A meta comment... the blog post has the tag "Filter Bubble" which might be ironic because Facebook stories on HN and similar tech sites will be overwhelmingly negative. As a matter of fact, I have never seen a positive Facebook-as-social-networking-site story on HN. (To clarify, there were a few positive Facebook stories about their various open source projects but not about the social networking function.) For insta…
Facebook is a lot more than what you portray in your comment. A random grandmother who logs into Facebook to see photos of her grandkids could get that same value from many other sources: Google Photos, Instagram and just plain old e-mail come to mind immediately. I closed my Facebook account this year, precisely because Facebook ended up consuming too much of my time with bullshit I shouldn't be spending time or ene…
Like the US government.
As for algorithms, why single one out? Google, Twitter, and Hacker News all create algorithmic filter bubbles. What's the alternative? Getting rid of the algorithms and going back to direct human manipulation of the content we see? We already have Fox News for that, and it's not an improvement. The algorithm is part of the experience, which is why it's not at all true that our hypothetical grandma could get the same value from Google Photos. Who are you to say that their opinion of the value they receive is worth less than your opinion?