My mom loves me. But she also âlikesâ meâa lot. And apparently, when she does so on Facebook, itâs hurting my chances of becoming the next viral sensation.
On his blog, engineer Chris Aldrich explains what he calls The Facebook Algorithm Mom Problem. When you post something on Facebook, and your mom is the first to like it (and how can she not? sheâs your mom!), Facebook thinks itâs a family-related piece of content and sets the audience accordingly.
Facebookâs process for determining what goes into your News Feed is frustratingly opaque. However,âŠ
Hereâs Aldrichâs dilemma:
I write my content on my own personal site. I automatically syndicate it to Facebook. My mom, who seems to be on Facebook 24/7, immediately clicks âlikeâ on the post. The Facebook algorithm immediately thinks that because my mom liked it, it must be a family related piece of contentâeven if itâs obviously about theoretical math, a subject in which my mom has no interest or knowledge. (My mom has about 180 friends on Facebook; 45 of them overlap with mine and the vast majority of those are close family members).
The algorithm narrows the presentation of the content down to very close family. Then my momâs sister sees it and clicks âlikeâ moments later. Now Facebookâs algorithm has created a self-fulfilling prophesy and further narrows the audience of my post. As a result, my post gets no further exposure on Facebook other than perhaps five peopleâthe circle of family that overlaps in all three of our social graphs.
I, too, have a like-happy mom. Two seconds after I post a story Iâve writtenâsay, a 3,000-word piece on state-imposed no-fishing zonesâmy mom will like it. She hasnât read it, and probably never will, but she likes seeing her daughterâs face on her computer, and really, who can protest the unconditional support? But because of her eager click, Facebook lumps the content in with my photos of Babyâs First Avocado, and shows it only to a small group of family members.
Until Facebook stops penalizing mom auto-likes, Aldrich writes that you can sidestep the problem with a little extra effort. Hereâs how to make sure your Facebook posts reach an audience beyond Mom, Aunt Susie and Uncle Ken in Kansas.
1) Set the privacy settings of your post to either âFriends except momâ or âPublic except mom.â
I know what youâre thinking. How awful! How can you do that to your own mother? Did you know that birthing you took 38 hours? Millennials!
Wait, wait, wait, everyone. Thereâs a step two.
2) At the end of the day, or as soon as it seems as though the post reached its maximum audience, change the audience settings to âfriendsâ or âpublic.â Aldrich has been doing this, and has been seeing more impressions on his posts. âIâm happy to report that generally the intended audience which I wanted to see the post actually sees it,â he writes. âMom just gets to see it a bit later.â
I’m sure my mom is super-stoked to be like this on LifeHacker! đ
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Chris Aldrich
I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history.
I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media.
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