Facebook’s News Feed will adapt to your connection speed

Facebook is really trying to show News Feed stories you might want to see, even if you’re on a slow internet connection. Last year, it tweaked its algorithms to serve up stories by caching them on your device if internet speeds slow down. While this guarantees you have some kind of content, it means you might get old or irrelevant articles. So, Facebook devised a new ranking system that weighs “both new stories from the server and unseen stories from the persistent cache.” The result should be posts you’re more interested in reading, even if you’re stuck on a train or in a refugee camp.

The social network says this “client-side ranking” takes advantage of your smartphone’s computing power. It differs from browsers like Chrome, which serves up text only if the internet is slow, loading images later when things speed up. Facebook, by contrast, feels a story isn’t relevant “until its associated media (e.g. images, at least beginning of a video, text of Instant Articles, etc.) have loaded.” As a result, it avoids spinners and grey boxes by “requiring all stories to have all necessary media available before rendering them in News Feed.”

Now, when you start up the app and scroll your feed, the client (ie the app on your phone) triggers a request to “get next best story.” It then weighs the server ranking based on the type of article and looks at cached stories to see whether the image or video is available, among other things. After taking into account your internet speed, the algorithm scores and sorts all the stories, and gives you the top one based on all of that.

The motivation for the changes was to improve News Feeds in emerging markets, Facebook says. However, the updates will also benefit everyone, “as we all experience less than ideal internet connections at times.” Zuckerberg & Co. will build on the new foundation and have promised more updates to come.

Source: Facebook

Supporting Peter Thiel isn’t embracing ‘diversity’

Presidential candidate Donald Trump has had a rough week. After a tape was revealed of him bragging that he could grab women “by the pussy” and get away with it, several former female acquaintances have come forward accusing him of sexual assault. But that hasn’t stopped venture capitalist Peter Thiel, an ardent Trump supporter, from giving him $1.25 million this past weekend. It so happens that Thiel is also a part-time partner of startup incubator Y Combinator and a long-time member of Facebook’s board of directors. Yet, neither entity have rescinded their support of Thiel. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s reason? To protect those with “different viewpoints” in the name of “diversity.”

Y Combinator president Sam Altman gave a similar reason, saying that we should talk to people who are “different from we are” and that to terminate their relationship with Thiel over his support of a political candidate would be a “dangerous path” to take.

I can see their point if Trump was an ordinary Republican candidate. Facebook has already come under fire earlier this year for apparently suppressing conservative news and Zuckerberg has made a few anti-Trump remarks in the past, so it’s understandable that he wants to make nice on both sides of the political aisle.

But Trump is not a normal conservative. He has made blatantly xenophobic and racist statements by threatening to ban an entire religion, calling Mexicans rapists and implying that all African-Americans live in crime-infested “inner cities” (even his racism is outdated). He has said he would pay the legal fees of any supporter that attacked protesters. He has not denounced the support he’s received from white supremacists and far-right hate groups. He’s been accused of sexual harassment, assault and even rape. He has said that once elected, he wants to have his political rival sent to jail. Worse, he refused to say whether or not he’d accept the results of the election and has accused it of being rigged — with absolutely zero evidence — sowing distrust and inciting conflict.

These are the statements of a misogynist, a racist and a fascist. And by donating such a large sum of money to his campaign, Thiel is essentially endorsing Trump’s hateful behavior. Ellen Pao, a co-founder of a diversity initiative called Project Include, wrote in a blog post that this donation is a “direct contribution to creating hate and instilling fear.”

Zuckerberg wrote “There are many reasons a person might support Trump that do not involve racism, sexism, xenophobia or sexual assault.” Which, is superficially true, but suggests that saying hateful, misogynistic things and being repeatedly accused of sexual assault shouldn’t automatically disqualify you for president, regardless of your political views.

Even members of Trump’s own party are abandoning him. Arizona Senator John McCain has withdrawn his support, House Speaker Paul Ryan has refused to campaign for him and former GOP rivals like Jeb Bush and John Kasich have denounced him as well. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, Maine Senator Susan Collins wrote that Trump “does not reflect historical Republican values nor the inclusive approach to governing that is critical to healing the divisions in our country.” 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has said “I simply couldn’t ignore what Mr. Trump was saying and doing, which revealed a character and temperament unfit for the leader of the free world.” To them, denouncing Trump has nothing to do with a disagreement over tax codes or public policy. Instead, it’s taking a stand for basic human decency.

And let’s not kid ourselves: There’s a difference between welcoming opposing viewpoints on Facebook and promoting straight-up bigotry. It’s one thing to provide a platform for people to say whatever they want under the guise of free speech, and it’s another thing to basically say it’s OK for a member of your own board of directors to support a hatemonger.

