Comment by bluetidepro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bluetidepro | Hacker News Reader

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To clear it up a bit, it's NOT what everyone is making it seem like. Facebook is NOT auto 'liking' a post on your behalf.

Basically, what is happening (per his example) is that "Johnny" liked "Vice", and what Facebook is saying is "Johnny liked Vice", and it's pulling in a recent/popular "Vice" article to expand more on the brand. To help get more likes for the brand (which is a good thing, for pages/brands). It's NOT saying "Johnny liked this Vice story", which is what he [the guy in the video] is implying. That's why it says "Related Stories", that story is related to "Johnny" liking "Vice", because it's a "Vice" story/post.

Facebook should just make it more clear that you like "Vice" as a whole, and because Facebook wants to promote that you like "Vice" they should phrase it like it's a recent "Vice" post and NOT an article "you" specifically liked. They currently have a horizontal rule with "Related Story" to show this, but that probably isn't enough since everyone is getting confused. That's the confusion here.

It's just a confusing UI/UX element, it's not like they are saying you "Like" this weird article that you never liked.

People need to take a "chill pill" over this, because it's not as bad as it seems.

The suspicion - and I think it's a reasonable one - is that the confusion is completely intentional. In which case it really is as bad as it seems.

Why they don't just make the search facilities work better and attach adverts to those instead of these sorts of shenanigans is beyond me.

I would argue that it's not intentional. I will agree they are trying to bring more exposure to a brands by pulling in a related story in a confusing UI way, but I think they could argue that they don't force you to 'like' anything. If you don't like the things pages you 'like' are posting, 'unlike' them. It's that simple. I tested it with a few test accounts and if you 'unlike' the page there will be no posts like this. So, I will keep with my statement that it's not as bad as it seems.

People just need to watch what they 'like' and maybe go back through those 'likes' to do some cleaning. I actually like this, because it puts the full blame on the user to be more responsible on what they 'like', and not to just 'like' everything possible.

There's a big difference between what Facebook could argue and what Facebook's actual intentions are.

I'm very skeptical that this was accidental. Even if it was, it looks intentional: users don't see the promoted posts that are associated with their past likes so they don't have any intrinsic feedback that would make them curate their likes. That looks underhand. If it didn't we wouldn't be seeing the fuss.

People chose to 'like' stuff generously because it was relatively harmless. It was not broadcast very loudly to other friends.

Stuff liked years ago can now clutter the feeds of friends and family and look like you wanted to show it to them right now.

They've changed the consequences of choosing to 'like' stuff without any indication to the user.

Sure, they don't force you to "like" anything, they don't force you to have a Facebook account and they do let you opt out of contextual ads if you know how to.

That doesn't change the fact that the intention of the UI is to imply a person has endorsed a product or message when in fact they've only endorsed the messenger

To put it bluntly, advertisers are spending those dollars because they know the majority of their "fans" won't go so far as to "like" the product or message in question if approached to do so, which would put a message in their friends' newsfeed at no cost. It's an opt-out system that works because it's poorly understood, and Facebook and their advertising partners have identified that and put a dollar value on it.

If we reach a situation where we're discussing who is to "blame" for an inadvertent endorsement, there's a problem.

Was Beacon intentional? What about sponsored stories? How about frictionless sharing?

It is painfully obvious this company is desperate and undaunted it its efforts to "package peer pressure as a service" they can sell to bring more exposure to brands, with or without users' consent, knowledge or approval. It's not merely confusing UI to pull in some random post from a site you "liked" once and post that as part of an endorsement. It is part of an established pattern of ethical melt-downs and trust. Moreover, it's been established that Likes can be derived from simply sending a link in a PM or posting one to your timeline, even in a negative context.

Putting "full blame" on the user fits nicely with the CEO's view during college that we're all just "dumb fucks" for using the thing.

I hate to be so negative, but I find this outrageous and indefensible. Because of it's scale and the many talented people working there, I think Facebook holds promise in lots of areas, but it is profoundly creepy the way they are always trying to lull us all into gradual acceptance of using our information however they damn well please for a mythical valuation sustaining cash cow that has as of yet to materialize.

*credit to Jaron Lanier & his book You Are Not A Gadget book for some of my phrasing and ideas here. He articulated this when Beacon was their only offense, and his predictions about their direction have proven completely and totally accurate.

