First off, this thread is for people who actually use Facebook, not for bitching about Facebook or crowing about how you don’t use it, or disparaging people who do. I have a legit question about Facebook and the discussion is really only best served by people who regularly use the site.
On to my question…There’s a lot in the news about Facebook and “fake news,” including Facebook deciding to make changes to “the newsfeed” and what content it shows to people.
Thing is, I’m a regular FB user (like, all day long) and have been for about 10 years, and I’ve never had Facebook push any news to me. I don’t get news stories on my feed that weren’t shared, liked or commented on by my friends. There’s nothing that I see on Facebook that is produced by Facebook or even really written FOR Facebook - in that, if I see a news story, it’s a link to a story accompanied (hopefully) by a comment by the person who posted the link. It’s a post with a link, just like we see here on the SDMB.
Granted, I do see a lot more posts from non-friends now, but those posts are all by businesses/movies/shows/artists I deliberately chose to follow, and who are advertising their stuff to their followers. I see ThinkGeek posts, PetCo posts, Late Show posts, etc. I see posts by Elizabeth Warren because I follow her. I see posts by Schwebel’s Bread cuz I follow them, even! The only news I see on my newsfeed is from the one newspaper I follow, the local Cleveland indie paper.
And of course piles of junk shared memes and shit from my friends. And their occasional shared news stories.
I do see some “news” on Facebook. When I’m on the desktop version, there will be a list of trending news stories on the right hand side. If any headline grabs me, I can click through and see a feed of all the people who are talking about the headline, and links to outside news sources with stories. But that’s far from front-and-center and it’s far from being pushed to my newsfeed. And in fact when I am in the FB app on my phone, I don’t even see it. The app is just my feed, with all the people and things I follow.
My question is, why doesn’t my experience line up with what Facebook is accused of and admitting to doing with regards to news? How is Facebook controlling any narrative, when my friends are controlling what I see? Even if Facebook banned pages that are putting out “fake news,” that doesn’t stop the entire Web from publishing “fake news” and my friends from sharing links to this “fake news.”
What the heck is going on? What exactly has Facebook done that I’m not seeing?