Facebook News(facebook.com)
facebook.com
Facebook News
https://www.facebook.com/news
53 comments
Blog post: https://about.fb.com/news/2019/10/introducing-facebook-news/ (October 25, 2019)
Build a more personalized news experience? Hide publishers you're not interested in?
Don't people from facebook see this'd increase the already existing polarization and information bubbles?
Don't people from facebook see this'd increase the already existing polarization and information bubbles?
> Don't people from facebook see this'd increase the already existing polarization and information bubbles?
Facebook isn't optimizing for the preservation of democratic norms or decrease of polarization; they're optimizing for eyeballs, time, and attention (which obviously translates to money).
To answer your question, they may not see it because they don't care, and if they do see it, they still don't care as that's not their KPI.
(Disclaimer: I'm not talking about specific employees but rather the company as an organization)
Facebook isn't optimizing for the preservation of democratic norms or decrease of polarization; they're optimizing for eyeballs, time, and attention (which obviously translates to money).
To answer your question, they may not see it because they don't care, and if they do see it, they still don't care as that's not their KPI.
(Disclaimer: I'm not talking about specific employees but rather the company as an organization)
To be fair, this is a standard feature of most news apps. Like Apple's.
I get the idealism of wanting to expose people to a more diverse set of news sources but I also don't think I would ever use a news app that didn't let me filter out the chaff. Irrespective of your political beliefs there's still a lot of low-quality journalism out there that simply isn't worth your time.
I do think it's funny that "news" has become hard synonymous with "politics" despite the fact that columns like the arts, lifestyle, product reviews, food, local events, human interest, short fiction, non-political opinions, and sports are just as much news and are, arguably, the good bits.
I do think it's funny that "news" has become hard synonymous with "politics" despite the fact that columns like the arts, lifestyle, product reviews, food, local events, human interest, short fiction, non-political opinions, and sports are just as much news and are, arguably, the good bits.
Literally the first thought which popped in my head.
Agreed - first thought that popped into my head. Second thought: Wait, don't I do that already? I mean - there are certain news sources that I explicitly avoid (or at least, don't trust at all). Others that I check all the time and trust a lot. Then there's a slew in between that I check periodically and somewhat trust.
As much as my knee jerk reaction is against this, I also am asking myself: how's it really different from my own behavior? (and should I re-evaluate my own behavior).
Edit: Spelling/grammar.
As much as my knee jerk reaction is against this, I also am asking myself: how's it really different from my own behavior? (and should I re-evaluate my own behavior).
Edit: Spelling/grammar.
Wow that landing page has an animated marquee sort of banner (a bunch of company logos sliding across horizontally), and instead of using CSS transforms, they've done it with a 23mb gif.
Really curious as to why.
Really curious as to why.
Haha, it's janky and cropping parts of some logotypes too. Totally against the otherwise smooth animations and style in the rest of the page. It looks bolted on and I wouldn't be surprised it was a late decision to showcase some publishers and added by non web devs...
Was making me dizzy looking at it!
Yes non web devs, or web devs in a rush because of a poorly managed project + deadline I reckon.
Yes non web devs, or web devs in a rush because of a poorly managed project + deadline I reckon.
>> Yes non web devs, or web devs in a rush because of a poorly managed project + deadline I reckon
Why? You and the parent comment seem to imply that there are no crappy web devs, or at least none at FB. There are crappy people in every profession, as well as mostly good people who are crappy at just some aspects of their job.
Why? You and the parent comment seem to imply that there are no crappy web devs, or at least none at FB. There are crappy people in every profession, as well as mostly good people who are crappy at just some aspects of their job.
Benefit-cost ratio of owning your own CDN.
Bring back the `<marquee>` tag.
And it looks terrible. I’d guess that this site was thrown together by an outside agency, as these landing pages usually are by companies. In my experience these agencies don’t care about anything but getting paid, and will yield absolutely trash. And why wouldn’t they? They never have to deal with it again and the company hiring them probably doesn’t care, it’s just a marketing landing page. Then the company wants to change it some day and thinks it can just be handed off to engineering, because “it’s just code” and “how hard could it be” and fuck now I’m just sad. I am so done with tech lol, I can’t wait to get out.
You sound pretty jaded. But your thoughts don't really match my experience with software agencies as you mentioned. I previously worked for a software consulting shop/agency. Our mindset wasn't just build some crap software and deliver as you might imagine, we actually put care and effort into our work despite half the team being freelancers who might never work on the product again.
I think it is important to differentiate software agencies and digital marketing agencies. Early in my career I worked at a few digital marketing agencies and this does feel very similar to what could be churned out. Everything was sold on the design. Sales teams would promise, mockups would be signed off on by clients without engineers looking at them, and there was usually a rush because of time and/or money once the project made it to the engineers hands.
This is what I mean, thanks for adding the clarity that I neglected to. I did make it sound too much like a personal attack against the implementers here, but you’re right in that the ones hiring the agencies are just looking for the fastest possible output, not quality, and applying that pressure.
I too have worked with such agencies that actually care, and of course they exist. I guess I wanted my hot take HN comment and didn’t take the time to explicitly state that not every software consulting agency produces low quality work. If you don’t mind me asking, did you work on marketing landing pages like this one or something else? These marketing pages in particular are what I am calling out.
