What does the Facebook algorithm say about me?

Lisa Antropius
Inside the News Media
1 min readDec 14, 2016

Last week we talked about Facebook and the stories that it presents you, chosen by its algorithms.
Well, so I’ve actively checked my timeline and I’m not quite sure if I’m happy about the result.
If Facebook shows you the most interesting things, especially tailored for you — what does it say about me when all I can see are cute cat videos, memes, makeup tutorials, and “Tasty” videos? Uhm, I would say that I love cats, makeup and food.
But what about more serious topics? Once in a while I’d find an article from my local newspaper, but I can’t really see any important news if I’m not specifically looking for them.
Does that mean that I’m kind of light-minded, politically uninterested and superficial? I definitely wouldn’t say so. Just because I’m not liking any newspaper pages on Facebook or because I’m not commenting on political stuff like other people do and start some dumb discussions in the comments doesn’t mean that I’m not reading news articles at all or that I’m not telling my personal opinion concerning political topics people that are indeed interested in hearing it.

But on the other hand I need to admit that maybe leaving a little like at the FAZ, Spiegel or Tagesschau Facebook page won’t hurt, because to be honest — I’m checking facebook more than ten times a day. Newspages? Maybe every two days…

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