Let Me Rewrite That For You: Washington Post Misinforms You About How Facebook Weighted Emoji Reactions

from the let's-clean-it-up dept

Journalist Dan Froomkin, who is one of the most insightful commentators on the state of the media today, recently began a new effort, which he calls "let me rewrite that for you," in which he takes a piece of journalism that he believes misled readers, and rewrites parts of them -- mainly the headline and the lede -- to better present the story. I think it's a brilliant and useful form of media criticism that I figured I might experiment with as well -- and I'm going to start it out with a recent Washington Post piece, one of many the Post has written about the leaked Facebook Files from whistleblower Frances Haugen.

The piece is written by reporters Jeremy Merrill and Will Oremus -- and I'm assuming that, like many mainstream news orgs, editors write the headlines and subheads, rather than the reporters. I don't know Merrill, but I will note that I find Oremus to be one of the most astute and thoughtful journalists out there today, and not one prone to fall into some of the usual traps that journalists fall for -- so this one surprised me a bit (though, I'm also using this format on an Oremus piece, because I'm pretty sure he'll take the criticism in the spirit intended -- to push for better overall journalism on these kinds of topics). The article's headline tells a story in and of itself: Five points for anger, one for a ‘like’: How Facebook’s formula fostered rage and misinformation, with a subhead that implies something similar: "Facebook engineers gave extra value to emoji reactions, including ‘angry,’ pushing more emotional and provocative content into users’ news feeds." There's also a graphic that reinforces this suggested point: Facebook weighted "anger" much more than happy reactions. And it's all under the "Facebook under fire" designation:

Seeing this headline and image, it would be pretty normal for you to assume the pretty clear implication: people reacting happily (e.g. with "likes") on Facebook had those shows of emotions weighted at 1/5th the intensity of people reacting angrily (e.g. with "anger" emojis) and that is obviously why Facebook stokes tremendous anger, hatred and divisiveness (as the story goes).

But... that's not actually what the details show. The actual details show that initially when Facebook introduced its list of five different "emoji" reactions (to be added to the long iconic "like" button), it weighted all five of them as five times as impactful as a like. That means that "love," "haha," "wow," and "sad" also were weighted at 5 times a single like, and identical to "angry." And while the article does mention this in the first paragraph, it immediately pivots to focus only on the "angry" weighting and what that means. When combined with the headline and the rest of the article, it's entirely possible to read the article and not even realize that "love," "sad," "haha," and "wow" were also ranked at 5x a single "like" and to believe that Facebook deliberately chose to ramp up promotion of "anger" inducing content. It's not only possible, it's quite likely. Hell, it's how I read the article the first time through, completely missing the fact that it applied to the other emojis as well.

The article also completely buries how quickly Facebook realized this was an issue and adjusted the policy. While it does mention it, it's very much buried late in the story, as are some other relevant facts that paint the entire story in a very different light than the way many people are reading it.

As some people highlighted this, Oremus pointed out that the bigger story here is "how arbitrary initial decisions, set by humans for business reasons, become reified as the status quo." And he's right. That is the more interesting story and one worth exploring. But that's not how this article is presented at all! And, his own article suggested the "reified as the status quo" part is inaccurate as well, though, again, that's buried further down in the story. The article is very much written in a way where the takeaway for most people is going to be "Facebook highly ranks posts that made you angry, because stoking divisiveness was good for business, and that's still true today." Except none of that is accurate.

So... let's rewrite that, and try to better get across the point that Oremus claims was the intended point of the story.

The original title, again is:

Five points for anger, one for a ‘like’: How Facebook’s formula fostered rage and misinformation

Let's rewrite that:

Facebook weighted new emojis much more than likes, leading to unintended consequences

Then there's the opening of the piece, which does mention very quickly that it applied to all five new emojis, but quickly pivots to just focusing on the anger:

Five years ago, Facebook gave its users five new ways to react to a post in their news feed beyond the iconic “like” thumbs-up: “love,” “haha,” “wow,” “sad” and “angry.”

Behind the scenes, Facebook programmed the algorithm that decides what people see in their news feeds to use the reaction emoji as signals to push more emotional and provocative content — including content likely to make them angry. Starting in 2017, Facebook’s ranking algorithm treated emoji reactions as five times more valuable than “likes,” internal documents reveal. The theory was simple: Posts that prompted lots of reaction emoji tended to keep users more engaged, and keeping users engaged was the key to Facebook’s business.

Facebook’s own researchers were quick to suspect a critical flaw. Favoring “controversial” posts — including those that make users angry — could open “the door to more spam/abuse/clickbait inadvertently,” a staffer, whose name was redacted, wrote in one of the internal documents. A colleague responded, “It’s possible.”

