How Facebook's 'Like' ruins your world

As a Facebook non-user, I’m fascinated by the comparison between I Liked Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days. Here’s What It Did to Me by Mat Honan with Elan Morgan’s I Quit Liking Things On Facebook for Two Weeks. Here’s How It Changed My View of Humanity.

These two experiments at the opposite extremes of the Facebook Newsfeed rapidly come to the same conclusion - Facebook’s algorithm is bad for your health:

After checking in and liking a bunch of stuff over the course of an hour, there were no human beings in my feed anymore. It became about brands and messaging, rather than humans with messages.

- Honan the Liker

Facebook’s algorithm is not human… does not understand the psychological nuances of why you might like one thing and not another even though they have comparatively similar keywords… Liking a local animal hospital does not equal my wanting to see abused dogs… The algorithm can’t know that, though, because it can’t know individuals.

The above quote is Morgan’s, before he quit the Like. When he did, he <span>started <em>commenting</em> in lieu or Liking:</span>

I had been suffering a sense of disconnection … prior to swearing off Facebook likes… there were fewer conversations, more empty platitudes and praise, and a slew of political and religious pageantry. It was tiring and depressing. After swearing off the Facebook Like, though, all of this changed…. I took the time to tell people what I thought and felt, to acknowledge friend’s lives, to share both joys and pains with other human beings.

This had an immediate effect: Facebook returned to what it was - a social platform between people, rather than an platform for advertisers:

Now that I am commenting more on Facebook and not clicking Like on anything at all, my feed has relaxed and become more conversational. It’s like all the shouty attention-getters were ushered out of the room … Facebook without the Like appears to be nearly sane.

So far, so obvious (I joined Facebook in 2007 but have hardly looked at it for at least three years). But I was intrigued how Facebook’s algorithm varies by screensize:

<span>on mobile … I was only presented with the chance to like stories from various websites, and various other ads… On that little bitty screen, where real-estate is so valuable, Facebook’s robots decided that <em>the way to keep my attention is by hiding the people and only showing me the stuff that other machines have pumped out.</em> </span>

<span>Perhaps one day we’ll be able to just hook the machines together and go off into a corner someplace where we can reconnect as human beings?</span>

<span>In the meantime, can you tell which author wrote which of the following quotes?</span>

<span>A. As day one rolled into day two, I began dreading going to Facebook… </span>It reminded me of what can go wrong in society, and why we now often talk <em>at</em> each other instead of <em>to</em> each other. We set up our political and social filter bubbles and they reinforce themselves… But maybe worse than the fractious political tones my feed took on was how deeply stupid it became.

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<span>B. I think the humanity and love, the kinder middle grounds not begging for extremes, that many of us have come to believe are diminishing in the world at large are simply being drowned out by an inhuman algorithm, and I think we can bring those socially vital experiences back out into the light.</span>

<span>Now go read the full posts. And comment on them, like a real human being.</span>

• <span>I Liked Everything I Saw on Facebook for Two Days. Here’s What It Did to Me by Mat Honan </span>
• <span>I Quit Liking Things On Facebook for Two Weeks. Here’s How It Changed My View of Humanity by <span><span>Elan Morgan</span></span>
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