Is Facebook Censoring Your Online Conversations?

[Editor's Note: Today's post is by guest author R. Michelle Green, the Principal for her company, Client Solutions. She is a combination geek girl, personal organizer, and career coach. She has studied what makes some individuals embrace or avoid information technology. (She’s definitely one of the former.) Michelle helps others improve their use of technology in their personal or professional life. Here's her take on Facebook's formula for displaying your status messages.]

By R. Michelle Green

Tired of hearing about Facebook Privacy and Security? Are you just happy to post to Facebook, let your friends know what you’re thinking, and see what your friends are talking about?

What if I told you there’s no guarantee that anyone sees what you post?

The hell you say?? Oh yeah -- the Top News feed is clearly edited. But Most Recent will show everything right?

Nope.

Sounds preposterous – the whole purpose of Facebook is to share posts with each other, right? Maybe originally. But it’s a business now, a big one. And with the very public statement on its sign-up page “free, and always will be,” how does it make money? Its business model is driven by focused advertising, page looks and click-throughs. Under that business model, not every post is created equal. Facebook’s Terms of Use do not promise to deliver your posts or content to your friends. The ToU speaks instead of your posting information so others (unspecified) can access that information.

I can hear you now – not delivering the posts contravenes the whole Facebook model. We’d all be up in arms if our posts and updates were not received.

But are we really checking? Who’s polling their 130 friends and saying did all of you see my post? Not me. But Thomas Weber of The Daily Beast made an effort.

In a month-long experiment with a FB newbie, two dozen interns checked to see if the newbie’s posts appeared in their feed. Their newbie varied his posts by content and type over the period as part of the experimental design. Late in October 2010, Weber posted his report on what makes a FB post worthy of disseminating. Newbies have low priority. (Some interns never saw any of newbie’s posts.) Links trump plain status updates. Photos and videos are prized. The more people comment on a post, the more likely it will be seen (and if that’s not chicken/egg, I don’t know what is). Think of it this way – they want you on the site, clicking around, looking at things, coming back, clicking again. Photos, posted links, and people with a zillion friends drive user engagement, and are therefore coin of the realm for the news feed.

This actually helped me make sense of a personal puzzle. I would look at my most recent feed, wonder about a particular friend not shown, go to their profile and see all sorts of current things that never made it to my news feed. I never checked dates/times – I just figured that other posts crowded them off my home page of presented posts. Now I know that FB’s algorithm had made a decision that my friend’s post was not one I needed to see. In a mobile device world, FB may decide to privilege the feed over the profile. “Facebook… continues to redefine ‘what's important to you’ as ‘what's important to other people,’ ” Weber concluded.

So, what might this mean for you, Gentle Reader? Don’t assume your friends all saw what you posted – some will, some won’t. If you really want someone to see what you post, tag them, or send them a message. If you want to keep up with particular friends, check their profile. Or go old school and try some synchronous face time (what a concept!!)…

Weber wasn’t the first to talk about this algorithm, only the more widely read. In April 2010, FB engineers at the F8 conference gave the best look under the hood to date, describing a formula called EdgeRank that valued the type of item posted, the age of the item, and the relationship between the poster and the friend who interacted with it. Extra credit readers can see the engineers' speech here, about 22 minutes in.

There’s another clue to the algorithm in a new feature (actually a revamped one) called Groups. Using the groups you build or are listed in, along with what they already know about your friendship circle, they can make even finer distinctions about which posts from which people to display. Recently announced FB messaging is supposed to be superior to email by filtering out messages from people who aren’t in your network (turning email about changes in your travel itinerary into de facto spam). But that’s another blog post, for another day.

Comments

[VA home home loan]

Of course FB has authority to put what they want on their site. After all, it is their site. Yes, there is some user value and without a good user experience, you would not go back. However, I think it is important to recognize that Facebook is a business and therefore they are there to make money. They are not there for the sole purpose to act as a medium. The medium aspect is the draw, not their purpose. If it were a nonprofit, government entity or other benevolent organization, sure. But since it is a business their motives are primarily self driven.

[George]

I have wondered why this blog post didn't get more comments. Yes, FB has the authority to put what they want on their site. The relevent issues are:

1) Does it meet users' needs to censor posts in the timeline?

2) Should FB clearly explain what it is doing? And if you believe the answer is "yes," then why hasn't FB explained what it is doing?

3) Should users push back on this? Users have protested other changes by FB. Why not this, too?

I suspect that what may be going on among FB users is what a coworker said recently, "it's not really censoring. FB is making my life easier by keeping my timeline simpler. Otherwise, my FB timeline would quickly become overwhelming."

