How Facebook’s Algorithm Is Suppressing Alternate Views & Changing Politics
Hello reader, welcome to this article. I’m glad you found us, but I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s probably not a random coincidence that you’ve stumbled across this story. If you clicked on this article from Facebook, then I’m sorry to tell you that you’ve just been played. You might think that you chose to click on this link, but every step up to that exact moment of physically clicking this article was determined by a faceless, anonymous algorithm that lurks beneath your Facebook news feed. It’s not just deciding what you read — it’s manipulating your worldview and might even be responsible for fracturing the very nature of politics. But we’ll get to that.
On the surface, Facebook might seem like a vast expanse of randomly assorted information, spat out into a neat little feed for us to passively scroll through. But Facebook has long been meticulously manipulating what we see and interact with on the social media site — whose statuses we come across, whose nauseating Europe photos we violently scroll past and what liked pages surface on the feed.
It explains why your best mates’ posts always seem to hover near the top while you haven’t seen anything from that random friend from primary school on Facebook in years. Yet if you click on their profile, they’ve been having a wild time — it just hasn’t been in your news feed.
While old mate Zuckerberg has kept the exact algorithm that determines what filters into our news feed deftly hidden in his billion dollar empire, the tech savvy of Facebook have a rough idea of how it works.
Simplified? Facebook prioritises the posts which it deems are most relevant and enjoyable to us in the hope that it will keep us coming back for more, feeding our insatiable Facebook addictions.
When Facebook was but a scrawny infant in the social media world, this algorithm mattered little. It made perfect sense — it was a useful tool for blocking out people we didn’t particularly care about and prioritising our favourite people.
But if you hadn’t noticed, Facebook is no longer an infant in the social media world and the dynamics of the social behemoth are changing. People are sharing personal content exponentially less, and instead the news feed is beginning to live up to its name — clogged and overwhelmed by news, memes and articles.
The problem with an algorithm for world news
Suddenly, this humble algorithm no longer just determines whose profile pictures we see, but is the gatekeeper to most of the information and news that we consume via social media. With many young people using Facebook as their main source of news and information about the world, their knowledge of world issues is in the hands of an algorithm we don’t even fully understand. Facebook’s news feed isn’t skewed towards any agenda (the Facebook trending feature is another debate entirely). However, just like personal posts, it cultivates more of the same news that you like. It sees that you’ve been clicking on an awful lot of posts from Junkee or Vox recently, and therefore dishes you up a whole bunch more. It notices that you scrolled past that rather conservative post about Ted Cruz or The Daily Telegraph, and decides that it won’t show you much more from that outlet.
Your newsfeed quickly reduces and warps to fit your preferences, abjectly ignoring anything that doesn’t fit into your worldview. The only way you’ll see any alternative views is if a friend likes or comments on something. Yet the likelihood is that the algorithm has already cut that person from your news feed because you never agreed with or liked any of their content.
Suddenly, your news feed never disagrees with you. Every opinion piece seems to be spruiking your opinion, every news article slanted ever closer to your views. While this leaves you with a warm and fuzzy feeling every time you log onto Facebook, the reality is that there are other views out there, they’re just lurking out of sight of your news feed.
The rise of Trump & importance of seeing the other side
The only way that productive debate on issues of importance can occur is through an understanding of each side of an argument. How can you rebut the other sides’ argument if you don’t even know what it is? As Facebook continues to accelerate us into smaller pigeonholes and pander to our own views, the voices of dissent become quieter and more distant, lulling us into a cosy yet false sense of security.
Meanwhile there are loud and influential voices booming in other parts of the internet and filling other people’s’ news feeds. Take the US election as an example. If you subscribe to largely progressive news outlets on Facebook, there has been a complete denial of the possibility of a Trump presidency. Yet seemingly out of nowhere Trump has now taken a slim lead over Clinton in a national aggregate poll. Articles appeared on these websites with titles such as “Inside The Mind Of A Trump Supporter” as if these people were some rare breed of social outcast. Well, considering this group is rapidly approaching a majority of Americans, they’re clearly and terrifying not a bizarre anomaly.
While it might be nice to be separated from the toxic commentary around Trump, it reeks of an audience with zero exposure to the other side of the political debate. We shouldn’t need a ground-breaking investigative article to profile a Trump supporter, they should be blatantly obvious on the internet which is home to the complete spectrum of political ideologies. Yet we’ve managed to find a way to conclusively shut out the other side of the debate. After all, why would anything pro-Trump filter into your news feed if you’ve never liked or interacted with that type of content? People on opposing sides of politics might never be able to see eye to eye but rarely has there been such a chasm between two sides of politics in America.
Depending on your social political views, this could be considered a good thing. It helps to connect communities of similarly minded people and accelerate social change. But your idea of a productive and positive community is another’s’ idea of a toxic one. This algorithm can unite people of dangerous ideas, cementing each other’s’ ideologies without any threat of rebuttal. While your news feed might never show pages or people who support neo-nazism, someone else’s news feed might never show any pages or people who support basic gender equality. It doesn’t help that liking a page or news site on Facebook is a form of social statement visible to the rest of your friends. We are quick to judge people on what pages they like on Facebook, translating this like as a nod of approval to that cause.
“Oh, you liked Hillary Clinton’s Facebook page? I’ll just put you down in my mind as a lifelong Clinton supporter.”
That’s the whole problem with the concept of “liking” a page. There is no way to follow and immerse yourself in contrary views without boldly stating your allegiance to them via a “like”.
All of us are comforted by similar views. But in a time when politics seems to be increasingly fracturing to the extremes and fascism is again on the rise globally, we must continue to expose ourselves to the other side to be informed about the reality of the social debate.
So next time you’re on Facebook, open that news article you’d normally ignore. Like a page or two with views that don’t align to your own. Don’t delete that weirdo who keeps posting racist statuses and if you can manage it, occasionally delve into the comment sections of articles. Employ the social media equivalent of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer.
You can get angry at every word you read, you can roll your eyes and you can punch your screen — but at least attempt to expose yourself to the other side of the debate, if only so you can more effectively tear their arguments to shreds.
This article was originally published by Cameron Nicholls at The Vocal
