The social media giant is luring away readers and advertisers and dominating the space news outlets used to hold.
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Facebook isn't free - It feeds on your data
Today I would like to expand on the ever vast topic of Facebook's misconduct.
I feel that too many are still unaware of the way Facebook feeds are constructed. The choices are determined by algorithms which monitor your "interests" and then replay similar content back to you, based on what the algorithms believe you wish to read and filtering out posts that you probably don't want to see.
Sounds convenient right? The problem here is that if we expand on this system a "bubble effect" occurs - Your facebook feed becomes an echo chamber of your own preconceived beliefs with no exposure to alternative or controversial perspectives. How can you evolve if you don't hear counter arguments?
Essentially, Facebook narrows down your interests and "tells" you what to read. Evidently, this system works perfectly.
This is true for all kind of content, just a look at your friends list: How many of them still appear in your feed? Do they still post? Yeah they do - you just never see it anymore.
It is frightening to consider the implications this effect has on consuming news related articles on Facebook.
The thing is, 66% of Facebook uses do get their news through the social media platform (according to Pew Research Center Study May 2016). It's a scary number.
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Aren't newspapers doing the same thing?
In a way, yes. In fact, it is almost impossible to create unbiased articles - objectivity is a real virtue in journalism.
But there is a difference. Facebook is eating away the user base and attention span at a large scale. More and more people abandon traditional media outlets in favor of Facebook to consume news. This means that Facebook is becoming an unstoppable ever expanding outlet without a counterweight and readers accept it as a legitimate news source.
The second problem is the way their market share in advertisement. Facebook, like Google, has created a giant platform that is crushing internet advertising revenue. It works much more efficiently than any traditional newspaper since users willingly put unbelievable amounts of personal information about themselves into Facebook. How could any newspaper compete with the targeting precision Facebook Ads have to offer? How could they ever know what Facebook knows through years of spying on their customers?
Newspapers are also funded through advertisements. This means that Facebook is taking away the funds of these outlets, because they are no longer able to afford their journalists. And with every step Facebook takes towards dominating the news space, it becomes a centralized authority of news based on their own notions and beliefs.
The result is horrifying: The Facebookisation of news has the potential to destroy democracies by exercising control of what we get to read - and then destroying competing outlets that provide that material.
Delete Facebook, go Steemit.
Information sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/why-facebook-is-public-enemy
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- Nick ( @cryptonik ) -