Facebook’s News Feed: Often Changed, Never Great

Facebook’s announcement this week that it would tweak its news feed felt all too familiar: Facebook makes changes, people howl, fortunes are lost, Facebook gets stronger. But then Facebook reconsiders and starts tweaking its feed again. Repeat. At different times, Facebook has prioritized inane apps, like SuperPoke; social games, like FarmVille; social news; or video sharing. The change boosts our addiction to the platform, and then Facebook, like a tyrannical boy king with a short attention span, tosses aside the toy and demands something shinier. This is, of course, Facebook’s prerogative. It owns the platform. However, every time Facebook’s news feed, introduced almost a decade ago, is manhandled, I am left wondering whether it has to change the feed with brute force because its algorithms are just too dumb to improve the service in a way that suits both Facebook—by making money and monopolizing our attention—and its 1.6 billion users.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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