Are you on Facebook? Do you know how its newsfeed algorithm works? Do you know how to control your newsfeed?
During a January week in 2012, around 700,000 English-speaking Facebook users were chosen, without their knowledge or consent, to be emotional lab rats. The researchers found that, if you tweak what people see in their Facebook newsfeed – the scrolling information on your page –to suppress or heighten certain emotive words, readers’ emotions will shift to match. Understandably there has been anger that the experiment breached ethical guidelines.
So, are you on Facebook? As of the first quarter 2014, Facebook had 1.28 billion monthly active users. I am one of them. Do you understand how and why Facebook manipulates the newsfeed that you receive? Do you know how to take control of your newsfeed? You’ll find helpful explanations here.
This whole Facebook controversy comes as I am reading a prescient novel called “The Circle” by Dave Eggers.