If they go directly to the page, FB will still apply its filter to the posts in that group.
> there are no tools that don't require a person to fight medium.
Perhaps, but there are tools that don’t make it practically impossible to find out what your opponent actually tried to say to you. I have been in the situation multiple times of doing everything I can on FB to make sure I read everything that was written in a thread prior to responding but still failed. This is what I mean when I say FB is intent on it. The design makes it impossible, whether that was the aim or not.
Edited to add: It’s no surprise that this leads to greater “engagement,” but it is obviously counterproductive to actual debate.
If they go directly to the page, FB will still apply its filter to the posts in that group.
FB doesn't filter the posts, shows them all - I'd be surprised if you could show otherwise.
FB doesn't do it's comment-filtering but that can be gotten around by clicking show more.
I've never had the experience of FB hiding comments in a fashion I fundamentally couldn't find them (and I do a lot of discussion on FB). It can be hard to see everything.
Perhaps if you scroll far enough it will show you every post in a group. Most people don’t. FB chooses what to show them from the group. That’s the filter.
As for not showing every comment, I am positive it has happened to me a few times that an important comment just doesn’t show up in the thread until after several others have been left. I have assumed it is because they are using a database that doesn’t guarantee a SELECT gives every record, but who knows.
As far as I can tell, FB group view, what you see when go "to" the group page, shows posts in the order of who last commented on the post. It's a much more reliable view than the feed, which indeed can show posts from anywhere in any order.
I think you're right that Facebook sometimes does just fail to show some comments at some points. The thing here is that any world wide distributed system on the scale of Facebook will sometimes do that. I don't believe there's any algorithmic manipulative intention involved here. (as opposed to the feed, which indeed is something like Facebook's spin on things).
And with Facebook's feed, even. Yes, it's filter of your friends' comments and links and a filter with a spin on it. But what is the contents of the average minor metropolitan newspaper? 90% of it is a filter of the wire service feed with a particular spin to it.
> what you see when go "to" the group page, shows posts in the order of who last commented on the post.
But that is itself a decision to elevate conflict and hide things that don’t generate conflict, unless there are an extraordinarily small number of posts in the group or it is just a small size. Because every time you visit the page you start at the top. And you get sucked into the “high-engagement” content before you get to it.
> there are no tools that don't require a person to fight medium.
Perhaps, but there are tools that don’t make it practically impossible to find out what your opponent actually tried to say to you. I have been in the situation multiple times of doing everything I can on FB to make sure I read everything that was written in a thread prior to responding but still failed. This is what I mean when I say FB is intent on it. The design makes it impossible, whether that was the aim or not.
Edited to add: It’s no surprise that this leads to greater “engagement,” but it is obviously counterproductive to actual debate.