{"id":1421402,"date":"2022-04-06T08:16:02","date_gmt":"2022-04-06T12:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1421402"},"modified":"2022-04-06T08:17:45","modified_gmt":"2022-04-06T12:17:45","slug":"my-ill-fated-quest-to-rid-my-facebook-news-feed-of-harry-potter-memes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/my-ill-fated-quest-to-rid-my-facebook-news-feed-of-harry-potter-memes\/","title":{"rendered":"My Ill-Fated Quest To Rid My Facebook News Feed Of Harry Potter Memes"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fmy-ill-fated-quest-to-rid-my-facebook-news-feed-of-harry-potter-memes%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1421402&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>I know it makes me a traitor to my own millennial generation, but I have to admit: I have never read a Harry Potter book. I do not like Harry Potter. I haven\u2019t purchased or Google-searched anything Harry Potter-related, and I certainly have never \u201cliked\u201d anything about Harry Potter on Facebook. So why does Facebook think otherwise?<\/p>\n<p>This has been the question on my mind for months as I scroll through my hollowed out Facebook News Feed. Usually only filled with posts from my parents\u2019 friends and perfectly targeted ads, it now frequently \u201csuggests\u201d content from an alarming number of Harry Potter fan and meme groups.<\/p>\n<p>The posts are a bizarre collection of viral memes remade with Harry Potter characters, posts about the actors who play characters in Harry Potter movies, memes based on Harry Potter movie scenes, and just pure fandom posts about how great Harry Potter is. <\/p>\n<p>Maybe it was the bad memes that grabbed my attention, or the groups\u2019 cringe Potter-themed names \u00ad\u2013 \u201cThe Ministry Of Magic,\u201d \u201cEverything HP Universe\u201d \u201cHogwarts Great Hall\u201d \u2013 but whatever it was, I just knew I wanted it to stop.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"819\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Grey-and-Blue-Clean-Grid-Interior-Design-Photo-Collage-1024x819-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-270037\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Grey-and-Blue-Clean-Grid-Interior-Design-Photo-Collage-1024x819-1.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Grey-and-Blue-Clean-Grid-Interior-Design-Photo-Collage-300x240-1.png 300w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Grey-and-Blue-Clean-Grid-Interior-Design-Photo-Collage-768x614-1.png 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Grey-and-Blue-Clean-Grid-Interior-Design-Photo-Collage-1536x1229-1.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Grey-and-Blue-Clean-Grid-Interior-Design-Photo-Collage.png 2000w\" \/><\/p>\n<p><figcaption class=\"col-12 col-md-6 body-xs px-15 pe-md-0 ps-md-30 py-15 m-0 text-center\">Screenshots taken over the course of several months. <\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>With a basic understanding of how algorithms and cookies and other internet things work, I thought it would be a simple fix. I went to my News Feed preferences, where an option to \u201cunfollow\u201d groups is given. Yep, exactly what I was looking for.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/preferences-1024x754-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-270030\" width=\"521\" height=\"384\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/preferences-1024x754-1.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/preferences-300x221-1.png 300w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/preferences-768x566-1.png 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/preferences.png 1442w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>But no. Facebook only presented me with the option of unfollowing groups that I <em>willingly<\/em> followed. There was nothing Harry Potter to unfollow.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/blur-1024x931-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-270033\" width=\"518\" height=\"472\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/blur-1024x931-1.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/blur-300x273-1.png 300w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/blur-768x698-1.png 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/blur.png 1450w\" \/><\/p>\n<p><figcaption class=\"col-12 col-md-6 body-xs px-15 pe-md-0 ps-md-30 py-15 m-0 text-center\">Names and faces are blurred for privacy.<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>I looked for an \u201cI don\u2019t want to see this\u201d or \u201cwhy am I seeing this?\u201d option on the drop-down menu of meme groups in my feed, but those were not options either. The only option was to \u201chide\u201d or \u201csnooze\u201d posts from that specific group. <\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/No-why-am-i-seeing-this-928x1024-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-270035\" width=\"504\" height=\"556\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/No-why-am-i-seeing-this-928x1024-1.png 928w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/No-why-am-i-seeing-this-272x300-1.png 272w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/No-why-am-i-seeing-this-768x847-1.png 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/No-why-am-i-seeing-this-1393x1536-1.png 1393w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/No-why-am-i-seeing-this-.png 1458w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>So I began \u201chiding all.\u201d Goodbye, \u201cSeriously Serious Black.\u201d So long, \u201cSociety for the Promotion of a Harry Potter TV Series.\u201d I hoped this would inform the algorithm of my preferences and the other groups would disappear. I gave it several weeks. Nothing changed. Even worse, new Harry Potter groups seemed to fill the void of groups I blocked. <\/p>\n<p>I checked all my options in Facebook settings but found nothing helpful. I reached out to media contacts at Facebook and was handed off to a communications team member who specifically handles groups. After exchanging emails for a week, all this team member came up with was what I had already tried.