The warning proved prescient. The company’s data scientists confirmed in 2019 that posts that sparked angry reaction emoji were disproportionately likely to include misinformation, toxicity and low-quality news.

Let's rewrite that, both using what Oremus claims was the "bigger story" in the article, and some of the information that is buried much later.

Five years ago, Facebook expanded the ways that users could react to posts beyond the iconic "like" thumbs-up, adding five more emojis: "love," "haha," "wow," "sad," and "angry." With this new addition, Facebook engineers needed to determine how to weight these new engagement signals. Given the stronger emotions portrayed in these emojis, the engineers made a decision that had a large impact on how the use of those emojis would be weighted in determining how to rank a story: each of those reactions would count for five times the weight of the classic "like" button. While Facebook did publicly say at the time that the new emojis would be weighted "a little more" than likes, and that all the new emojis would be weighted equally, it did not reveal that the weighting was actually five times as much.

This move came around the same time as Facebook's publicly announced plans to move away from promoting clickbait-style news to users, and to try to focus more on engagement with content posted by friends and family. However, it turned out that friends and family don't always post the most trustworthy information, and by overweighting the "emotional" reactions, this new move by Facebook often ended up putting the most emotionally charged content in front of users. Some of that content was joyful -- people reacting with "love" to engagements and births -- but some of it was disruptive and divisive, people reacting with "anger" to false or misleading content.

Facebook struggled internally with this result -- while also raising important points about how "anger" as a "core human emotion" is not always tied to bad things, and could be important for giving rise to protest movements against autocratic and corrupt governments. However, since other signals were weighted significantly more than even these emojis -- for example, replies to posts had a weight up to 30 times a single "like" click -- not much was initially done to respond to the concerns about how the weighting on anger might impact the kinds of content users were prone to see.

However, one year after launch, in 2018, Facebook realized weighting "anger" so highly was a problem, and downgraded the weighting on the "anger" emoji to four times a "like" while keeping the four other emoji, including "love," "wow," and "haha" at five times a like. A year later, the company realized this was not enough and even though "anger" is the least used emoji, by 2019 the company had put in place a mechanism to "demote" content that was receiving a disproportionate level of "anger" reactions. There were also internal debates about reranking all of the emoji reactions to create better news feeds, though there was not widespread agreement within the company about how best to do this. Eventually, in 2020, following more internal research on the impact of this weighting, Facebook reweighted all of the emoji. By the end of 2020 it had cut the weight of the "anger" emoji to zero -- taking it out of the equation entirely. The "haha" and "wow" emojis were weighted to one and a half times a like, and the "love" and "sad" were weighted to two likes.

From there, the article could then discuss a lot of what other parts of the article does discuss, about some of the internal debates and research, and also the point that Oremus raised separately, about the somewhat arbitrary nature of some of these ranking systems. But I'd argue that my rewrite presents a much more accurate and honest portrayal of the information than the current Washington Post article.

Anyone know how I can send the Washington Post an invoice?

Filed Under: algorithm, emoji, facebook papers, framing, frances haugen, journalism, let me rewrite that for you, ranking, reactions
Companies: facebook

Wherein Jean Luc Picard Learns How Not To Moderate Twitter

from the instructive-allegory dept

For those not familiar with the Star Trek: the Next Generation canon, in the episode "Hero Worship" the Enterprise receives a distress call from somewhere deep in space, and in responding discovers a heavily-damaged ship with just one survivor. While the Enterprise crew is investigating what happened to the ship, they soon realize that they are being pounded by energy waves, and eventually it dawns on them that these waves could eventually destroy their ship like they apparently did the other. As the Enterprise tries to channel more and more power to its shields to protect itself from the battering, the waves hitting the ship become more and more violent. Until finally – spoiler alert! (although let's be honest: the episode basically telegraphs that this will be the solution) – Commander Data realizes that the waves are reflecting back the energy the Enterprise is expending, and that the solution is to cut the power or else be destroyed by the slapback.

This is a sci fi story illustrating a phenomenon with which we're all familiar. It's that basic principle: to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And that's what's happening as people demand more censorship from platforms like Twitter, and then get more outraged when platforms have inevitably censored things they like. Of course increased calls to remove content will inevitably result in increased calls not to. And of course platforms' efforts to comply with all these competing demands will just make the platform more unusable until, like the wrecked ship, it will have torn itself apart to the point that it's hardly recognizable.

As the Enterprise crew learned, solutions don't always require figuring out ways to expend more energy. Sometimes they involve disengaging from a struggle that can never be won and finding new ways to view the problem. And when it comes to platform moderation, that same lesson seems relevant here.

