Facebook Algorithm

It is well known that Facebook uses a formula to determine which of the hundreds of posts by your friends (and others) will appear on your news feed or home page. What is not well known is exactly how it works. It seems to have something to do with whose posts you like or comment on. This is sad, because it means you will likely see mostly posts from the folks that you agree with and interact with most, producing a closed loop effect.

Instead of asking folks to “like” or comment on your posts, as a recent meme requests, I suggest we be more pro-active. Go to your Friends list and select people you care about or are curious about. Read their Timelines, look at their photos, like or comment on their posts and maybe even interact at a human level by sending them a message.

This will cause more of their posts to appear on your newsfeed and provide you with some interesting information as well.

The same technique can be applied if you’d like to hear more from folks with who you disagree politically, since the “closed loop” of the algorithm especially applies to political posts. To combat this incestuous circle, I tried an experiment, which seems to have worked. Go to the home page of someone that you rarely agree with (in my case a Trump fan). Click “like” on 5 or 6 of their recent posts – which will likely cause them some temporary confusion. Also notice how few of their posts have appeared on your feed. Shortly thereafter, you should notice that you see more of their posts, as I did.

Let’s not allow FB to dictate what we see.