A report from The Washington Post suggests Facebook purposefully prevents users from controlling their own feeds.
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.
It seems Facebook makes efforts to control the content that appears in the user feed.
The report from The Post details the efforts:
“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. That leaves users to see all the posts from all of their friends in simple, chronological order.
Both tests appear to have taught Facebook’s researchers the same lesson: Users are better off with Facebook’s software calling the shots.”
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen has alleged that Facebook prioritizes profit over all else, including its users.
Lawmakers like Senators Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley 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?”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Facebook headquarters at 1-650-308-7300 and demand that Big Tech be held to account to provide clarity on “hate speech,” rules that seem to be applied inconsistently. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.