Wow! That is either a gracious stance of giving FB the benefit of the doubt, or a surrender that there isn't a better social networking site available in the marketplace currently; where better = fetures + penetration among peers.

I guess the old saying is true: you get what you pay for with a free service. Obviously, I disagree with the person's statement about FB making my life easier. I expect to see and should see posts from all of my friends in my FB timeline.

George
Editor
http://ivebeenmugged.typepad.com

[George]

Facebook rolls out timeline changes:

http://mashable.com/2010/12/22/facebook-news-feed-filtering/

George

[phildgeo]

1) Does it meet users' needs to censor posts in the timeline?

Their playground, their rules. If we use their playground, we must allow them to call the rules.

2) Should FB clearly explain what it is doing? And if you believe the answer is "yes," then why hasn't FB explained what it is doing?

"clearly explain" is completely subjective.

3) Should users push back on this? Users have protested other changes by FB. Why not this, too?

No. You should never challenge the system. FB by design is a closed system. The FB system is a business not a democratic country.

FB states in the TOU that "you grant us [Facebook] non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license". Through this license, you release control of the licensed data to any "application" [read software or website feature].

You, I, and every other user has a contract with Facebook. I understand the contract to read FB has the right to set the rules as they wish.

If I do not like the FB rules, I may feel free to openly compete as that is the basis of the American way.

Its not acquiescence that is at hand. It is the honest realization of the agreement between FB and its users.

Please don't misinterpret these statements as an act of hostility. I'm not trying to be rude. I just don't understand the history of corporate bashing that the various FB changes have brought on.

[phildgeo]

One final thought but was unable to edit my comment. FB and you are free to censor all content posted by others. Is their and/or your censorship affecting the user experience? Isn't the filtration of information the goal of every webmaster?

[George]

Phildgeo:

Thanks for the comments. Yes, FB is a business and not a democracy. We agree on that. Yes, censoring affects the user experience. We agree on that, too.

A trustworthy business tries to meet users' changing needs. And many FB members expect their FB timeline to include all of the posts by their friends. When the timeline doesn't do this, and doesn't offer an explanation, then there is a problem -- regardless of what the terms of service state.

I am sure that Michelle Green will have more to say.

George
Editor
http://ivebeenmugged.typepad.com

[George]

Update. Facebook members are sharing the following note:

"Have you noticed that you are only seeing updates in your newsfeed from the same people lately? Have you also noticed that when you post things like status messages, photos and links, the same circle of people are commenting and everyone else seems to be ignoring you?

Don't worry, everyone still loves you and nobody has intentionally blocked you. The problem is that a large chunk of your friend/fan list can't see anything you post because the "New Facebook" has a newsfeed setting that, by default, is automatically set to ONLY SHOW POSTS FROM PEOPLE WHO YOU'VE RECENTLY INTERACTED WITH OR INTERACTED WITH THE MOST (which would be limited to the couple of weeks just before people started switching to the new profile).

So in other words, for both business and personal pages, unless your friends/fans commented on one of your posts within those few weeks or vice versa - you are now invisible to them and they are invisible to you!

HERE'S THE FIX:

Scroll down to the bottom of the Newsfeed on your HOME page and click on"Edit Options". In the popup, click on the dropdown menu next to 'Show posts from:' and select "All Of Your Friends and Pages" and then clickSave.

Note: This is the fix for personal pages but I am unsure of whether or not the business pages are set up the same way.

Simply posting an update about it won't do any good because lots of your friends/fans already can't see your posts by default. You'll either have to send out a message to everyone on your list (which I'm not even sure business pages can do and is a rather tedious method) or post an event explaining the situation like this one and invite your entire fan base and/or friend list. You can also tweet about it hoping that most of your fellow facebookers are also on twitter.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SHARE THIS NOTE WITH AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN SO WE CAN TRY AND GET EVERYONE INFORMED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Anyone who isn't seeing your posts right now will never see them until they have changed their settings as explained."

[R. Michelle Green]

These comments are deep! Without having seen this note, I recently posted on FB the idea that if you think just posting status updates is staying connected, think again. This just reinforces my statement. Thanks George!

[R. Michelle Green]

thanks Phildgeo for reading my post and sharing your perspective. I have a similar view about many things: know what the rules are; if you don't like the rules, say so; and if change can't occur, then vote with your feet. It would be nice, however, if FB had sufficient transparency to trust its users with the knowledge of which posts go where, and how to make a post go farther....

[Linda Dunn]

Thanks for explaining this to a casual user. veeeery interesting...

[R. Michelle Green]

You're quite welcome Linda Dunn!