105 Results
December 11, 2018
The Costs of Overambitious Seeding of Social Products
International Conference on Complex Networks and their Applications
Product-adoption scenarios are often theoretically modeled as “influence-maximization” (IM) problems, where people influence one another to adopt and the goal is to find a limited set of people to “seed” so as to maximize long-term adoption. In many IM models, if there is no budgetary limit on seeding, the optimal approach involves seeding everybody immediately. Here, we argue that this approach can lead to suboptimal outcomes for “social products” that allow people to communicate with one another.
By: Shankar Iyer, Lada Adamic
Data Science
Facebook AI Research November 3, 2018
How Social Ties Influence Hurricane Evacuation Behavior
Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW)
This work is the first of its kind, examining these phenomena across three major disasters in the United States—Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, and Hurricane Maria—using aggregated, de-identified data from over 1.5 million Facebook users.
By: Danaë Metaxa-Kakavouli, Paige Maas, Daniel P. Aldrich
Data Science November 3, 2018
The Effect of Computer-Generated Descriptions on Photo-Sharing Experiences of People with Visual Impairments
Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW)
Like sighted people, visually impaired people want to share photographs on social networking services, but find it difficult to identify and select photos from their albums. We aimed to address this problem by incorporating state-of-the-art computer-generated descriptions into Facebook’s photo-sharing feature.
By: Yuhang Zhao, Shaomei Wu, Lindsay Reynolds, Shiri Azenkot
Human Computer Interaction & UX 
Connectivity 
Economics & Computation August 19, 2018
A real-time framework for detecting efficiency regressions in a globally distributed codebase
Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD)
This paper describes the end-to-end regression detection system designed and used at Facebook. The main detection algorithm is based on sequential statistics supplemented by signal processing transformations, and the performance of the algorithm was assessed with a mixture of online and offline tests across different use cases.
By: Martin Valdez-Vivas, Caner Gocmen, Andrii Korotkov, Ethan Fang, Kapil Goenka, Sherry Chen
Systems & Networking August 16, 2018
Constrained Bayesian Optimization with Noisy Experiments
Bayesian Analysis 2018
We derive an expression for expected improvement under greedy batch optimization with noisy observations and noisy constraints, and develop a quasi-Monte Carlo approximation that allows it to be efficiently optimized.
By: Ben Letham, Brian Karrer, Guilherme Ottoni, Eytan Bakshy
Data Science
Machine Learning July 11, 2018
Learning Diffusion using Hyperparameters
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML)
In this paper we advocate for a hyperparametric approach to learn diffusion in the independent cascade (IC) model. The sample complexity of this model is a function of the number of edges in the network and consequently learning becomes infeasible when the network is large.
By: Dimitris Kalimeris, Yaron Singer, Karthik Subbian, Udi Weinsberg
Data Science
Machine Learning June 28, 2018
Hardware Remediation At Scale
International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN)
Large scale services have automated hardware remediation to maintain the infrastructure availability at a healthy level. In this paper, we share the current remediation flow at Facebook, and how it is being monitored.
By: Fan (Fred) Lin, Matt Beadon, Harish Dattatraya Dixit, Gautham Vunnam, Amol Desai, Sriram SankarJune 25, 2018
Do Diffusion Protocols Govern Cascade Growth?
International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)
Large cascades can develop in online social networks as people share information with one another. Though simple reshare cascades have been studied extensively, the full range of cascading behaviors on social media is much more diverse. Here we study how diffusion protocols, or the social exchanges that enable information transmission, affect cascade growth, analogous to the way communication protocols define how information is transmitted from one point to another.
By: Justin Cheng, Jon Kleinberg, Jure Leskovec, David Liben-Nowell, Bogdan State, Karthik Subbian, Lada Adamic
Data Science June 25, 2018
“I’m Never Happy with What I Write”: Challenges and Strategies of People with Dyslexia on Social Media
International Conference on Web and Social Media
This work studies the experiences, challenges, and strategies of people with dyslexia when using social media. We interviewed 11 people with dyslexia to understand their general experiences with reading and writing content on Facebook. The interview study findings highlight the challenges they face when writing content on Social Networking Sites (SNSs), and their strategies for mitigating these challenges.
By: Lindsay Reynolds, Shaomei Wu