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Comment by shizcakes | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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?

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