was reluctant to get on in the first place, a metric completely different from how long I would spend once I DID open it.

I mean, this isn't that surprising as the algorithm is intended for full dopamine distribution. It's like a fucking dopamine faucet and we are all just a bunch of apes.

I'd like to interject for a moment and say,

this isn't a test for what users like, this is a test for how users are addicted to the platform

algorithm provides content in a way that they become a consoomer and more often than not, we actually feel guilty and sad after an hour of scrolling and realising we wasted so much time (like post masturbation sadness)

Usage time ≠ enjoyment.

Prefer is weasel language. The utility function they are using is if a User stays on the platform, while the user utility function may be simply - Did I get updates on everything I care about?

Giving users agency over their feed is empowering, sure some people may want to be stuck in a never-ending loop of content - and thats fine for them, but the option for someone to see the most relevant posts from their subscribed communities/friends in a quick fashion is important.

I'm excited to see more user configurable agency in the fediverse. Imagine you have 100 friends, a few rarely post, a few post every 5 minutes, and everyone else in between. If my goal is to stay updated with all 100 friends, but in 10 minute a day increments then I want a agent that shows me the top content uniformly distributed across all 100 of my contacts, such that I see the one post from the introvert rather then the 95 shit posts from the extrovert drowning out that content (the influencer/engagement enshitification cycle).

The same applies to lemmy communities, and while our feed algorithms are not there yet, I'm excite to see development continue.

Company study confirms what company wants you to believe. More at 11.

Disappointed with Wired writing totally wrong title. Meta didn't prove anything. It was a claim, not a proof.

The headline is ridiculous and leaving instagram for youtube and tiktok is a weird point since they are very different to what people use instagram for?

But why does everything in the world have to be so THIS or THAT??? Why can’t i have a chronological feed that gives me a “recommended” post every 3rd or so post? I want to see everything from everyone I follow while sometimes seeing new stuff and then when ive caught up i want to close the app and go on with my day.

I dont want For You or Following tabs. I want to choose how often im recommended content and see/change what its basing the recommendations off of. Everything in life doesnt have to be a war between red or blue hats for crying out loud

This is a non-issue. Provide the chronological feed and let people choose how they want to consume their content.

I wouldn't want to be stuck with ether one. Sort options. Let me choose how to sort my feed, whenever I want to. Sometimes I scroll thru hot, sometimes I'm in new, sometimes I use both in the same session. There's no reason to lock it to one or the other permanently.

People hate exercise, too. Not doing it will shorten their lives, but they hate it.

Classic false dilemma. It was never about "algorithm vs chronological". The problem is the lack of options. Having algorithmic magic be the only way to browse content is the issue. That doesn't mean it shouldn't exits or even that it shouldn't be the default. There should just me more other ways that the user can switch too.

I have that issue with Youtube, which can be really good at recommending obscure videos with a couple of hundred views that are exactly about the topic you are looking for. But there is no way for me to actively select the topic that the recommendation machine recommends, it's all based and watch history can very easily get screwed up when you watch the wrong videos. Worse yet, it can't handle multiple topics at once, so one topic will naturally end up suppressing the other. The workaround for that is to run multiple browser profiles, train each of them on a topic and than be very careful what video you watch with what profile. But that's frankly stupid, such functionality should be in the UI. Youtube has a topic-bar at the top which looks like it might help, but it's far to unspecific to be useful, something like "Gaming" isn't one topic, it's thousands of topics bundled into one, the recommendation algorithm understands each of the thousand topics individually, the UI does not.

Give users choice.

ITT: tech people and power users struggle to understand that the masses use devices and services differently than they do.

Worth keeping in mind that Facebook has manipulated data before:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pivot_to_video#Facebook_metrics_controversy

In September 2016, Facebook admitted that it had reported artificially inflated numbers to its advertisers about how long viewers watched ads leading to an overestimation of 60-80%[44] Facebook apologized in an official statement and in multiple staff appearances at New York Advertising Week.[45][46] Two months later, Facebook disclosed additional discrepancies in audience metrics.[47][48] In October 2018, a California federal court unsealed the text of a class action lawsuit filed by advertisers against Facebook, alleging that Facebook had known since 2015 that its viewership numbers were inflated "by some 150 to 900 percent" and waited over a year before taking action to disclose or fix the problem, citing internal Facebook communications that "somehow there was no progress on the task for the year" and decisions to "obfuscate the fact that we screwed up the math."[49][50]

Facebook want enraged users, enraged users are engaged users. They don't care about mental health or enjoyment, just how long you stay on Facebook.