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo learn more about content that\u2019s showing up in your Feed, you can click on the three dots on the upper right-hand corner of the post and then click on \u2018Why am I seeing this,\u2019\u201d the comms person suggested. I reiterated that I had already tried this and that there is in fact no \u201cWhy am I seeing this,\u201d option available on these posts, and she told me would check with the team again.<\/p>\n<p>I could generate a \u201cWhy am I seeing this,\u201d option on other types of posts in my feed. Facebook would tell me I\u2019m seeing a certain ad because of my age or other sponsored posts because of my geographic location, but never an explanation for what about my demographics suggests I\u2019m interested in Professor McGonagall content. <\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/HPthreedots-1024x576-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-270136\" width=\"1080\" height=\"607\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/HPthreedots-1024x576-1.png 1024w, https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/HPthreedots-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/HPthreedots-768x432-1.png 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/HPthreedots.png 1200w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>At this point, it was more than just about getting the memes to stop, although I wanted that too, I really wanted to know why this was happening and why Facebook couldn\u2019t give me an explanation. I turned to Facebook experts. One was former Facebook employee Antonio Garc\u00eda Mart\u00ednez, who specified that he had worked on the ads team at Facebook, not on their growth team, where he believes this problem lies. <\/p>\n<p>After I explained my plight and he confirmed what I had recently learned about Facebook communications \u2014 that they are \u201cfamously bad\u201d \u2014 Mart\u00ednez offered two possible explanations for why Facebook was mistaking me for a Harry Potter fangirl. <\/p>\n<p>The first is that Facebook is making recommendations for me based on content that my \u201cfriends\u201d have liked or engaged with. \u201cIt\u2019s very possible that unbeknownst to you, maybe in a closeted format, you have lots of closet Harry Potter friends who are super into Harry Potter,\u201d Mart\u00ednez suggested. So in the same way that Netflix recommends movies based on the movies I\u2019ve watched that other people have also watched, Facebook is recommending content based on what people similar to me like. <\/p>\n<p>I explained that besides logging in and scrolling, I\u2019m not really an active Facebook user. I don\u2019t make friend requests, write posts, share photos, comment or engage with posts, or even use Facebook messenger, which leads to the second possibility Mart\u00ednez and another expert I spoke with floated. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cMaybe they have very little data and they are basically overfitting you based on what little data they have,\u201d Mart\u00ednez said. <\/p>\n<p>But if Facebook is just making a wild guess about my interests based on my age and other demographics, <em>why<\/em> Harry Potter? And why memes? Why not \u201cThe Office\u201d or \u201cGrey\u2019s Anatomy\u201d? Why is it so frequently and consistently Harry Potter? And again, is there no option to make it stop?<\/p>\n<p>Both experts were not sure it was possible. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can block individual pages and people, but you can\u2019t really opt out of the \u2018don\u2019t show me sh-t related to this,&#8217;\u201d Mart\u00ednez said. <\/p>\n<p>Of course, I\u2019m not the first person to encounter unwanted content on her news feed. A Washington Post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/lifestyle\/2018\/12\/12\/dear-tech-companies-i-dont-want-see-pregnancy-ads-after-my-child-was-stillborn\/\">column<\/a> by Gillian Brockell went viral in 2018 when she wrote about the trauma she faced every time she was fed a pregnancy ad after delivering a stillborn baby. <\/p>\n<p>In November, Meta (Facebook\u2019s new company name) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/11\/09\/technology\/meta-facebook-ad-targeting.html\">announced<\/a> they would be removing advertisers\u2019 ability to target users based on \u201csensitive\u201d categories like health, religion, sex, and thousands of other topics. Unwanted ads are clearly a problem, and exactly why Facebook gives users the \u201cWhy am I seeing this?\u201d button on ads, but what about on the unwanted \u201csuggested topics,\u201d that were plaguing my feed? <\/p>\n<p>After exhausting all the scenarios, it seems I have only two options, and neither is practical nor enticing. The first is to get new friends, even though I doubt any of my current ones are closeted Harry Potter super fans. <\/p>\n<p>The second is to start engaging and interacting with Facebook more so the algorithm can gather the data it needs to more accurately reflect my interests. I don\u2019t want to do that, and don\u2019t plan on it, especially now that I realize perhaps that was their plan all along. <\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Madeline Osburn is managing editor at The Federalist. Contact her at madeline@thefederalist.com or <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/madelineorr\">follow her on Twitter<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know it makes me a traitor to my own millennial generation, but I have to admit: I have never read a Harry Potter book. I do not like Harry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":590,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1421402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/590"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1421402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1421402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1421402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1421402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1421402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}