Strategy question

You are the PM for Facebook newsfeed. How would you decide between showing events or videos?

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Ranking and tradeoff reasoning for competing content types in a single feed, balancing engagement value against user intent.

Clarify the decision context: is this a general ranking policy or a specific placement decision for a given user session.
Assess user intent signals: someone who recently RSVPed to events or engages with local groups likely has higher intent for event content, while frequent video watchers signal entertainment intent.
Segment by historical engagement: rank content type based on each individual user's past interaction patterns rather than a blanket policy.
Weigh business goals: video may drive more session time and ad inventory, while events drive real-world local engagement and platform stickiness.
Propose a personalized ranking model that scores both content types per user and shows whichever has higher predicted engagement value for that person.
Success metric: overall session engagement and satisfaction (via surveys or dwell time), not just raw click volume on either content type.

Frames this correctly as a personalization decision rather than a single fixed policy across all users.
Names concrete intent signals, like past RSVP activity, that differentiate users who want events from users who want video.
Balances two different value types, engagement time from video versus real-world local stickiness from events, rather than optimizing for one blindly.

Proposing one fixed answer, like always show video, ignoring individual user intent differences.
No signal-based reasoning for how to actually personalize the decision.
Ignoring the different long-term value events might bring versus pure short-term engagement from video.

How would you measure the long-term value of event content versus video content?
What would you do if personalized ranking created a filter bubble effect?