Explore the latest research from Facebook

In this paper, we provide the first efficient implementation of general multi-step lookahead Bayesian optimization, formulated as a sequence of nested optimization problems within a multi-step scenario tree.

We introduce BOTORCH, a modern programming framework for Bayesian optimization that combines Monte-Carlo (MC) acquisition functions, a novel sample average approximation optimization approach, auto-differentiation, and variance reduction techniques.

In this paper we introduce the Ad Types Problem, a generalization of the traditional positional auction model for ad allocation that better captures some of the challenges that arise when ads of different types need to be interspersed within a user feed of organic content.

Social comparison is a common focus in discussions of online social media use and differences in its frequency, causes, and outcomes may arise from country or cultural differences. To understand how these differences play a role in experiences of social comparison on Facebook, a survey of 37,729 people across 18 countries was paired with respondents’ activity on Facebook.

The Facebook company is partnering with academic institutions to support COVID-19 research and to help inform public health decisions. Currently, we are inviting Facebook app users in the United States to take a survey collected by faculty at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Delphi Research Center, and we are inviting Facebook app users in more than 200 countries or territories globally to take a survey collected by faculty at the University of Maryland (UMD) Joint Program in Survey Methodology.

We use aggregated data from Facebook to study the structure of social networks across European regions.

In this paper, we present our efforts to protect various social media entities at Facebook from people who try to abuse our platform. We present a novel Temporal Interaction EmbeddingS (TIES) model that is designed to capture rogue social interactions and flag them for further suitable actions. TIES is a supervised, deep learning, production ready model at Facebook-scale networks.

In this paper, we present CLARA (Confidence of Labels and Raters), a system developed and deployed at Facebook for aggregating reviewer decisions and estimating their uncertainty. We perform extensive validations and describe the deployment of CLARA for measuring the base rate of policy violations, quantifying reviewers’ performance, and improving their efficiency.

We study a problem arising in statistical analysis called the minimum bottleneck generalized matching problem that involves breaking up a population into blocks in order to carry out generalizable statistical analyses of randomized experiments.

As we increasingly integrate technology into our lives, we need a better framework for understanding social interactions across the communication landscape. Utilizing survey data in which more than 4,600 people across the United States, India, and Japan described a recent social interaction, this article qualitatively and quantitatively explores what makes an interaction meaningful.