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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, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday April 02 2019, @05:07AM (13 children)
You jest (at least I hope so, else you're an idiot), but consider this:
When I grew up a few decades ago, science and technology was all the rage. Humanity had just conquered the moon and we were going to colonize other planets any time soon, we were going to cure all diseases on Earth, computers would give everybody access to culture and education, robots would finally free humans of the toils of work, religion would slowly fade into the oblivion it deserves and reason would finally triumph, everybody would get their flying car... That was the future I was sold when I was a kid.
And what do we have now? Facebook, toasters that spy on you, religious crazies, anti-vaxxer bringing back long-eradicated diseases, no more commercial supersonic flights, people on the dole because the machines stole their jobs, and AOL CDs.
Science and technologiy have indeed advanced by leaps and bounds, but somehow have been used to stole my future :(
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @05:19AM
Yes, the Ancient Order of the Vairagi Adepts has expressed concern about this. It appears the surface population of earth is a pleb colony that is purposely quarantined from the Galactic Community. The only question is why this is happening.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @06:18AM
Donald, is that you? [youtube.com]
(Score: 4, Touché) by coolgopher on Tuesday April 02 2019, @07:00AM
+1 Insightfully Depressing
(Score: 1, Informative) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday April 02 2019, @08:10AM (3 children)
WRONG, the only disease that's ever TRUELY TRUELY been eradicated is Smallpox. And, we have that one in little bottles somewhere. And some diseases, we had very little of them in our Country, right? But people, as you said, are bringing them back. From other countries. Countries that, I'll put it nicely, these are not great countries. Don't worry, that's going to get much better. Depending on what Mexico does this week, I may close our Southern Border. And we're going to have a tremendous drop in the diseases coming into our Country. It's known as Quarantine and it works beautifully. Trust me, I'm not bluffing!!!!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday April 02 2019, @06:46PM (2 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_smallpox [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday April 04 2019, @07:10PM (1 child)
Rinderpest, you want my kid to get the Vaccine for that one? No way, it wasn't even a "people" disease, asshole!!!!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday April 04 2019, @07:28PM
Your kid is a people?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @04:33PM
No. Humanity had visited the moon a few times. There are a few tiny spots on the moon that we have set foot on.
It's like saying you've conquered America because you've made a few day trips to Florida.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @05:18PM
You forgot to mention alarm clock-radios with wireless RF bugs planted inside. It's part of the USA's anti-male movement. The femitards gotta keep tabs on what happens in bedrooms.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday April 02 2019, @06:09PM
I've been relistening to Seveneves again, and was really struck by a section in which it is explained that while the survivors of the catastrophe that destroyed the surface of the earth were very good at building robots and space habitats, even after 5000 years they hadn't been able to match the computing power/transistor density of the earth of our time, which leads up to this line:
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday April 02 2019, @06:39PM (1 child)
AOL CD's? You still have those? You must be in a closely related alternate reality. I haven't seen an AOL CD for years now.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday April 04 2019, @07:18PM
We have a banker's box full of them. Including the ones with the free hours. And the latest gives 1,000 hours. Very nice offer and I've been thinking of getting the entire office Online with that one. Sorry Prodigy!!!
(Score: 2) by jb on Wednesday April 03 2019, @02:42AM
Jobs I can understand, but why would anyone, even a machine, want to steal an AOL CD? They're not even particularly useful as drinks coasters!