So basically the algorithm feeds an unhealthy addiction. And in no moment the study even tries to contradict the main concerns against algorithm-based sorting: lack of transparency, unhealthiness, bubbling, and feeding into dichotomies like "you like apples, so YOU'RE A BANANA HATER!".

Better approaches put power on the hands of the users. For example, tagging content, or sorting it into communities. Perhaps not surprisingly it's how Mastodon and Lemmy do it, respectively.

There's also the matter of quality, not just personal preferences; this sort of thing does require an algorithm, but there's nothing preventing it from being simple, customisable, and open, so users know exactly why they're being shown something instead of something else.

Is it possible to design a content recommendation algorithm that isn't game-able? As it stands right now I don't think that algorithms are fundamentally bad, just that capitalism ruins everything.

People don't hate it. Facebook and its shareholders hate it because it means less earnings.

How about you give people the choice?

The best thing about reddit/Lemmy is you can sort content by new, hot, controversial, etc. Depending on what you're in the mood to view.

Users of the chronological feeds engaged less with the platforms

Because there is no endless content. You will eventually reach the end of your feed, close your browser and go to bed, sleeping well and staying healthy.

But of course Meta prefers you doomscrolling through the entire night and feeling like shit afterwards. Just one more ad bro...

I'm the opposite, chronological feed made me use social media even more

Less engagement doesn't mean dislike.

That said I do think people get a little too excited about chronological order. I'm fine with any transparent algorithm, I think the old reddit "best" algorithm thatthe xkcd guy made is still a very good way to order comments and I liked the Q&A sort method in specific cases.

I'm sorry, but those "suggestions" sound wrong - a chronological feed exposes users to untrustworthy content. The point is an algorithmic feed is unknown manipulation UNLESS the algorithm is known and published. Engaging less is also NOT a bad thing at all, unless you are the platform itself. The inference is that an algorithm will expose users to less political and untrustworthy content? Well, certainly not if the platform wants to generate continuous engagement through provocation and the creation of outrage.

But OK, it is an experiment by Meta, so let's just leave it at that.

I think this is bullshit.

I think it is exactly how people are behaving. And I can even recall witnessing many people first hand who flip a newspaper to the sports section. Never learning anything about science news, medical news, unless it's some kind of social column about a diet.

People wanting to cut out and block things they don't want to read in a newspaper is what I consider the "default behavior" of most of humanity. No surprise they do not care about the news their friends share. An intelligent computer system that filters out (based on topic/content study) what they don't want to see before-hand is always going to be popular with such people.

“One of the effects of living with electric information is that we live habitually in a state of information overload. There's always more than you can cope with.” — Marshall McLuhan.

Mix addictive ingredients into food and the consumer will eat more than naturally, but it's not better for him. Saying "more is better" and confusing "to engage" with "to like" is eval.

I think there's a point to algorithmic feeds but it doesn't necessarily eliminate the need for a chronological one either.

When I was on Threads poking around, the algorithmic feed was pretty essential in finding mainstream people I used to follow on Twitter.

There just has to be a healthy balance between the two.

I guess I'm a minority because I mostly stopped using Facebook after they got rid of chronological feeds because that's all I wanted.

it's because they aren't talking about users, it's shareholders. shareholders don't stand to gain near as much ad revenue from the endless algorithm induced scrolling. executives and shareholders hate chronological feeds, not people

I exclusively scroll Lemmy in new mode. I scroll I see a post I already have seen. Then I leave. That doesn’t mean I hate it, I’m just done!

And that is the problem for the commercial platforms. They don't want you to leave, they don't want you to "be done", they want you reading and engaging as much as they can because that's part of what they sell to advertisers.

I also feel like a lot of the value of chronological is lost if I think it's algorithmic recommendations. If I don't know I'm browsing the latest? I'll likely just think the algorithm is serving up some garbage. Especially somewhere like Facebook, where people haven't really been curating their feed for years, just... following whoever to be polite and letting the algorithm take care of it.

How much additional shit did Facebook push to the users feeds though? People are engaging less because Facebook has added a million ads and a billion posts from people and groups you never agreed to follow. Facebook can't be trusted for anything. They'll game any study to support whatever outcome they wanted in the first place. It's run by a sociopathic, lying, thief.

This probably has a kernel of truth. Someone just posted how they hate that Mastodon doesn't do trending posts and instead only has chronological. They said they found it pointless. I personally disagree and the reason I say there's only a kernel of truth is that we shouldn't view addiction as the best or most desired end state.