Because just as the challenge facing the Enterprise was not actually to overpower the energy rocking it, that is not really the platforms' challenge either. The essential, and much less pugilistic, challenge they face is to figure out how to successfully facilitate the exchange of staggering amounts of expression between an unprecedented number of people. Content moderation is but one tool, but it's not the only one available, nor is it the best one for achieving that ultimate goal. Platforms shouldn't need to completely control the user experience; instead they need to deliver the control users need to optimize it for themselves. Being fixated only on the former at the expense of the latter is doomed to be no more successful than when the Enterprise was focused on doing nothing but feeding more power to the shields. In the end it wouldn't have saved the ship, because ultimately the solution it needed was something far less antagonistic. And the same is just as true for platforms.

Internet platforms of course are not fictional starships. And unlike fictional starships they can't depend on artificial intelligence to set them on the right path. Theirs is a very human exercise, that first requires understanding the human beings who use their systems and then ensuring that the interfaces of these systems are built in accordance with how those users expect to use them, and need to.

Which itself is a lesson the story teaches. The survivor of that wrecked ship happened to have been a child, who was worried that it was he who had accidentally destroyed his ship when he stumbled during a wave attack and hit a computer console during his fall. The Enterprise crew assured him there was nothing he could have done to hurt anything. The engineers who had designed those consoles understood what their users needed from their interfaces, including the protection the interfaces needed to afford, and the enormous stakes if users didn't get it. And that's what the people building computer systems always need to do, no matter what the century.

Filed Under: moderation, pushback, reactions, star trek

France Already Expanded Surveillance Twice In The Past Year -- Perhaps Expanding It Again Is Not The Answer?

from the maybe-it's-time-to-think-a-little-differently? dept

I've been having this discussion on Twitter and a few other places over the past few days, so it seemed only right to put it into a blog post. For all the ridiculous talk with politicians grandstanding and using the attacks in Paris last week as an excuse to expand surveillance powers, it seems worth noting that France actually expanded its surveillance state powers twice in the last year -- and the first time it didn't stop the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and the second time obviously failed to stop the attacks last week. Already, before all of this, French intelligence had powers that were so similar to the NSA's that it was obvious that there had been some coordination. Then, late last year (actually on Christmas Eve), France quietly enacted a new surveillance law relating to data retention and requiring internet companies to cough up info on users.

That went into effect just shortly before the Charlie Hebdo attacks. And, of course, with that new law failing to prevent those attacks, the French government did the kneejerk thing and expanded its surveillance powers even more, claiming it needed to do so to protect against the next attack. That law, which allowed authorities to monitor communications of suspected terrorrists without a judge's approval, went into effect in July, with supporters, including Prime Minister Manuel Valls declaring: "France now has a secure framework against terrorism." Yeah, how did that work out?

Maybe, instead of calling for greater and greater surveillance, we should take a step back and think if there isn't a better approach that doesn't involve continually tossing civil liberties in the trash, for no clear benefit.

Filed Under: france, isis, kneejerk reactions, paris attacks, privacy, reactions, surveillance

NYPD Failed At Social Media This Time, But They Reacted Like Adults To That Failure

from the what'd-you-expect? dept

If you were alive yesterday and opened up a web browser, you likely saw the story of how the NYPD attempted to build some social media buzz and found that attempt turned around on its ass. The police force that has previously done a decent job at connecting with people on Twitter decided to run a campaign asking the public to share photos of themselves with police officers. They probably thought most of the pictures would be of smiling and appreciative citizens and local beat cops. Let's just say their expectations were slightly off the mark.

Almost immediately after the call went out from the department's official Twitter account, storms of users took the opportunity to instead attach some of the most unfavorable images of New York City officers that could be found on the Internet. And judging by the output on Tuesday, there are quite a few. Officers holding down a photographer on the pavement and a white-shirted supervisor twisting an arm, among scores taken during Occupy Wall Street protests. An officer knocking a bicyclist to the ground during a Critical Mass protest ride, and another dancing provocatively with a barely clad paradegoer. A dog being shot. Officers on trial, or sleeping in uniform on a subway train.

Oops. But this probably should have been expected in response to a police force that has had some very serious public relations problems revolving around some serious policy decisions. Stop and frisk, waste and fraud, and an apparent distaste for citizen journalists were on everyone's mind and the backlash was as severe as described above. Having found their campaign being turned into a PR nightmare, you might think the NYPD would react angrily to yesterday's mishap. It turns out they were prepared to be adults.

