Facebook is the sender

TLDR; Without the control and true freedom of speech we should regard Facebook as nothing but a attention draining casino made for people with fear of missing out. Equally so, we should consider it as an active sender as it actively modifies what is being said and consumed. And hold it responsible as such.

Probably most of us have felt fear of missing out. So we try too keep up with too many sources of information and entertainment. Facebook et al. promise to help us by filtering information. It is well described in for example the Facebook guidelines of how their newsfeed algorithm is supposed to function.

The filtering one gets is based on the behaviours of others. It is based on the often correct premise that the more people agree that something is ‘worth sharing’ or ‘worth interacting with’ makes it more ‘worth showing’. Especially amongst ‘like-minded’ (actually: like-clicking) people.

Replace ‘worth sharing’ with ‘truth’ and we’re getting to today’s debate. A food recipe or a fun post ‘worth sharing’ might not do much harm. A political stance, however, could use a contra-stance, medical advice should maybe always be accompanied by a doctors advice. This is what most traditional news outlets have been doing (even to such extreme extent that for years we’ve been hearing in equally loud terms about climate sceptics while the vast majority of scientists already agreed upon the very existence of the phenomenon).

Something being true because it is shared often is a fallacy. The first class in logic learned us that having only seen white swans (and hence not having seen a black swan ever), we cannot just state that all swans are white.

Mark Zuckerberg basically claimed a few days ago that Facebook has no role in deciding what to show and not by simply favouring more established and truthful news-sources. News-sources should fix that according to him. Facebook makes money by enabling free speech, for anyone.

On the surface the Facebook-stance sounds all nice, open and just very very libertarian, but in reality Facebook does already remove and block articles and users (you won’t see much nude imagery on Facebook for example). And actually one may wonder whether it is free speech when a lot of voices aren’t being heard by other parties simply because of their ‘smart’ filtering.

The idea is that the newsfeed filters the relevant content for you. But really, it doesn’t. Thomas Baekdal did some basic testing earlier this year and although I haven’t tested it as thoroughly as he did I’ve been forced to manually navigate to someone’s Facebook page multiple times to actually see a post that was of interest to me. Not by someone like-minded, but I enjoy reading contrasting views. Facebook intervenes in possible conversations. As Annalee Newitz reports at Ars Technica, most of Facebook’s act of innocence is based on “we’re merely making communication possible”, and hence having no responsibility. But it remains to be seen if that stance still holds with its harsh editing of what people actually get to see. Whether that editing is ‘automatic’ doesn’t really matter.

The purpose of Facebook’s newsfeed optimisations* is just serving their interests, getting us to stay longer at Facebook (whether ‘we’ are racists, intellectuals or 9gag-fans). More time at Facebook is more profit for their shareholders. Good for them, but not for the addicts to distraction. We regulate casinos that nudge people to throw away their money after bad, so why not corporations like Facebook that nudge people to throw away their valuable time after bad?

While I fully acknowledge that not all information can be consumed we should be aware that Facebook is neither unbiased, nor perfectly attuned to our own needs for information (or entertainment). Since I don’t think perfectly automatic selection of information and entertainment is even remotely possible, nor desirable as it requires vast amounts of private data, users should be offered full control over how the timeline is being constructed.

As long as Facebook is applying non-transparent filtering it is impossible to back the idea freedom of speech exists at Facebook, nor the freedom of access those ideas (there is no speech when it isn’t being heard). Hence, Facebook acts beyond just being a medium (which is already known to influence the message), it is responsible for what it ‘says’: Facebook is the sender.

* I spend less time on Facebook since I deleted the app and use the webapp that allows for chronological listing of events (still sadly not all events).