Facebook’s News Feeds Changes Is Making Everything So Much Worse

When Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that his Personal Challenge for 2018 would be to focus on fixing his company, one of the first public examples of this is the planned changes for the News Feeds. While many lauded this attempt at addressing the problems on the social media site, Facebook’s solutions appear to be making everything so much worse.

The changes that Facebook wanted to implement on its News Feeds is to basically separate posts from publications and posts from friends or family. This caused worry among content companies due to the potential loss of traffic. However, based on the results of recent tests that Facebook is conducting, these changes are causing much bigger problems such as helping boost the presence of Fake News, the New York Times reports.

Accord to the publication, countries where Facebook as fiddling with its News Feeds have seen a spike in consumption of Fake News by basically reducing the presence of legitimate journalistic publications. One example is the Bolivian news site, Página Siete, which saw a steep drop in traffic from Facebook. In turn, this exposed the country’s users to contents with fraudulent or sensationalist claims.

This development also opens the floodgates of another problem that has been a growing concern in internet culture; tribal mentality. As a piece published in Fast Company notes, limiting the exposure of users to information outside of their group makes them more prone to xenophobia and less open to the views of others.

It’s more than likely that only a few people would even know that there is a new section called Explore, where all the news content is going to be posted. As such, users will only see the articles or “news” that their friends or family is sharing.

What’s more, this announcement to tweak the News Feed to put people first could be nothing more than a stunt. A former Facebook manager recently spoke to NBC News and said that the company is only interested in growing its influence and making money. This is consistent with the accusations that have already been leveled at the social network, making its claimed piety in changing direction dubious to many.