Re:Facebook’s Walled Wonderland Is Inherently Incompatible w...
by briandear on Monday December 05, 2016 @04:21AM
(#13104278)
I don't necessarily agree with the comment to which you are replying however one concrete step is the newsfeed algorithm. As someone mentioned, Facebook becomes a bubble; I have a few hundred 'friends' of widely different politics and interests, yet my feed is populated with an echo chamber of my own inadvertent creation. I like stories I find interesting and agree with however that then results of me seeing more of the same so my feed now consists of probably a maximum of ten people's content, so the "inventory" of shareable content from my feed gets more and more focused to the point where there is no longer much diversity in my feed and thus the things I share.
For example: I "like" Mises posts, I like my "real" friends's music posts and I like the occasional post from The Paris Review.
However I follow a ton of people from interior design and architecture but I rarely see posts from those people/subjects. So my feed looks like a very narrow focus on Austrian economics and electronic music.
My point: the content isn't the problem with Facebook, the problem is the feed algorithm that decides the content I see. I would prefer no algorithm at all: just show me everything my 'friends' are posting. If I get tired of someone, I unfollow them. Facebook has made a conscious decision to behave as a de facto curator of content. I get it, it's my own fault for "liking" things. But I am a relatively sophisticated user -- I am aware of the echo chamber I create; but for hundreds of millions of users the newsfeed is their 'news' and it isn't transparent how their past likes are creating this environment.
For example: I "like" Mises posts, I like my "real" friends's music posts and I like the occasional post from The Paris Review.
However I follow a ton of people from interior design and architecture but I rarely see posts from those people/subjects. So my feed looks like a very narrow focus on Austrian economics and electronic music.
My point: the content isn't the problem with Facebook, the problem is the feed algorithm that decides the content I see. I would prefer no algorithm at all: just show me everything my 'friends' are posting. If I get tired of someone, I unfollow them. Facebook has made a conscious decision to behave as a de facto curator of content. I get it, it's my own fault for "liking" things. But I am a relatively sophisticated user -- I am aware of the echo chamber I create; but for hundreds of millions of users the newsfeed is their 'news' and it isn't transparent how their past likes are creating this environment.