Comment by DamnInteresting | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DamnInteresting | Hacker News Reader

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DamnInteresting

Author of the Damn Interesting post here. Internally we worried that there would be some fallout from abandoning our Facebook page--by the numbers we had more followers there than any other social media platform, by far. But the response from our audience has been almost 100% positive, even from our Facebook followers[1]. It put only a tiny dent in our site's daily traffic. It resulted in many new subscribers to our email list. There was a flurry of new donations, with attached supportive comments about the amputation. Facebook was exactly the gangrenous thing it appeared to be, and we are better off without it. If you will permit me the indulgence of quoting my own post:

> Some call it a “necessary evil,” but if that’s the case let’s do all we can to make it unnecessary.

For any organizations considering the same move, I cannot recommend it enough. It feels like cutting off contact with a toxic acquaintance--equal parts relief and optimism.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/DamnInt/posts/10158097374656961

Thank you for posting this here. It is exactly the kind of public service announcement other organizations need to see, because it will encourage them to question and reevaluate the benefits and costs of their relationship with Facebook.

If enough organizations change their behavior, I'm hopeful the folks at Facebook will be forced to change their behavior too. I mean, shouldn't be possible for Facebook to be profitable without also doing all those toxic/evil things?

How can you tell the real people from the spambots?

I am on a Bitcoin group on Facebook and spambots keep making their way through the registration process.

If I interpret OP correctly: It's not the spambots that are the problem. It's Facebook that's the problem.

Then your mods are terrible. FB's moderation tools are primitive, but they do exist. Your group should require a moderator's approval to gain posting privileges, and require a few questions to be answered as well:

- Do you agree not to make posts advertising any business or profit-making entity on this group?

- Do you agree that all of your posts and comments on this group will be individually written by you?

Reject any user who doesn't say yes to both of those and set all new users to post approval for the first week.

It's a lot of work because, as mentioned, FB's tools are crap.

Your problem might be exacerbated by the subject matter.

Interesting, if you had more follower on facebook than any on other social media, and turns out, these are the core followers that are not abandoning you after you left facebook. Wouldn't that suggest that Facebook algorithms actually did an excellent service for you and your audience? If so, my reading is that Facebook does a great job overall matching audience with content, and opening a Facebook page seems like a great move!

You seem to be taking a single metric out of context and using it to draw a dubious conclusion. Facebook was showing each of our posts to very few of our fans. It was hiding our posts from a lot of people who wanted to see them. Myself, I would not categorize that as 'excellent service'.

That's my interpretation of this paragraph:

> ... from scores of long-time fans who were under the mistaken impression that we had ceased all operations years ago

> ...When we ask them what caused the assumption of our demise, they invariably cite the fact that our posts disappeared from their Facebook news feeds.

I understand that the article is an opinion piece against facebook, but I just think that the data provided is ambiguous. Looks like Facebook did a great job showing the blog to the relevant people. So much so, that years after the people reach to author with questions where it disappeared.

One could argue that Facebook did a "did a great job showing the blog to the relevant people" years ago, before they implemented boosting (although my intuition is that it was mostly the other way around, most of our Likes were from fans of our site who subsequently liked our page). But even if that argument holds water, all of the water leaks out at the introduction of Boosting, where they began withholding our content from people who asked to see it.

I don't known how boosting works or what is it exactly, but judging by its name, one could assume that boosting is a zero sum game. Namely, if Facebook, for one reason or another, boosts your content, this would come at a cost to other relevant blogs that also compete for the same screen real-estate on Facebook. So it sounds natural to ask you to pay money for ads service to promote your content, that's what ads are for. It's just that reading you post it looks like, in retrospective, the anecdotal evidence that you provided, gives the impression that facebook ads actually might have worked well for you.

> I don't known how boosting works or what is it exactly

In that case, perhaps you should resist expressing strong opinions about it one way or the other. I anticipate that you, like most humans, find it annoying when other people have strong opinions in domains where they lack even superficial knowledge.

I think you comment does not contribute to the conversation. If you're annoyed by my question that does not make it an argument or move the conversation forward. If you can share some aspects of boosting that clarify your argument, please do so.

The funny truth is, I strongly suspect, I know about ads and ranking and boosting no less than you do. What's called boosting could be complex set of many different algorithms that change over time. Boosting that was a year ago is not the same one that is now, etc.

But overall the irony of our exchange is here. Quoting from DI about section:

> We are ardent proponents of quality over quantity, and accuracy over hyperbole.

Feels like this specific post about facebook is actually quite a hypebole a bit like a propaganda post. With a lot of assumptions and accusations. With the purpose to push specific agenda. In your post you spit hate towards facebook, but when confronting with some questions to test the logic of your claims, you finally appeal to authority rather than clarifying your claims.

> I don't known how boosting works or what is it exactly

> I strongly suspect, I know about ads and ranking and boosting no less than you do

Does not compute.

This can be computed in this sense:

"One of the great challenges in this world is knowing enough about a subject to think you're right, but not enough about the subject to know you're wrong." Neil deGrasse Tyson

Change "you're right" -> "you know the subject" & "you're wrong" -> "you don't know the subject".

Saying Facebook introduced "boosting" does not mean a lot...

No, it suggests that people liking Damn Interesting on Facebook were already readers and that Facebook wasn't providing more than "a tiny dent" of additional traffic.

Facebook likes to try to take credit for 100% of the traffic they send from their platform, but seems like the people they were reaching would have gone anyways.

I dont understand where does your claim come from that the users were already readers of the blog before seeing it on Facebook.

It says in the article that once facebook promotions were gone, people were not able to find the content, so much so, that they would reach out to the blog years after- to asked if the blog still operates... that sounds to me like facebook identifying new core audience for the blog. Which is a great service done by an ads company.

People who enjoyed DI liked their facebook page.

Previously, this meant that those people would see DI articles on their feed.

Facebook changed the algorithm so posts by pages you've liked show up rarely if they don't pay to promote them.

Facebook wasn't identifying a core new audience, they were selling access to their original audience.

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