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.
Related Stories
Submitted via IRC for chromas
Facebook calls for government regulation
Mark Zuckerberg says regulators and governments should play a more active role in controlling internet content.
In an op-ed published in the Washington Post, Facebook's chief says the responsibility for monitoring harmful content is too great for firms alone. He calls for new laws in four areas: "Harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability."
It comes two weeks after a gunman used the site to livestream his attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand.
"Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech, and frankly I agree," Mr Zuckerberg writes, adding that Facebook was "creating an independent body so people can appeal our decisions" about what is posted and what is taken down.
He also describes a new set of rules he would like to see enforced on tech companies. These new regulations should be the same for all websites, he says, so that it's easier to stop "harmful content" from spreading quickly across platforms.
Also at The Telegraph, CNBC, CNET
(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.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @04:34AM (15 children)
Facebook needs open source algorithms.
Imagine if everything was open source. By 1890 all electricity would have been free, by 1920 we could have harnessed the cleanest most abundant fuel on Earth, hydrogen. By 1950 we would have directed magnetic beams for flying cars. By [insert current year] we would have colonized Mars with plants and animals, and have bases on Venus.
(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]
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(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?
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(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.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(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!
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Tuesday April 02 2019, @10:00AM
"By 1890 all electricity would have been free, by 1920 we could have harnessed the cleanest most abundant fuel on Earth, hydrogen. By 1950 we would have directed magnetic beams for flying cars. By [insert current year] we would have colonized Mars with plants and animals, and have bases on Venus."
April Fool's day was yesterday...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @04:50AM (1 child)
Stuff like the Unplanned movie gets hidden. A manifesto gets hidden. Pictures of Biden sniffing girls get hidden.
Meanwhile, anything pro-globalist is promoted. Anything leftist is promoted, unless it conflicts with globalism.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday April 02 2019, @08:58AM
Wow, interesting news, I learned something new about myself. Apparently I must be a Globalist -- and one of the biggest. Because my Facebook "page" has over 25 million Faithful Followers!!!!
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @07:25AM (2 children)
Why am I seeing this submission? Where is my button? Can I press it now? You know, we could have had a nice spicy aristarchus submission, instead of this mainstream media click=bait=leading=to=the=Great=Anus. Really, we could have.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday April 02 2019, @08:43AM
I think we're going to see a lot more of Aristarchus in the Soylent News app. And a lot less of him in Facebook. Because Facebook banned White Nationalism. Also known as White Supremacy. They didn't ban it, they banned writing about it. And he absolutely loves to write about that one. Too bad!!!!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 02 2019, @03:53PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday April 02 2019, @08:39AM
We love Facebook. And, we love beautiful buttons. I don't open Facebook much, I leave that one to Dan and Brad(true Cyber geniuses). But I think I'll open it just to press The Button. I think I know what it will say. And that's one of two things. 1st. thing, I see this story is from April 1. And, went up on April 1. So The Button could say BANG. Something like that, right? 2nd. thing, if The Button tells why we're reading something. It can say, "you opened Facebook, you're on Facebook and reading is a big part of that, thank you, good job!!!"
(Score: 4, Touché) by Bot on Tuesday April 02 2019, @08:55AM (1 child)
What it really needs is a "What am I doing here" button, though.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @04:35PM
And when you press that button, you get the answer: “You are pressing the `What am I doing here?´ button.”
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday April 02 2019, @09:25AM
They will lie, just a little, itty bitty bit, in these explanations. Just little lies. Maybe they will leave out those little things that they _really_ can't just come out and say openly. Or they will conveniently rename and relabel some reasons just a little, tiny bit. Or you know, well, some things are just obvious to everyone right? They don't need actually to be said. Out in the open. Other things, their advertising customers will just flat out demand they lie about. Also, think of the children.
If you believe this is anything other than another avenue used to lie and manipulate you..
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 02 2019, @12:55PM
Don't worry, you can further adjust their sights...
Yeah, give them more info, that'll teach them! /s