You’d think the pretentious stories about how husbands are perfect and how precious people’s children are would be the reason why I have a beef with my Facebook’s newsfeed but this isn’t the reason I created this post. My beef with the newsfeed is that the algorithm decides for you in what order you will see the information posted by your friends. This makes the epistolary quality of the application moot. Instead of telling a story in chronological order, the posts are placed in order of suspected interest or popularity, and include what people liked or patronized. If what you wrote about isn’t trending people may never see it. Add to this the fact that many people don’t check the time and date of the post to validate its relevance and you get a mix and match of reactions and questions. I find myself redirecting folks to my main page or blog so they can piece together the context. Event though the info is out there it is not being broadcast live to the masses. Bummer!
In the before time, or 2013 for example, I could ask my app to list the post in recent order. If someone posted five straight paragraphs statuses they would appear in the intended order. Now, to avoid spamming your friends, the posts are thrown into the mix sporadically. Kind of sad that people who claim to be your friends would complain so much about frequent posts that this was the solution to appease the users. See less from your friends is an actual setting. Why have these people at all if you rather ignore them? They read your stuff anyway and not all of it is gold. Ever since the internet giants added like and share buttons Facebook lost a bit of value. If everyone shares the same memes over and over, what are we actually communicating? Shouldn’t we be opening dialogue instead of preempting it with others’ opinion pieces? Half of the articles shared are click bait or native advertisements. We can’t tell real news from commercials anymore. 😦
I check Facebook to keep up with my friends and recent events but I can tell we are leaning towards becoming a generation of likes and emotions and not of discussion and deep thought. Emotions are great but what we feel is not necessarily relevant; what we do with and about those feelings is. We need to move from behind our screens to effect and affect change. Words are meaningless without action. The next time you read me take the time to text, call, IM or further engage me in person. We put all this info out there to connect at a human and intimate level that is not materializing. It is our own fault for letting the system be corrupted. Instead of promoting misinformation and advertisements we need to put back the social in social media. If not, we are just killing very valuable time.
Mrs. Enginerd - Nerd Whisperer 