A spokeswoman for the department, Deputy Chief Kim Y. Royster, said in a two-sentence statement Tuesday evening that the department was “creating new ways to communicate effectively with the community” and that Twitter provided “an open forum for an uncensored exchange” that is “good for our city.”

The experience will not stop the department from pushing forward with social media endeavors, its top spokesman, Stephen Davis, said. “You take the good with the bad,” he said.

Look, I realize that praising Royster's statement in light of the larger problems the NYPD has in interacting with their own citizenry may seem strange, but the fact is that both spokespeople are absolutely correct. The entire point of social media is about engagement. If that engagement doesn't go exactly as they expected, and it certainly didn't, that doesn't mean there isn't value in it. Choosing to respond in an adult way means the trolling doesn't get any worse and may actually provide an avenue for dialog that results in real change. It may be a small thing, but it's still a good thing.

Filed Under: mynypd, new york, nypd, reactions, social media

Restaurant's Facebook Goes Nuclear Over Reviews & Gordon Ramsay; Owners Cry Hack

from the nobody-believes-you dept

I guess I can't say for sure how I would react to a negative review (besides reading some Techdirt comments directed at me), but I'd like to think that I have thick enough skin not to make a complete ass out of myself. That's why it always surprises me to see companies that should know better poop their pants over what customers (or non-customers) say on sites like Yelp and Reddit. Whether it's suing customers or issuing DMCA notices, I simply fail to see the logic in pissing off even more people with that kind of behavior. If someone posted a negative review of one of my books for instance, even petulantly, I'd prefer to look at it as an opportunity to both learn from the negative review and appreciate the fact that someone out there cared enough to write something about it at all.

Or, if you're Amy's Baking Company, you can write off all the complaints as coming from "haters" and then make a complete ass of yourself on your company's Facebook page. That restaurant has an interesting history of poor service, garnering poor reviews on Yelp, and even cursing at customers and tossing them out of their establishment for complaining. The woman who runs the place (you'll never guess what her name is) appears to have the business sense of a drunken chimpanzee. In one of the all-time worst decisions of anything ever, they decided to bring in Gordon Ramsay's show Kitchen Nightmares for the stated purpose of proving to their customers that their food is crazy good and the haters are all idiots. Those that have watched the show in the past can probably already hear the freight train of doom headed Amy's way.

On Friday night's episode of Kitchen Nightmares, shouty chef Gordon Ramsay quit for the first time ever in the show's 82-episode history. Amy and Samy Bouzaglo — owners of Amy's Baking Company in Scottsdale, Arizona — blamed everyone for their troubles, including "haters" and "bloggers," but not themselves. The owners did not give service staff tips (pocketing the money instead) and admitted to having fired over 100 employees. Said Ramsay: "After about 100 Kitchen Nightmares, I met two owners I could not help, it is because they are incapable of listening."

I'm not normally one for reality shows, but go watch this. Seriously. The level of crazy in Amy and her husband Samy is as epic as it is entertaining. Right off the bat, Amy breathlessly rails against "haters" and "bloggers" who are apparently to blame for her serving variously under-prepared and over-prepared food, wait times that are measured in hours for customers, and food combinations that would make even an amatuer cook blow their brains out in dismay. Still, the whole point of the show is to help failing restaurants turn things around, right? So obviously things went poorly on the show, the public reacted, and Amy and Samy learned their lesson and got their shitake mushrooms together.

Of course they didn't. Instead, their Facebook page went at times all-caps nuclear, with some of the greatest combinations of religiosity, anger, and cursing I've ever witnessed. Some treasures of highlights for you to enjoy.

"We will not bend to the will of these haters and sinners."

"I AM NOT STUPID ALL OF YOU ARE. YOU JUST DO NOT KNOW GOOD FOOD. IT IS NOT UNCOMMON TO RESELL THINGS WALMART DOES NOT MAKE THEIR ELECTRONICS OR TOYS SO LAY OFF!!!!"

"I am keeping note of all names here. We will be pursuing action against you legaly, and against reddit and yelp, for this plot you have come together on. you are all just punks."

"WE ARE NOT FREAKING OUT. WE DO NOT CARE ABOUT A "WITCH HUNT" I AM NOT A WITCH. I AM GODS CHILD. PISS OFF ALL OF YOU. FUCK REDDITS, FUCK YELP AND FUCK ALL OF YOU. BRING IT. WE WILL FIGHT BACK."

Now, it should be noted that Amy and Samy have since claimed that someone hacked their Facebook page. Reading the above posts, which have since been deleted, you may be inclined to think that level of crazy is obviously the work of troublemakers. To that I suggest again watching the episode. Either someone is doing an immensely accurate impression of these two, or it was them and they aren't enjoying the blowback that comes with pissing off everyone.

