Facebook uses data to make the wrong point
This should be a moment for reflection on how internet information machines operate. Instead, Facebook is arguing about data.
On Tuesday, Facebook released cherry-picked information that sought to demonstrate that the posts that show up most often in people’s news feeds were not from the hyperpartisan political extremes but rather the more tame stuff, like mainstream news articles and heartwarming animal posts from a site called The Dodo.
Facebook periodically steps in like this to counter the idea that the most popular material on its site is from the shouty people, particularly right-wing political figures and commentators. It remains true that political partisans are among those that generate the most engagement — comments, shares, likes and other reactions — from users on the app. Facebook is arguing that’s not the most important measure of what is popular.
But what gets people engaged on Facebook matters. When the messages that can make Americans thrilled or angry enough to hit the “like” or “angry” icons or to type “the president has no shame!!!” in the comments — welp, that is important. It tells us something about how Facebook works, and perhaps how humans work, too.
Facebook has been so invested in getting people deeply engaged on its site that three years ago, the company began prioritizing posts that generated significant interactions. Facebook imagined that we would write a kind comment or have similarly “meaningful interactions” on a friend’s engagement announcement. It turned out that many of our interactions on Facebook were with shouty political commentators.
Facebook executives and data scientists are debating how “popularity” is defined on the site, but a better use of the company’s time might be spent reflecting on what it means that many people see NBC News articles, for instance, but are more motivated to interact with rants — whether they are falsely claiming voter fraud or accusing the president of faking his coronavirus infection. Does Facebook feel good about this? Should it ditch the reaction buttons or rejigger how it circulates posts to turn down the partisan temperature?
Those would be useful conversations to have. Instead we have duels over data.
Before we go …
Silence from Q: The Washington Post writes that President Trump’s election defeat is a “crisis of faith” moment for believers in the sprawling and baseless QAnon conspiracy that claims President Trump is a savior. My colleague Kevin Roose also says that Q, the pseudonymous message board user whose posts have fueled the conspiracy, has not posted since Mr. Trump’s election loss.
Black Friday is nothing compared with Singles’ Day: Wednesday’s edition of the wildly popular annual Chinese online shopping holiday known as Singles’ Day is a moment for delivery couriers to draw attention to their low wages and grueling working conditions, my colleague Vivian Wang reports.
Being extremely online seems extremely exhausting: My colleague Taylor Lorenz takes us inside the brain of Hasan Piker, the 29-year-old leftist political commentator who got a popularity jolt on Twitch with his slightly chaotic, marathon live streams of election coverage. He logged 80 hours of live election webcasts just this week!
The New York Times