{"id":727,"date":"2021-11-19T10:35:29","date_gmt":"2021-11-19T09:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2021\/11\/19\/i-used-facebook-without-the-algorithm-and-you-can-too-wired\/"},"modified":"2021-11-19T10:35:29","modified_gmt":"2021-11-19T09:35:29","slug":"i-used-facebook-without-the-algorithm-and-you-can-too-wired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2021\/11\/19\/i-used-facebook-without-the-algorithm-and-you-can-too-wired\/","title":{"rendered":"I Used Facebook Without the Algorithm, and You Can Too &#8211; WIRED"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"cfbc967f0983488262956e73eca9483a\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3859091246952232\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- blok -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3859091246952232\" data-ad-slot=\"1334354390\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n\n<\/div>\n<p>To revist this article, visit My Profile, then <a href=\"\/account\/saved\">View saved stories<\/a>.<br \/>To revist this article, visit My Profile, then <a href=\"\/account\/saved\">View saved stories<\/a>.<br \/><span itemprop=\"name\" class=\"BylineNamesWrapper-dbkCxf erRIa-D\"><span data-testid=\"BylineName\" class=\"BylineName-cKXFOb UCAzg byline__name\"><a class=\"BaseWrap-sc-TURhJ BaseText-fFzBQt BaseLink-gZQqBA BylineLink-eZnyPI eTiIvU fSdqYq klqzvV bKZMMS byline__name-link button\" href=\"\/author\/brian-barrett\">Brian Barrett<\/a><\/span><\/span><br \/>To revist this article, visit My Profile, then <a href=\"\/account\/saved\">View saved stories<\/a>.<br \/>To revist this article, visit My Profile, then <a href=\"\/account\/saved\">View saved stories<\/a>.<br \/><span class=\"lead-in-text-callout\">Facebook is broken,<\/span> says <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/facebook-whistleblower-hearing-will-be-different\/\">whistleblower Frances Haugen<\/a>, who worked on the company\u2019s civic integrity team. In testimony before Congress and in the media, Haugen has argued that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/facebook-papers-internal-documents\/\">the social giant\u2019s algorithms contribute to maladies<\/a> that range from teen mental health issues to ethnic violence in Ethiopia. There\u2019s no one solution that will <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/facebook-whistleblower-wont-change-anything\/\">fix all that\u2019s wrong with Facebook<\/a>\u2014no, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/facebook-name-change-wont-fix-anything\/\">not even a new name<\/a>\u2014but one of Haugen\u2019s suggestions stood out.<br \/>\u201cI\u2019m a strong proponent of chronological ranking, ordering by time with a little bit of spam demotion,\u201d she told the Senate earlier this month. \u201cWe should have software that is human-scaled, where humans have conversations together, not computers facilitating who we get to hear from.\u201d<br \/>Imagine that! Humans \u2026 having conversations \u2026 together. Haugen essentially recommends a Facebook News Feed where items appear as people post them, rather than in an order divined by the company\u2019s algorithmic wizardry. In this world, likes and comments wouldn\u2019t dictate what you see. It\u2019s all a matter of timing\u2014which would also prevent the algorithm from tossing logs onto the platform\u2019s most inflammatory posts.<br \/>It\u2019s not that radical a notion. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/2016\/03\/instagram-will-soon-show-thinks-want-see\/\">Instagram only handed the algorithm<\/a> the reins to your feed in 2016. Twitter took away chronology altogether that same year, only to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/twitter-chronological-timeline-will-save-us\/\">reintroduce it as an option in 2018<\/a>. And you can also ditch the algorithm in the Facebook News Feed right now, today. I know, because I\u2019ve been doing it for the past two weeks.<br \/>In fairness, it\u2019s not like Facebook hides the option. On desktop, you just click Most Recent in the lefthand pane. On mobile, you\u2019ll find Most Recent under the hamburger menu in the upper-right corner. As Facebook itself warns, though, the experience is fleeting. \u201cYou can sort your News Feed to see recent posts,\u201d a company help page says, \u201cbut News Feed will eventually return to its default setting.\u201d (Or you can just <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/?sk=h_chr\" class=\"external-link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/?sk=h_chr&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/?sk=h_chr\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>use this link<\/strong><\/a> instead of facebook dot com, and load a ranking-free experience every time.)