So, what's the lesson that should be learned here? Is it that you shouldn't treat your customers like garbage? Is it that you shouldn't lash out about poor reviews online, regardless of whether you agree with them or not? Is it that you shouldn't seek out Gordon Ramsay as a way to vindicate yourself? Or is that reacting to bad press from all the above by blowing an o-ring on your company Facebook page and then crying hack only makes you look petty?

None of the above. The lesson here is that you shouldn't go to Amy's Baking Company, because if the food doesn't kill you, I think there's at least a chance Amy will.

Filed Under: customer service, gordon ramsey, kitchen nightmares, reactions
Companies: amy's baking company

Content Creators Coming To Terms With The Fact That Their Works Will Be Shared

from the getting-over-that-hurdle dept

I've been noticing a trend lately of content creators who discover unauthorized copies of their works are being shared actually responding somewhat reasonably to it. In almost every case, the story starts out with a claim of how they were upset and annoyed at first... but quickly got over that. In the past few days, I've come across two more such examples. The first, from the LA Times, involves the producer of the movie Unthinkable, starring Samuel Jackson. Apparently, due to the studio that financed the flick going under, the film suddenly was without domestic US distribution rights, and couldn't find any fast enough. So it went direct to DVD. But... before the DVD came out, the film leaked, and it's now one of the most talked about films on IMDB, even though it hasn't even been released!

The producer notes that he had very mixed feelings about the whole thing:

"I've been unbelievably torn over the whole thing," says [producer Cotty] Chubb, best known for having produced such films as "Eve's Bayou," "Dark Blue" and "To Sleep with Anger." "It's tremendous to go on IMDB and see that our user rating is 7.3, which is the highest rating of any movies in the current Top 10 there -- you have to go down to 'Iron Man 2' to find a higher rating. But on the other hand, while everyone is debating all these important moral questions, I want to ask them another important question -- hey, guys, what about the morality of watching this movie on the Internet for free?"

Of course, rather than freak out, or threaten to sue, Chubb just asked people exactly what he wanted to ask. He posted a comment himself, politely asking those who had seen the movie directly on IMDB about what their feelings on downloading the film were, and whether or not there was a price they would pay for it, while also noting that he was quite "grateful" for all of the attention the movie was getting due to the downloads.

After tons of people responded -- almost all of whom saying that there's nothing wrong with downloading a film -- Chubb didn't freak out, but recognized the onus is on himself and the industry to respond:

"We've got to come up with a new model, because the old one just isn't working anymore," says Chubb. "You just can't fight against a model where the movie is available for free. People clearly want to download movies online, so it's time we figured out how to get some money out of it."

Similarly, here's a totally different story, about author Peter Nowak discovering that his latest book was available for unauthorized download. Again, his feelings were mixed, but he eventually realized that getting angry and fighting this served no useful purpose:

My initial reaction was shock - how dare someone rip off something that I put so much work into? For a moment, I completely understood Lars Ulrich, the Metallica drummer who years ago became the poster boy for the anti-file-sharing establishment when he and his bandmates sued Napster.

Fear not, though - my anger was short-lived, and not just because I'd like to avoid becoming a self-important douche like Lars at all costs. I'm certainly not the first author to get pirated, and I won't be the last. It's an inevitable reality that everyone today must face. And no, I don't think any number of Draconian copyright laws are going to change this. Technology has let the cat out of the bag, permanently.

As someone who has partaken of the occasional Torrent, it would be hard (and thoroughly hypocritical) for me to be angry. I'm also not of the mind that file-sharing necessarily hurts the artist or creator. In my experience, most people who download something for free weren't going to buy it anyway, or they already have and just want a digital copy, so it's not exactly a lost sale. Moreover, if they like the product they've downloaded, they may recommend it to someone else, who in turn may actually choose to buy it. In a way, the so-called "pirate" can become a good sales advocate.

In fact, he then notes that there are plenty of examples of authors using such publicity to their advantage, while also realizing that some of the problem is that his book doesn't have an official ebook version yet, though he's now working hard to make that happen as soon as possible.

I think it's completely normal and natural for people to have that initial negative reaction -- especially if they don't follow some of the details of what's happening and how such file sharing has helped some do much better than they would have otherwise. But it's especially nice to see more and more content creators get over that initial shock, and then start to logically look at the situation, and realize that what consumers really want is something different than is being provided, and the responsibility is on the content creator to better provide consumers what they want.

Filed Under: content, cotty chubb, peter nowak, reactions, sharing