Earlier this week I saw a funny post on Facebook that appeared briefly in my feed when a friend commented on it. I know of no way to track down these kinds of feed items once you scroll past them because don’t tend to stay in the feed and you can’t simply visit your friend’s page to see them because they aren’t actually my friend’s posts, they’re just her comments on posts.
I decided to wade once again into Facebook’s search feature, or what has passed for a search feature. As long as I’ve used Facebook I’ve hated its abysmal search ability. To my amazement, Facebook has done quite a bit to improve its search functionality. I was able to zero in on my friend’s posts, narrow them down by time, and search for a string. It used to be that this was not possible (as least, as far as I know).
Did I find my friend’s comment? No, but what I did find was just how extensively Facebook has been filtering my Facebook Feed. My simple search for posts that mentioned “Hurricane Matthew” suddenly pulled up dozens of posts that my friends had shared that I had never seen. Of course, I’ve known for a while that Facebook doesn’t show me everything – I have a lot of friends and there’s a surprising number of cat pictures out there. Even so, the extent of the filtering was really shocking.
Facebook’s Feed algorithms are a lot like my sweet but somewhat intellectually-challenged dog: always trying to figure out what I want but often doing a poor job of it. One day I might comment or like on a politically-themed post and the next day that’s all I see. I don’t want to be flooded with all of the same stuff, Facebook! I especially don’t want to be flooded if it means that some of the less popular but maybe more interesting or uplifting updates my friends make get lost in the process.
You want to know why our country is so polarized right now? It’s because social media like Facebook holds up mirrors to its users, amplifying their likes and minimizing their dislikes. It’s a giant echo chamber where the only views you’re presented with are your own. This is not helpful to our national dialogue because the result is that no one knows where the other side is coming from – you’re never exposed to the other side, how could you know? These stupid filtering algorithms don’t provide for any common ground. Is it any wonder that common ground is harder to find?
I fired up Facebook on my phone this morning to find page after page of political posts. No posts from my friends talking about the storm, or any fun stuff their families were doing. Just political posts, tired, soul-deadening, life-sucking, divisive political posts.
Fuck that. I uninstalled Facebook again, this time maybe for good. Once again Facebook’s algorithm has chased me away.