WashPost: Facebook Prevents Users from Controlling Feed

An article from The Washington PostFacebook deliberately prevents users controlling their own feeds, according to reports.

The “News Feed” feature on Facebook is meant to show the user the most up-to-date posts from friends, family, public figures, and news sources the user follows.

Facebook appears to be trying to limit the amount of content displayed in users’ feeds.

Report by The PostThe details of these efforts are:

“In at least two experiments over the years, Facebook has explored what happens when it turns off its controversial news feed ranking system — the software that decides for each user which posts they’ll see and in what order, internal documents show. Users can see the posts in chronological order from their friends.

“Both tests appear to have taught Facebook’s researchers the same lesson: Users are better off with Facebook’s software calling the shots.”

Frances Haugen is a Facebook “whistleblower”. She claims that Facebook places profit before all else including its users.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) have called for more regulation of Big Tech to push back against Facebook’s control.

Meanwhile, it seems Facebook will continue its “ranking” methods.

“Research we’ve done shows that unranked feeds can lead to integrity issues and other problems,” Facebook’s Ariana Anthony told The Post.

“Whenever we’ve tried to compare ranked and unranked feeds, ranked feeds just seem better,” one employee wrote in a 2018 memo about the system titled, “Is ranking good?”

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