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A comment on U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says. Parent comment

Re:U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison R... by michaelt on Thursday March 07, 2019 @06:32AM (#19327231)
If you have a change that improves your metric initially but damages it in the longer term, and your A/B test only detects the short initial effect, you can execute your A/B test perfectly and still get the wrong result.
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Re:U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison R... by teleclimber on Thursday March 07, 2019 @09:20AM (#19328155)
Interestingly that's exactly how algorithms make things go viral. They pick up on things that get a quick reaction with complete disregard for what happens in the long term. Jaron Lanier explains this in his talks [0].

So features on social media are decided based on short term gains and posts on social media are promoted like that too. It's like an entire industry forgot their parents warnings about thinking about the future.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc_Jq42Og7Q

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