Facebook's News Feed Paradox

A Page is a “business” as opposed to a person, yes, but frankly, users do not care. In truth, it is safe to say that most users prefer articles that speak to their niche interests from a voice they trust over that Rodan + Fields “testimonial” from their elementary school classmate.

I hope you’ll forgive me if I scoff at Facebook’s talk of its users’ preference. The users have already expressed their preference by subscribing to that publisher’s page. They want to see that content! It is called an “opt-in” and it goes beyond some surface-level brand affinity like Mountain Dew or the Holy Bible.

But does Facebook know this already? Let’s examine this statement from Lars the Engineer (‘cause this is all about users and technology and stuff), who no doubt got this passed to him from public relations (the quotation marks are mine, because I have to laugh at the word-smithing here):

We’ve heard from our community that people are still worried about missing important “updates” from the friends they care about. For people with many connections this is particularly important, as there are a lot of “stories” for them to see each day.

Well that makes sense, I guess. We wouldn't want anyone to be worried. Oh, except for the fact that most of our connections do not create content for Facebook.

Facebook claimed that 85% of its users are “creating content,” which sounds good, but let’s remind ourselves that Facebook is defining content creation extremely broadly, and I say, deceptively.² Content creation under Facebook’s terms “includes everything from uploading a photo or video to writing a status update to less time-intensive actions such as becoming a fan of something or liking a friend's post. What? So if I share an article posted by The Onion that receives 30 likes on my timeline, I and my 30 likers are considered to have created content? We tapped an icon as we scrolled down a newsfeed. We created nothing but data points for the algorithm. The Onion is the only one who should count in that instance as having made content. Ah! But remember? “Updates!” “Stories!” That’s right. I forget myself. Sorry, Lars.

This “Dancing with Words” smacks of what I and a few others have had an inkling for quite some time: a large, yet unknown portion of Facebook’s users, even though they log on and even interact with others, do not post anything of their own.

Facebook needs to be general in their classification of what it means to “create” on their platform, lest it reveals to us that a small percentage of accounts are creating the majority of the actual “stories.”

Even with their loose definition of what content is, the fact remains: without original, quality, real content from professional publishers, what would there be to see? Your uncle’s 30 nearly identical photos of the same Alaskan cruise he goes on every year? “Janet Smith liked Adam Brown’s selfie he cross-posted from Instagram?”

Let’s face it, people on Facebook are boring. They pretty much post the same stuff, talk about the same stuff, like the same stuff, and share the same stuff all the time. They create “updates” and “stories” about things that are interesting to them, not to us! Where do we see things that are interesting to us on Facebook? That’s right, from Pages, particularly from niche publishers and entertainers.

It is tightening the screws on the professionals who are actively supplying it with free content that is relevant to their shared audience—theirs and the platform’s—and who are willing to pay the platform for better placement when they need to advertise directly.

Viewed this way, niche publishers consistently posting their original work are Facebook’s best users. Conversely, the average user’s connections who post self-indulgent “updates” and self-serving “stories” are its worst users.

By the algorithm limiting the best, it is enabling the worst, to the detriment of all. Soon the large percentage of Facebook’s passive users will feel even more alienated and alone—though surrounded by familiar faces—than they already do. &

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