Your Facebook News Feed is a disaster.
The algorithmically chosen content presented to users on custom feeds is intended to generate likes and shares. However, the content is not presented to users for their benefit, as you might assume. The goal is to give "little doses of dopamine" (or something similar) to the original poster to encourage more content creation.
Frances Haugen, former Facebook product manager, stated this Tuesday in testimony before the Senate. This strategy combined with the fact that Facebook's own research shows they can not adequately identify dangerous content, is a big reason why the Facebook News Feed is so dangerous.
Haugen was responsible for leaked internal Facebook documents to Wall Street Journal. This cache formed the basis of bombshell series "Facebook Files".
One particularly shocking exchange was when the whistleblower led Sen. John Thune, South Dakota, through a series Facebook decisions. The goal was to juice content creation and ignore the logic behind them.
Haugen explained that Facebook knows that when they choose content that focuses on computers, people spend more time on their platforms and make more money. Facebook's engagement-based ranking has its dangers. Facebook knows that extreme reactions from users are more likely to result in a click, comment or reshare. This is interesting because these clicks, comments, and reshares may not be for your benefit.
Facebook could just display content in the order its posted, perhaps something akin to Twitter's reverse-chronological timeline. Instead of using engagement-based ranking, Facebook's News Feed prioritizes posts most likely to receive more likes and shares.
Haugen also explained the reasoning behind Facebook's News Feed algorithm.
Sen. Thune was told by her that "Facebook knows" that people will create more content if they receive the likes, comments, and reshares. They prioritize content in your feed to give your friends little dopamine hits so they can create more content. They have also done experiments on people (producer side experiments), and they have confirmed that this works."
SEE ALSO: Facebook whistleblower claims Zuckerberg placed safety first and gave bonuses
Facebook failed to stop the train wreck that it calls its News Feed algorithm and has been leaning on its accelerator all along.
