So why exactly is a fuss being made over Facebook manipulating the newsfeeds of some of its users? Facebook has been manipulating users newsfeeds through its proprietary algorithm for years. Today, on the basis of your activity - probably on the basis of your likes, comments, comment views, your relationship with the person posting the status update, what's trending in the world or in your city - the Facebook algorithm already decides whose and which updates it should show you. It's called personalization, and it's meant to increase your engagement on the platform. All Facebook did was conduct a user study by introducing an additional parameter that removed certain types of posts, in order to assess how that might impact your mood: does an increment in the percentage of happy posts make you happy, or sad posts make you sad? That's another form of manipulation, but even despite this, Facebook is reinforcing certain types of behavior or content that you already exhibit. There is no neutrality in that newsfeed. You always have friends whose updates you don't see on Facebook because its algo assumes you might not be interested in it, on the basis of your past behavior on the site. What this means is that you are not entirely in control of what you see on Facebook: sure, you can choose to ignore certain types of updates, or change your relationship (acquaintances vs friends) with certain people, but that doesn't mean that Facebook isn't looking at other signals that are…
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