In short, it’s laughable that Zuckerberg is keeping Thiel on Facebook’s board in order to cultivate a culture of “diversity” when Trump’s entire rhetoric is against it. Maybe, instead, Zuckerberg could direct his efforts into real inclusion, by hiring more women and underrepresented minorities. Or inviting a single person of color to join its board. Maybe then, I could believe that Facebook really believed in diversity. But as long as Facebook keeps Thiel on its board of directors, I can’t say that I do.

Facebook chief explains why Peter Thiel is still on the board

Ever since Peter Thiel drove Gawker Media to bankruptcy in a bid to silence unfavorable press, many have been wondering: why is Facebook keeping Thiel on its board of directors when he’s antithetical to the company’s emphasis on free speech, and is an ardent Trump supporter? Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has finally broken the silence… but it’s not going to make everyone happy. In a leaked post (Facebook has since confirmed that it’s authentic), Zuckerberg claims that it’s all about upholding diversity. You can’t just stick up for people you already agree with, he argues — you have to also protect the rights of people with “different viewpoints.”

Zuck adds that it’s possible for people like Thiel to support Trump without embracing racism, sexism or other labels attached to the Republican candidate. It would be wrong to give Thiel the boot if he was really just concerned about smaller government, lower taxes or other typical right-wing views, according to the executive.

The argument is nothing new. Social critic Noam Chomsky has long contended that free speech means protecting the right to hold unpopular views, for example. Thiel’s stance complicates things, however, and his support for Trump isn’t the only reason people have distanced themselves from his venture capitalism. After all, he took down Gawker precisely to restrict freedom of expression, to suppress a view he didn’t like. Why is his free speech allowed to override someone else’s? Zuck clearly has to walk a fine line in such a politically sensitive climate, but it’s hard to ignore the contradiction of claiming to defend free speech while embracing someone bent on destroying it.

Via: CNN Money

Source: Hacker News

Facebook App Integrates Food and Ticket Ordering Into Brand Pages

In the consistently updated Facebook app for iOS, the social media company is today introducing a slew of new features focused on event discovery and streamlined interaction with brands. Notably, now in the company’s mobile app users will be able to purchase tickets to movies and concerts, buy food, or book an appointment without leaving Facebook.

For food and ticket orders, the feature is fueled by Facebook’s partnership with services like Delivery.com, Slice, Ticketmaster, Fandango, and Eventbrite. Local businesses will need to be on board to support the appointment booking feature, but if they do users can simply request a specific time from the business’ Facebook page after looking at their list of services. A response confirmation will be sent through Facebook Messenger when the appointment is decided upon.

To generate more personalized interactions, there’s also a new Recommendations feature in the app that aims to make it easier to get advice from friends and family on places to see and things to do in a user’s hometown, or while traveling in a new city. Recommendations are represented as a new status option, so users can post about wanting to check out new restaurants, for example, and their friends can comment back with suggestions to try in the area.

People come to Facebook every day to connect and share experiences with friends and family. We share the great places we go and we ask our friends for advice when we need help getting things done. Today we’re starting to introduce a variety of new features that help you use those connections to discover new things in the world around you, decide what to do or where to go, and connect with local businesses in easier and faster ways.

Facebook will accumulate all of these recommendations into one map, so it’s easy to find the places that were mentioned in the comments of a post. To fuel personal discovery of events surrounding users, the company is also revamping the Events dashboard in the main Facebook app, with many of the same feature additions that it introduced in the standalone Events app, launched earlier in the month.

The company said that the update will be rolling out to users in the United States beginning today, and that “this is the first step” in its plan to make the app a one-stop shop for social planning. Facebook hopes that ultimately the app streamlines user and business interactions, and makes it easy for people “to get things done, make confident decisions and communicate directly with businesses on your time and terms.”

Tag: Facebook
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Facebook would like you to endorse political candidates

You don’t have to run a big media outlet to endorse a candidate this presidential election… or other elections, for that matter. Facebook has introduced an endorsement feature that lets you back a political candidate beyond tapping a “like” button, letting others know where you stand. Mercifully, though, you won’t have to endure the wrath of less-than-sympathetic friends if you don’t want to. While you can certainly make a public endorsement if you want to share your views with the world, you can limit the audience so that only your more open-minded (or like-minded) friends will see it.

You’ll also notice an “issues” tab that includes quotes and video clips explaining a candidate’s policies. If you want to know where Hillary Clinton stands on energy or what Donald Trump thinks about taxes, you don’t have to wade through the candidates’ external pages.

The endorsement option may seem a bit superfluous at first, but Facebook has a few good reasons to roll it out. For one, it gets people talking — you may wonder why that buddy from high school is backing someone you didn’t expect. The effort also gives both politicians and Facebook an easy way to quantify the most ardent supporters, those people who aren’t afraid to wear their affiliations on their sleeves. Given that Facebook is already having a significant effect on the US election, we wouldn’t be surprised if this new data gets put to use before long.

Via: Mashable

Source: Facebook