If you want to know what's going on in the world of mainstream social media and cancel culture, there's one essential newsletter to look at. The Interface by Casey Newton from The Verge. I wrote about it a few weeks ago too.
Last night's newsletter covered a fundamental difference between what Facebook users find interesting enough to share and interact with and what Facebook's censors WANT people to share and interact with.
Here's a typical look at the top engaged posts on Facebook as reported by Kevin Roose of the New York Times. He posts a list like this every day on Twitter and they nearly always look the same.
And that is driving Facebook crazy as Casey writes:
It is also true that these tweets have been driving people at Facebook absolutely crazy. And the reason is that the way CrowdTangle measures the popularity of partisan links is not the way that Facebook, which owns the tool, thinks that we ought to be measuring popularity.
On Monday, the company decided that it had had enough. In response to Roose’s latest CrowdTangle tweet — showing a top five of Fox News, Fox News, Occupy Democrats, Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro — John Hegeman fired back.
John Hegeman, Head of News Feed at Facebook doesn't normally tweet, after all he's he's very senior at Twitter's number 1 competitor and has fewer than 1000 followers. But he chose to answer Kevin's tweets with a thread:
1/6 Some important things to consider about these lists. This isn’t a criticism of your analysis, because you’re working with accurate engagement data from @CrowdTangle. But these lists don’t represent what most people see on FB.
— John Hegeman (@johnwhegeman) July 20, 2020
As he points out, Kevin's data (showing populist and conservative content dominating engagement) comes from a tool called CrowdTangle which Facebook bought in 2016. It's not open to you and me but important people like journalists at the New York Times can see it.
What he counters with is fascinating because it is data that, as far as I know, is internal to Facebook.
6/6 As you've noted, some authoritative sources on COVID information (ie UNICEF, AARP) get more amplification by us. We are removing them from this list since you did, but the fact remains that these posts still get high reach and would otherwise be included in the Top 10. pic.twitter.com/92dWtpKtii
— John Hegeman (@johnwhegeman) July 20, 2020
This is what the Head of News says gets the most REACH. I.e. the stuff people are being SHOWN, but not what they're interacting with.
Casey again:
The first is by what social media heads call “engagement,” or interactions — likes, comments, shares. This is what CrowdTangle measures, and Roose is representing in his tweets. Note that CrowdTangle measures only interactions on posts from publisher pages — if someone shares a New York Times link to their own page, it doesn’t get counted.
The second is by what we call “reach” — the number of people who scrolled by the link in their News Feed, regardless of whether they clicked it or engaged with it in any way.
I can only draw one conclusion from this and it matches what I knew back when I was managing a high traffic Facebook page with the highest levels of engagement on Facebook for any political figure in the UK. Facebook's internal political pressure from a predominantly "social justice" oriented workforce are deeply upset when ideas and people they hate prove popular. Their only impulse when faced with this is censorship.
Product advertising is manipulative and does successfully drive behaviour: advertising works. But perhaps political propaganda disguised as news and forced into people's faces isn't as powerful as these platforms think.
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You haven't seen anything about Facebook until you take a good look at Project Veritas: https://peakd.com/hive-120019/@vimukthi/are-you-aware-of-project-veritas-what-they-exposed-on-facebook-censorship-bias
The best indictment against Facebook is what comes out of the mouths of their own employees.
I've watched every single video Veritas have ever put out. We've got the Death Star cannon aimed at planet Facebook and we're powering it up now.
Following and sharing here is a vote too! Thanks for this information.
Hey moron. See how many people give a fuck about what you have to say?
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Considering our Crypto Class Action is getting explosive positive coverage in just about every crypto media outlet and in the biggest mainstream new sources in the world, a hell of a lot of people care what we have to say.
** This Youtube video about our case alone has over 22,000 views in a little over 24 hours. **
You on the other hand are just damaging your investment in Hive by pushing people away with your abuse and harassment.
Hive has the opportunity to be the decentralised replacement to Facebook, but your behaviour is destroying that chance.
If you can't behave in a civilised fashion then sell your Hive and leave.
I'm pretty sure he has bought enough Bitcoin (and other stuff) from his "investment" here that he isn't to worried about the place folding if it came to that.
Amen.
I won’t be going anywhere until I can laugh at your failure.
You won't be laughing when you have to choose between getting a multi- million dollar payout, but accepting public humiliation, or getting nothing (by opting out of the class action) but maintaining your rage.
Your claim for 2 million Steem alone is worth $12M and you obviously have a lot of other crypto holdings that would make your claim worth a lot more.
You clearly have a lot of confidence that your completely unqualified and baseless opinion of the prospects of success of this case is worth more than half a dozen qualified lawyers with well over a 100 years of combined legal experience.
So keep cutting off your nose to spite your face by bullying young girls with a big following off Hive and publicly attacking people that are working to bring everyone on Hive and in crypto big payouts and free advertising on Facebook, Google and Twitter (yes, we are seeking and can obtain such orders from the Court).
We are not young girls that can be easily bullied and you will find us very dangerous opponents if you continue to provoke us. Don't think we can't find you and bring a mountain of legal proceedings against you for defamation and sexual harassment. I'm sure @cryptofinally will be happy for free legal assistance.
We're a bit busy right now bringing down the biggest tech companies in the world, but you'll keep.
One of my previous jobs was going after terrorist money trails, so don't think you can really hide online from a determined opponent with our legal skills and crypto knowledge. How difficult do you think it is for us to sub poena exchanges such as Bittrex and Huobi for your ID information? You've transferred a lot of Hive to these exchanges this year and KYC is mandatory.
Stop being "Bernie the Bully - the Abusive Whale" and behave like a civilised member of this community or your will face serious consequences.
Hive on, we will have the last laugh.
It's funny how you resort to legal threats because you can't handle some criticism of your absurd lawsuit. Typical attorney.
Tell him to bring his evidence that the court has jurisdiction.
@marcstevens
https://marcstevens.net