Facebook deceives its users — so what?

There are countless of articles on how Facebook filters its content and only shows certain posts to users while trying to avoid showing others. Many of them simply state this fact, explaining what Facebook’s purpose behind all of this is and so on. Good. People should be aware of their filtered Facebook feed. What bothers me about many of these articles is the way in which this is presented and the opinions that flow in in those articles — many of them being negative. In what way? They present Facebook as “evil” and “deceptive” and seem almost like a warning to its readers not to fall into this “trap”.

People like to believe that they are being deceived and it’s not their fault that real news and posts on relevant matters hardly ever appear in their feed. However, everyone is responsible for their feed, meaning the people in their friends list and the pages they like. If you like three news pages and one page that posts cat pictures, it’s still your fault that you probably see the latter more often in your feed than real news. It is debatable whether you should use Facebook (or any other social media site) as a way to read news in the first place.

Actually, “deceive” is not even the right word to use in this case. I used it in the title on purpose because I find it slightly exaggerated. Facebook does certainly influence its users by filtering its content, but this is a fact known to many people by now. Besides, Facebook does not even deny this. Don’t forget that it’s your choice whether you want to use this social media site or not. And it’s your choice how you use it. After all, it’s very unlikely for Facebook to change the way it works, so complaining about it leads nowhere.