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Facebook is launching(*) a button called "Why am I seeing this post?" to start giving people information on why certain posts appear in their feeds.
Clicking on it will show information about the various pieces of data that help Facebook decide what should show above something else. So it might indicate that you tend to engage with posts that include videos, for instance, or that many of your friends have liked a certain post.
The firm is also updating the already existing "Why am I seeing this ad?" button to show how advertisers use customer lists to show ads to people.
Writing on the company's blog, Facebook product manager Ramya Sethuraman said: "Both of these updates are part of our ongoing investment in giving people more context and control across Facebook. We will continue to listen to your feedback and evolve these features over time."
Ramya goes on
During our research on "Why am I seeing this post?", people told us that transparency into News Feed algorithms wasn't enough without corresponding controls. People wanted to be able to take action, so we've made it easy to manage what you see in News Feed right from this feature.
The announcement follows Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's call for increased government regulation of social media.
"Privacy is dead" applying just a little bit to one of the social media giants is certainly a good thing. Hopefully others will follow suit.
* - As of story submission, the feature is not yet available on my Facebook feed.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @03:48AM (7 children)
The obvious reason why you are seeing a post when using facebook and trusting it with your information is because you are, in the words of its founder, a "dumb fuck."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 02 2019, @04:36AM (4 children)
Or you understand that getting your grandmother to install, learn, and keep up to date a distributed, FOSS alternative just isn't viable.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @04:39AM (1 child)
Just call her up?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday April 02 2019, @12:15PM
Why would I do that? You can't cage baked goods over the phone.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday April 02 2019, @05:01PM (1 child)
They said that about operating systems, but recent Mint versions can be set to self-update with one checkbox (validated with a password).
An alternate to FB/IG/WA which self-updates is not technically hard. Getting people to change their habit and use it would be, according to Google.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday April 03 2019, @11:58AM
I don't see how installing open source software is even relevant to the topic of social networking.
What would be the open alternative to Facebook? diaspora*? Mastadon? These are distributed networks, but they're not distributed to the scale of individual users. It is not expected that every single person on the network will be running their own server. The point is that you *can*, not that you will. Grandma would not be setting up her own disapora* pod, she would be using yours. Or one of the larger public ones. And registering an account on someone else's pod is no more difficult than registering for Facebook.
As you said, it's about getting people to actually look for and use alternatives, and while a large influx of users might cause some financial difficulties at the larger public pods (so they might need donations for faster servers) you don't technically need a bunch of people to go become sysadmins of new pods to make that happen. And you *certainly* don't need Grandma to spin up her own server.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Tuesday April 02 2019, @06:03PM (1 child)
The even more obvious reason is that you are using facebook. Stop doing _that_ and the issue goes away.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday April 02 2019, @06:36PM
People around me just don't, or won't, understand. Yeah, I have an account. Yeah, it's under a false name. No, I don't check it very often. Yeah, maybe I'll send you a friend request. No, don't expect me to get messages on Facebook. No, don't expect me to update my status - I don't HAVE a status. You don't see my picture on my account? There's a reason for that. Yeah, I'm kinda reclusive - it goes with being asocial. Why do I even have an account? SO I CAN SPY ON YOU STUPID!! THE SAME REASON SUCKERBERG OFFERS YOU A FREE ACCOUNT! No, of course I'm not being hostile - I just want you to understand something. If you put the details of your life on Facebook, you're a dumb fuck. Suckerberg himself said that. What? You don't believe me? Well, google it. Put it in a search box, click enter, and see what comes up.