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Lately my newsfeed on Facebook has been painful to read. FB sends me stories of war, of death and political corruption. They make me feel bad, yet they keep sending them.
Why? Because I’m telling them to. Facebook is a bunch of computers. They are programmed to send me more of what I like. How do they know what I like? Because when they send stories about police violence or Palestine, I am likely to click on them. I’m more likely to interact with them with a comment or a “like.” The computers even measure how much time I spend looking at a picture or video and include that data in their analysis of me.
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Dear David, wonderful to see the happy ending to the roommate situation! I do agree, at least sometimes, with this theme. A relative constantly complains and bemoans unsatisfying relationships with others in the family. I am content with what others give and don’t demand more. To her, that makes me cold and distant. To me, she is (to mix your metaphor) clicking on an open wound.
The problem is that Facebook doesn’t measure value, just hits. Van Jones says that’s key to understanding Trump, whom he calls the first social-media candidate. His point (Jones’s) is that it doesn’t matter to Trump whether people agree with him, just that they notice him. A winner on Facebook has a lot of “followers,”–which means people who see the winner’s posts, not people who agree with the winner.
I found this blog quite interesting. How you wove two very different on the outside experiences and showed how they are actually similar. The other item on how Facebook keeps us in a daily diet of what is wrong with the world and the people in it was something that l again enjoyed, keep up the good work my brother.
I just read an essay about how slaves in the USA may have contributed to the end of slavery with their prayers and dreams of freedom. Speaking of his slave ancestors, the author said, “They dreamed us into being.” Maybe they did. It’s a lovely thought.