I would argue that it's not intentional.

Have you heard of "surfacing," as a data-product?

http://www.palantir.com/what-we-believe/

That may be so, but the marriage of "X likes Y (brand)" and a specific story is pretty confusing - it looks more like they liked a specific story than the brand, and just that the wording is bad.

Anecdotally, I had a friend who 'liked' an apartment rental company, and it took me a number of postings to realize that he was not suddenly looking at 7500/mo Beacon Hill palaces on a bartender's wage. At first, I thought he was just clicking like on a beautiful apartment regardless of cost, but as "liked" listing after listing showed up over the course of about two weeks, I realized something was up. It can be that confusing.

I don't argue you at all on the confusion. It definitely is a confusing presentation. There is no doubt about that. I guess I'm just annoyed because people are getting upset thinking that Facebook auto 'liked' a post on their behalf and that is not the case.

If Facebook had auto-liked a post on your behalf would you be annoyed? If so why?

If Facebook creates the appearance that this has happened are you annoyed? If not why not?

Suppose the latter was intentional. Does that affect your annoyance?

> If Facebook had auto-liked a post on your behalf would you be annoyed? If so why?

Yes, I would be annoyed because it's an action on my behalf that I did not do.

> If Facebook creates the appearance that this has happened are you annoyed? If not why not?

As someone who gets what they are doing, I realize it's just an appearance so it doesn't bother me. I'm a UI/UX designer for a living, so I see a lot of ways things that are done differently and/or badly. I see what they are trying to do, and while it's a poor job, I get it. And because I get it, it doesn't bother me.

> Suppose the latter was intentional. Does that affect your annoyance?

I don't think there is really a way to prove if it was intentional or not, but I get your overall point. I personally don't believe it was intentional, but that is just me.

I used to work on conversion and revenue optimization. Basically manipulating users to take profitable actions (click ads, fill out forms, etc)

Almost every single designer I talked to thought the changes I made were "broken" or a "poor design job." As an example, bolding the title of the last form field to give users the impression that it was important would decrease abandonment rate. It looked ugly as hell, but worked.

The fundamental problem with monetization on a social platform is that it is near impossible to make an advertisement that is more compelling than your friends. You just can't compete with the emotional response of jealousy of your friends ski trip, or the desire from seeing your high school crush in swimwear. What Facebook has done here is broken that barrier and involved your friends in the advertisement. They need to create an assumed connection that Bob likes this article on CNN, so you'll go read it and find out why.

In my professional opinion, this is absolutely intentional. It's not a mistake, it is exactly what I would tell them to do if I was hired on to solve engagement problems with brands.

> As someone who gets what they are doing

Are you serious?

How many average Facebook users do you think understand that? The Hacker News crowd is generally very technically savvy and educated in these sorts of things.

But Joe Schmoe user on Facebook?

He's definitely going to think Johnny liked the Vice article. And Facebook damn well knows that.

How many times can a "mistake" or "confusing design" be "not as bad as it sounds" until it's clear that that is, in fact, their strategy?

Every time? It's pretty clear people have their Facebook phasers set to annihilate, interpreting every action in the worst possible light. Every mistake Facebook makes is, when first reported, made to sound as terrible as possible.

To rephrase your question, how many times must a "not that bad" mistake be overhyped before people realize that reporters are trolling for hits?

Poor little Facebook, such adorable little bumbling doofuses. Ooops! they say, covering their mouths coquettishly. Did we make a boo boo? And it made us more money? Why, never!

They employ some of the world's best UI designers… and marketers… and ad sales people. It's disingenuous to pretend they just "oopsied," especially when all their oopsies happen to benefit them and not their users.

A UI mistake which benefits users. Right...

Hmm.. not exactly true. I had the old version of Facebook before "likes" we're around, and we had an "Interests" section instead. All of those magically got converted to "likes" somehow, so yes they did "like" things on my behalf. I had to go back and remove some of them because some were pretty broken (i.e. me liking a foreign band somehow turned into me liking flowers because the band name had the word flowers in there).

Do you hold stock in Facebook?

Haha. No, not at all. I just wanted to bring some light to the issue to explain what was actually going on.

Knowing this, I feel a lot more comfortable considering your rationale. Thank you.

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