Will Oremus’ article on how the new Facebook algorithm works is interesting, exciting, and confusing all in the same time. The article on Slate’s website describes how the new algorithm works and gives a behind the scenes look at the engineers who work on this algorithm every day. The new Facebook algorithm is tricky for me because the negative aspects of it outweigh the positives. For example, I spend a lot of time on the local buy/sell/trade pages because, with our recent move, I have been looking to get rid of a lot of unnecessary items. I check the pages often so I would then assume that Facebook thinks I want to see what’s for sale. This morning I opened my newsfeed and the first four posts I saw were for sale ads for a kid’s fishing pole, children’s Halloween costumes, toddler shoes, and board games. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t buy any of this and was so frustrated that this would be at the top of my newsfeed that I clicked out of my Facebook app and opened Snapchat instead. I wish there would be some sort of way to easily filter what you see on Facebook. For me, I would want to see posts and pictures from the people I care most about, interesting news articles, and a few memes. I don’t enjoy opening up my newsfeed to ten memes followed by tons of posts on the buy/sell/trade pages because, for the most part, I am on Facebook to connect with the people on my friends list. I will say that on good days, when the people in my life have posted a lot, I do see those posts higher up on my newsfeed; which I appreciate. On the other hand, I don’t know how effective this algorithm is because whenever I open my newsfeed on the Facebook app I always click on the “most recent” tab. This will show me posts in the order that they have been posted, and I appreciate this so I am not viewing older posts, which can be frustrating. For example, sometimes when I open Facebook and don’t click on the “most recent” tab see posts that were posted three to four days ago mixed in with posts from the current day. This is awkward for me sometimes because I often comment on the posts if they are new to me. Recently I commented on a post of my mom’s that was from a few days ago and she asked if I was “stalking” her page. This would be fine for my mom to make a joke like this, but I wouldn’t want an ex or someone of the sort to see me commenting on posts from days ago as if I had purposely gone to their page and were scrolling through their page. There wasn’t anything in particular that surprised me in the article, but more of things that I found true in my experiences on Facebook. Oremus wrote that, “People are too complex for any algorithm to model.” This rings true in my experience on Facebook as described above. While I completely appreciate when I open my newsfeed and see pictures of my mom’s hike, my boyfriend’s niece, and an article written by my cousin, I am completely turned off when I do not enjoy the posts so much so that I exit out of the app and click open a different social media tool. I also was struck by this excerpt from the article: “People were liking more things on Facebook than ever. But were they liking Facebook less?” This rang true to me. Most recently I have seen myself “liking” posts that I find funny or interesting, but have also been contemplating deactivating my Facebook as a whole because my use on Facebook has recently become so routine that it’s almost unnecessary. If I am bored enough, I could spent up to thirty minutes at a time on the app, and that is completely unnecessary. Oremus talked about how impractical it would be to ask Facebook users to rank what they found most important on their newsfeed in order to perfect the algorithm. While he said it would be impossible and impractical I would absolutely appreciate the chance to do so before I find myself using other apps where I do have that control like on Snapchat. Oremus also wrote about liking a post before you’ve actually read it. Am I the only one who doesn’t do this? I would never like, comment on, or share a post that I hadn’t read because I wouldn't want to seem ignorant posting views on something I knew nothing about. I also found the idea of “superhiders” extremely interesting, but ridiculous at the same time. Who has time to click “hide” on every single post that they have viewed or read? The most practical use of the “hide” button, I think, would be to hide posts you find offensive or inappropriate. With this being said, superhiders would then hurt the algorithm set up to hide future posts that I would find offensive.
I suppose the only way for me to take control over my newsfeed would be to click on that tiny grey arrow to the right of a post and give Facebook the feedback of how I react to posts, but in the end, I don’t have time for that. It it because I don't have the time? Or because I am too lazy to do so? That is probably the better question, but I know I don’t want to have to click on that grey arrow because I am a spoiled tech user; I want this done for me. While it is a nice addition that I have the option to hide, report, unfollow, and like I think the perfection of the Facebook algorithm will be a long and never ending process.
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