Yeah it was stuttering, which is why I was inspecting it. I assumed it was a CSS transition, but without hardware acceleration.
Outside agency makes a lot of sense to me.
When you say get out of tech, you wouldn't happen to mean on a ranch would you? Been seeing more and more references to tech folk wanting to escape to such places ha!
Outside agency makes a lot of sense to me.
When you say get out of tech, you wouldn't happen to mean on a ranch would you? Been seeing more and more references to tech folk wanting to escape to such places ha!
I know it’s such a cliche to want to leave tech for the ranch haha. No I just plan to pursue some of my own adventures that still involve technology, just outside of the Silicon Valley tech startup world.
and when you click on how it works, it greets you with a 31MB gif
Anybody else having their browser history busted by visiting the link? Looks like it opens a new window for this page, and then closes the old one.
Just in time for the official launch of https://upstract.com later this week.
This reminded me of a project an acquaintance of mine did in 1997/98 when he build a news aggregator site. Mind this was before Google News arrived and it was a great way of seeing all headlines from the bigger (ans also smaller) sites in Germany.
Until the publishers came, dragged him to court on claims of copyright infringement (for doing deep links into the articles). That was a time, when clicking on a teaser brought you to a category page where you had to click the teaser again to get to the intended article. Why? To increase ad impressions. Sometimes you had to click three or four levels deep.
So they feared the lost ad impressions. They pulled the big guns on a high school kid creating a service. He agreed to delist them and the service was dead in the water. Because nearly every publisher wanted his sites to be delisted.
One or one and a half years later Google entered the German internet with Google News and the publishers sued again - this time it came to a trial and Google won. But 20 years later the publishers still try to lobby for laws against aggregators, against quoting from "their" news.
Thanks for this trip down memory lane into the late 90ies. Now I feel old. ;-)
Until the publishers came, dragged him to court on claims of copyright infringement (for doing deep links into the articles). That was a time, when clicking on a teaser brought you to a category page where you had to click the teaser again to get to the intended article. Why? To increase ad impressions. Sometimes you had to click three or four levels deep.
So they feared the lost ad impressions. They pulled the big guns on a high school kid creating a service. He agreed to delist them and the service was dead in the water. Because nearly every publisher wanted his sites to be delisted.
One or one and a half years later Google entered the German internet with Google News and the publishers sued again - this time it came to a trial and Google won. But 20 years later the publishers still try to lobby for laws against aggregators, against quoting from "their" news.
Thanks for this trip down memory lane into the late 90ies. Now I feel old. ;-)
I've been running this under various brands for 25 years — Back then I was the #1 referrer for Reddit and Digg so to this day, i still take some credit for their success ;)
Folks from Conde to Forbes call me to get on the site — no one ever asked to be removed. It's great not to be Google.
Ah, the good old popurls days ;)
This looks great - nice work!
Please don't unnecessarily spam your product.
Could have taken this opportunity to include some degree of "truth" or "fact checking", but no.
Introducing the "Democracy Breaker 2.0"
Introducing the "Democracy Breaker 2.0"
Nope. Not doing it
Anyone else think that news isn't really all that exciting? Everyone gets news spammed by Google, Apple, Microsoft and every media related thing already... Will be interesting to see how the whole family/friends content works with this in the long run because it sure seems like FB was successful by presenting a stream of personal stuff that users cared much more deeply about (like my neices new kitten picutres).
Honestly, news is mostly terrible experience right now, and the prospects of facebook delivering news is about as exciting as Mafia Wars invites and Farmeville status posts from back in the day.
Honestly, news is mostly terrible experience right now, and the prospects of facebook delivering news is about as exciting as Mafia Wars invites and Farmeville status posts from back in the day.
Business wise, I'm sure it's a good idea for them.
Unfortunately I don't completely trust Facebook to be impartial the news they report.
They could very easily skew a narrative on a particular issue by placing news articles they agree with at the top, and not displaying articles that they don't agree with.
That said, it's their business and they can do with it what they want, and it's still our decision if we want to use that feature.
Unfortunately I don't completely trust Facebook to be impartial the news they report.
They could very easily skew a narrative on a particular issue by placing news articles they agree with at the top, and not displaying articles that they don't agree with.
That said, it's their business and they can do with it what they want, and it's still our decision if we want to use that feature.
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Aside from all controversy...
How would this News app stand against existing market players? I don't see the differentiation factor TBH
How would this News app stand against existing market players? I don't see the differentiation factor TBH
Closed it as soon as I saw "Open the Facebook App".
The only way I use Facebook is within a container in Firefox. I'll never install a Facebook developed application onto a phone ever again.
If what you're doing is making a competitor to google news, it should just be a webpage.
The only way I use Facebook is within a container in Firefox. I'll never install a Facebook developed application onto a phone ever again.
If what you're doing is making a competitor to google news, it should just be a webpage.
I'm sure this is going to be very objective and neither manipulated or manipulative at all.
Bottom right: "Facebook © 2019"
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Aw hell nah
It’s not new and was released about a year ago.
Scroll down to the bottom of page, you'll see "Facebook © 2019"
Probably just re-using a footer component which wasn't updated yet
The fake rage is from 2020, however.