What if Facebook knows when i’ve unfriended someone before I do?
On my Facebook wall, I see the posts of maybe 6 or 7 friends out of the 150 that I have. I feel like they are who they are simply because they are there. Heavy, I know, but i’ll try to explain. I will typically unfriend people who I don’t interact with, whether online or in real life. If i don’t want to unfriend them, but I don’t want to see their posts, i’ll unfollow them, removing them from my feed. Now all thats left in my feed are people whom I’m good friends with, kinda am friends with, and people that i’m just kind of apathetic about. Of those people, the ones who post very often will inevitably fill up my feed more than the ones that rarely post. Facebook’s algorithms tracks and records how much time you take to pause and look at an ad when scrolling through your feed to determine your interest in that ad. I feel like they do the same with friends. And so maybe i’ve liked a friends post, or see their posts more often than others, or actually have an ongoing chat with them in Facebook, telling the algorithm that I have interest in this person, or at least that i find them interesting. These would be my influencers. These are the people that Facebook sites when telling me about this new page or product that my friends liked. These are the people whos friends are recommended to me as “people I may know.” These people have the greatest influence in my feed, simply because they have not been unfollowed, unfriended, or social enough.
For what it’s worth, these people are actually funny and I enjoy seeing their posts on my feed. I just wonder what posts i’m missing from my other friends whose posts get lost in the algorithm. I mean, I see their posts when one of our mutual friends, and one of my influencers, likes their post, but beyond that, they rarely appear. Maybe it’s safe to say taht Facebook knows what it’s doing and that I wouldn’t be interested in the posts of others anyway. Maybe i’m reinforcing the algorithm by clicking on the links for products my influencers have also liked? Or maybe my influencers are chosen based on the number of mutual friends I have within my uniplex system. After all, we all end up liking each others stuff, so maybe just one of us has to be targeted, and the influencers algorithm will just do it’s magic and reach the whole.
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Interesting point. Perhaps you’re missing opportunities to hang out with your less close friends and build a bonding relationship with them, thanks to Facebook! I think that’s really interesting because it’s social media. In theory you should be networking and paying attention to people you don’t talk to often, yet we hide the posts of people we don’t really care to see their posts so that we can see our friend’s posts (who we probably interact with a lot more!) Interesting that we do that and have turned it into anti-social media. I definitely do that, too!
I think you pose a really interesting hypothetical in likening Facebook’s direction and targeting of ads to interactivity with friends. I’m a little skeptical as to whether or not Facebook actually measures the amount of time you spend looking at a certain friend’s post, but I wouldn’t completely put it past them either. This would make a lot of sense strategically, as Facebook would recognize the parties whom stand to most affect, influence, and even persuade you. From that point, Facebook could use its position along the network for a multitude of purposes. Crazy to think about, but no really surprising.
I have found through my own experiences with Facebook, the more you like of someone’s posts the more often they show up and higher up in your feed. You can actually select which of your friend’s posts you want to see first every time you log into Facebook. In my case, Facebook automatically did this by selecting my grandma. I probably should start using the unfollow feature more often than I have. Awesome post!