<br \/>To get a possibly obvious caveat out of the way: I am by no means a Facebook power user. I\u2019ve posted three or four times a year since 2019, all of which were either WIRED stories or attempts to drum up business for my daughter\u2019s Girl Scout cookie side hustle. My account is private, and while I\u2019m somehow a member of 14 groups, more than half of those haven\u2019t posted anything in the past year, I sporadically check in on three, and had forgotten the rest existed. Still, any honest accounting would put me on Facebook a few times a week. Call it force of habit, call it Marketplace voyeurism. Regardless, I am familiar with how the News Feed typically functions\u2014and was struck by just how different an experience a healthy dose of chronology imparted.<br \/>I also don\u2019t want to overstate things. The ills that Haugen proposes chronology may fix are largely not present in my social media bubble to begin with, at least that I\u2019ve seen. Facebook also uses a multitude of algorithms; here it&#x27;s referring only to the platform&#x27;s News Feed ranking. And I hesitate to say whether the experience is necessarily better, at least for me, than what Facebook currently has on offer. Far more interesting, anyway, is what it says about Facebook itself.<br \/><span class=\"BaseWrap-sc-TURhJ BaseText-fFzBQt BylinePreamble-igNUzc eTiIvU djTkCL kntvqh byline__preamble\">By <\/span><span itemprop=\"name\" class=\"BylineNamesWrapper-dbkCxf erRIa-D\"><span data-testid=\"BylineName\" class=\"BylineName-cKXFOb irUMly byline__name\"><a class=\"BaseWrap-sc-TURhJ BaseText-fFzBQt BaseLink-gZQqBA BylineLink-eZnyPI eTiIvU fSdqYq klqzvV nZHeQ byline__name-link button\" href=\"\/author\/brian-barrett\">Brian Barrett<\/a><\/span><\/span><br \/>I have 975 Facebook friends, accumulated over the past 13 years or so. I \u201clike\u201d 15 pages, a list that primarily comprises news outlets, plus a few friends who converted their profiles into Pages, and Cheez-Its, for some reason. (The reason is that Cheez-Its are delicious.)<br \/>You might imagine that in a healthy social network, even in chronological mode, the ratio of posts from friends to brands would roughly reflect the proportion in which you follow them. You don\u2019t even have to imagine, actually; chronological Twitter functions basically like this, with ebbs and flows throughout the day that map the real human activity of the people you follow.<br \/>On Facebook? It\u2019s brands all the way down. I\u2019ll give the caveat again that everyone\u2019s News Feed is their own curated experience, mileages vary, etc. But I\u2019m also at the crossroads of most demographics that, according to a recent Pew Research <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/internet\/fact-sheet\/social-media\/?menuItem=c14683cb-c4f4-41d0-a635-52c4eeae0245\" class=\"external-link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/internet\/fact-sheet\/social-media\/?menuItem=c14683cb-c4f4-41d0-a635-52c4eeae0245&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pewresearch.org\/internet\/fact-sheet\/social-media\/?menuItem=c14683cb-c4f4-41d0-a635-52c4eeae0245\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">study<\/a>, say they use Facebook the most. If nearly 1,000 of my closest friends aren\u2019t on here, who is?<br \/>Brands! In my case, media brands specifically, since that\u2019s the majority of my follows. On a recent morning\u2014granted, it was early, around 8:30 am ET\u2014I scrolled through 35 consecutive posts before I hit my first entry by a human, which happened to be from a person I don\u2019t remember sharing a video of Elvis impersonators. Needless to say, this is nothing like the experience of firing up Facebook\u2019s algorithmically curated News Feed, especially if you\u2019re an infrequent customer. On that Facebook, friends are everywhere! They abound. They\u2019re at the pumpkin patch, they\u2019re having a date night, they\u2019re excited about <em>Succession<\/em>. They\u2019re playing sitar at the Montclair Art Museum. It\u2019s not a bustling metropolis, but it\u2019s no ghost town either.<br \/>But is it \u2026 better? I\u2019m not so sure. The chronological News Feed may not feature many of my acquaintances, but that effectively turns it more of an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/rss-readers-feedly-inoreader-old-reader\/\">RSS feed<\/a> than a social network. There\u2019s something to be said for that experience; I saw interesting stories\u2014Ralph Ellison <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.esquire.com\/entertainment\/music\/a36452417\/ralph-ellison-mintons-jazz-remembrance\/\" class=\"external-link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.esquire.com\/entertainment\/music\/a36452417\/ralph-ellison-mintons-jazz-remembrance\/&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esquire.com\/entertainment\/music\/a36452417\/ralph-ellison-mintons-jazz-remembrance\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">on jazz!