Likes, anger emojis and RSVPs: the math behind Facebook's News Feed — and how it backfired
CNN
In late 2017, Facebook had a big problem: users were commenting on, "liking" and resharing posts less than they had in the past.
The declines in engagement, visualized in charts on an internal document viewed by CNN Business, looked like wiggly black-and-blue frowns. Facebook decided to make a change — and fast.
That December, other internal documents show, the company quickly came up with a plan: it would refocus its News Feed algorithm on a new metric it referred to as "meaningful social interactions", or MSI, for ranking people's interactions on Facebook. MSI would assign different point values to things such as "likes" and comments on posts, and even RSVPs to events, and take into consideration the relationships between people, such as that of a person writing a post and a person commenting on it. It launched in early 2018, marking a new era in the ways the social network monitors and manipulates its users, and experiments on their data.
The alleged drug traffickers killed by the US military in a strike on September 2 were heading to link up with another, larger vessel that was bound for Suriname — a small South American country east of Venezuela – the admiral who oversaw the operation told lawmakers on Thursday according to two sources with direct knowledge of his remarks.
The first week of testimony in Brian Walshe’s murder trial in Dedham, Massachusetts, has come to an end. The jury heard from about two dozen witnesses called by the commonwealth in its case against Walshe as prosecutors work to prove he killed his wife, Ana Walshe, around New Year’s Day in 2023.
The US Army officially stood up a new command on Friday to oversee the Army’s activities in the Western Hemisphere in the latest signal of increasing focus on homeland defense.
A former high-level Drug Enforcement agent was indicted on charges of conspiring to traffic drugs and launder millions of dollars for a Mexican cartel.
A federal judge in Florida ordered the unsealing of grand jury transcripts and other records in the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein granting the Justice Department’s request.
The Indiana House approved new congressional maps designed to hand Republicans all nine of the state’s US House seats on Friday, setting the stage for a showdown next week in the state Senate.
Honduran presidential candidate Salvador Nasralla said last-minute interference from US President Donald Trump in the country’s closely fought election had damaged his chances of winning and left him trailing as vote counting dragged on.
Vice President JD Vance said he and second lady Usha Vance are largely amused by the online chatter dissecting their marriage, including a recent spate of headlines over photos of her without a wedding ring.
During interviews with the FBI, the suspect arrested in the pipe bomb probe told investigators that he believed the 2020 election was stolen, providing perhaps the first indication of a possible motive for the bombs placed near the DNC and RNC headquarters, people briefed on the matter said.
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The two men killed as they floated holding onto their capsized boat in a secondary strike against a suspected drug vessel in early September did not appear to have radio or other communications devices, the top military official overseeing the strike told lawmakers on Thursday, according to two sources with direct knowledge of his congressional briefings.
As Chad Curry busily ferries his teenage children through the streets of their Chicago neighborhood of West Ridge, he eyes passing vehicles with a skepticism he didn’t have just a few months ago.
Speaker Mike Johnson is a political survivor, weathering crisis after crisis since his unlikely ascent two years ago.