By David Pierce
The top of my Facebook feed currently shows a photo of a woman
I'm not really friends with -- I think we were on a kickball team
once? -- who recently got married. This photo has topped my feed
for the better part of three days, despite the fact that I don't
care. Meanwhile, there's been a black-hole sighting and a new way
to watch Disney movies and a WikiLeaks arrest and presumably lots
more. I'll never know because, according to Facebook, what matters
is that wedding photo.
This is life in the age of the inscrutable, opaque algorithmic
feed. I may decide whom I friend or follow, but Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, YouTube and the rest decide what I actually see.
This can be annoying, like the ever-present wedding photos. It
can also be hugely problematic, like when Facebook surfaces hateful
and fake content or a simple YouTube search leads you down a
recommendations rabbit hole into the internet's darkest corners.
Often, what you're seeing and who made it are a total mystery.
Ostensibly, the point of these algorithms is to show you what
you care about. The companies frame it like the difference between
Netflix and channel-flipping: Wouldn't you rather see the best
stuff whenever you want, instead of only what happens to be on
right now? These services claim to have users' interests at heart,
but they also have an interest of their own, to show you whatever
good, bad or ugly stuff it takes to keep force-feeding you ads.
These services don't make it easy, but there are ways to take
back a bit of control over your feed. Some offer the ability to
turn the algorithms off and see your feeds in more transparent
ways. More often, the best you can do is try to influence the
algorithm slightly in your direction. (You still might never know
if it's working.) There are handy Chrome extensions and third-party
apps that do some of the work for you, too.
Tweaking the System
In general, one word rules the way your feed is sorted and
presented to you: engagement. The more you click, like, comment,
share and read, the more likely you are to keep checking back in.
Your feed is carefully ordered to make sure you never get bored. As
my colleague Christopher Mims put it so well: "If it's outrageous,
it's contagious."
The invisible sorting systems start with a few obvious things:
whom you follow, friend or subscribe to heavily influences what you
see in your feeds. If you double-tap to like an Instagram post or
comment below it, that's another positive signal. If you tend to
watch a lot of videos, the platforms will show you more videos and
fewer photos. If you don't like a post, but stare at it for a
while, you're still adding a tick to the "show me more!" column.
And these bots don't get sarcasm: Hate-likes are the same as
like-likes.
But it's also possible to tell the algorithms what you don't
like. On Facebook, for instance, you can click the three dots at
the top right of any post and choose from options such as "Hide
post," which will both hide that post and show you fewer like it,
or "Unfollow [the person who posted]," which removes all of that
person's posts from your feed without unfriending them. Facebook
says these are among the strongest indicators you can send to its
algorithm. Twitter and YouTube offer similar tools. Clicking the
"Not Interested" button on a YouTube thumbnail makes a powerful
statement.
Companies should make it easier. "This is an area we're
investing more in -- explicit controls for you to say, 'I like this
thing' or 'I don't, '" said Wally Gurzynski, a product manager at
Twitter. Mr. Gurzynski said Twitter's also working on helping users
understand what happens when they click those buttons and how their
actions affect the content they see. Facebook recently announced a
similar feature, called "Why am I seeing this post?" When (if?) the
company rolls it out, you'll be allowed to take actions to see more
or less content like any particular post.
Even then, these controls aren't enough. "They give you the
illusion of control without giving you actual control," said Matt
Kruse, the developer of Social Fixer, a browser extension I like
that lets you filter certain users, keywords or topics out of your
Facebook feed. When you tell Facebook what you don't like, all
you're really doing is shouting instructions at the wizard behind
the curtain. You should really be able to get back there and tinker
yourself.
Everything in its right place
For all its problems with abuse and hate speech, Twitter is at
least the most transparent feed: You can click the starry icon at
the top and see all your tweets in reverse-chronological order.
Keep an eye on it, though, because Twitter will eventually switch
you back to the algorithmic feed. It wants to show you all the
intoxicating stuff you've missed.
The other networks are worse. Facebook offers a version of your
news feed sorted by "Most Recent," which you can access by clicking
the three dots to the right of the News Feed icon, but Facebook
still filters out lots of content. (You can access the feed on
mobile by typing "Most Recent" into the app's search field.)
Eventually, it also switches back to the Top Stories feed.
Facebook-owned Instagram doesn't even pretend to offer a
chronological feed. "Before we were ranking people's feeds, they
were missing over half of their friends' posts," said Julian
Gutman, a product lead at Instagram. If you want a cleaner, more
transparent experience, I recommend Filtergram, a web app that
gives you a chronological, filterable feed of all the public
accounts you choose. You don't need an Instagram account to use
it.
For YouTube users, I recommend the Chrome extension DF Tube.
With it enabled, a YouTube page is rendered as minimally as
possible. It won't automatically play recommended videos at the
end, show you related videos on the side, or display all the
comments below a video. With everything disabled, YouTube's
homepage becomes a search bar and any video page shows nothing but
a video.
Extensions like SocialFixer and DF Tube are popular and the
developers say they're not collecting private information, but you
should always be careful about what you add to your browser.
They're also powerless on your phone. Nobody can really give you
the tools you need there except the social companies
themselves.
I'd like more tools, but even now, by giving up as much
algorithmic help as possible, I've found I use the services less --
and that's a good thing. In general I feel more able to understand
what I'm seeing and why, and more in control over the unrelenting
stream of content that determines so much of my life.
And if I don't like what I see on Facebook or YouTube? You
better believe I'll let them know. And I hope they -- or at least,
the mysterious black boxes they built that control our lives -- are
listening.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 14, 2019 09:14 ET (13:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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