<\/a>\u2014I wouldn\u2019t have encountered otherwise, because they garnered too few likes and comments for Facebook to thrust them in front of my eyeballs. And while the timeliness of those stories generally doesn\u2019t match that of Twitter, it\u2019s a more comfortable way to get caught up on the news.<br \/>The ranked News Feed undoubtedly gives you more faces you recognize, but the difference isn\u2019t quite as stark as you might think. Again, it feels like not many people are posting to Facebook these days, no matter what mode you\u2019re in. A high-engagement post from someone you barely remember doesn\u2019t really register. And of the posts I was genuinely interested in\u2014often up to four or five days old\u2014I\u2019d already seen a high percentage on Instagram.<br \/>The most interesting part of using News Feed chronologically, though, may be the reminder of all the things the Facebook algorithm chooses <em>not<\/em> to show you in the normal course of use. Take the news: When Colin Powell died, the story dominated chronological Facebook, post after post from media outlets saying largely the same thing. Repetitive? Sure. But at least I knew my full range of options, instead of letting Facebook\u2019s algorithm anoint the One True Obit and shuffle it into a deck of posts from friends and non-alcoholic beer companies with big marketing budgets.<br \/>I also realized just how much of Facebook\u2019s volume seems to be propped up by a handful of people. Again, mileage varies, and maybe the friends in your circle are still popping off in the News Feed like it\u2019s 2008. But at any given moment the bulk of the posts appearing organically in my feed were from the same half-dozen people, none of whom I\u2019m especially close with. (To be clear, I support their choice to post, and am glad to know my former coworker\u2019s mom seems to be thriving.) That scarcity does allow for moments of serendipity; I\u2019m not sure my regular News Feed would have served up the neighborhood group post that read, in full: \u201cAnyone have a adult\/mens large Luigi costume they would be willing to sale? Mario is not acceptable-has to be Luigi.\u201d That one made my morning.<br \/>A common worry that has cropped up around the chronology discussion is that the News Feed would feel too spammy or cluttered without Facebook\u2019s curation. Not so much! Not only for all the reasons mentioned above, but because Facebook currently appears not to insert sponsored or recommended posts artificially into your timeline when you ditch the algorithm. On the regular News Feed, every fifth post is some sort of ad. I don\u2019t miss those one bit.<br \/>Using a chronological News Feed hasn\u2019t made me want to get on Facebook more. But it hasn\u2019t made me like it any less. Besides, I eventually realized that I\u2019d been thinking about this all wrong. The algorithm is there to show you who Facebook thinks you are, but also to hide what Facebook knows it is: a little empty, a little sad; a place where a few voices get most of the attention, no matter what it is they have to say.<br \/><button data-testid=\"navigation__heading-button\" type=\"button\" aria-expanded=\"false\" class=\"NavigationHeadingButton-keczTd cOuOgJ\">More From WIRED<span data-testid=\"navigation__heading-arrow\" class=\"NavigationHeadingArrow-gwmptm ebEhin\"><\/span><\/button><br \/><button data-testid=\"navigation__heading-button\" type=\"button\" aria-expanded=\"false\" class=\"NavigationHeadingButton-keczTd cOuOgJ\">Contact<span data-testid=\"navigation__heading-arrow\" class=\"NavigationHeadingArrow-gwmptm ebEhin\"><\/span><\/button><br \/>\u00a9 <!-- -->2021<!-- --> Cond\u00e9 Nast. All rights reserved. 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The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond\u00e9 Nast.<!-- --> <a class=\"external-link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;http:\/\/www.condenast.com\/privacy-policy#privacypolicy-optout&quot;}\" href=\"http:\/\/www.condenast.com\/privacy-policy#privacypolicy-optout\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ad Choices<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/how-to-use-facebook-no-algorithm\/\">source<\/a><\/p>\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.Brian BarrettTo revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.Facebook is broken, says whistleblower Frances Haugen, who worked on the company\u2019s civic integrity [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"googlesitekit_rrm_CAow1sXXCw:productID":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-classe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/727\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}