Fixing Facebook

#373: Feedback Is Key

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Galaxy Brain, by Charlie Warzel, features a post this morning comparing the vast wasteland of daytime TV with the "weird, garbage-y, spammy stuff" on Facebook:

"Some posts are truly vapid, recycled, or low budget, like" a "2 a.m. channel scroll" on TV. "Other posts approximate the feel of listless daytime channel surfing: lots of time killers and “on in the background” content sandwiched between melodrama." 

This is a revealing comparison, in that it points out the unfortunate tendency of media to slouch toward mediocrity.  There's a big difference, though, between the two formats: TV is exclusively passive, we sit and watch; while on the internet we have agency.  Sure, we can change 'channels', moving from Facebook to the equivalent of some other TV network; but what makes the internet different is that not only can websites accept our posts, but they can also be constructed in order to register feedback.  This, I'll argue, is how Facebook, and the internet more broadly, can be 'fixed'. 

A first reaction to the issue is to want minimal standards and prohibitions, and to promote media literacy.  But in addition to these obvious approaches, what if we were to ask Facebook, for example, to accommodate not just the (heart) and (mad) emoji system in all its variety, but a link to an objective source that would critique and grade a post.  Not all posts, obviously, would get the treatment, but if a post were flagged by enough viewers, it would.

Ok, but who would this 'objective source' be?  Facebook itself?  That wouldn't be much different from the current setup.  Some kind of outside group funded by Facebook?  Possibly.  But what about Facebook users themselves?  What if, after a post has received a certain amount of engagement in a given amount of time, it sports a scale from 1- 10, that appears adjacent to the emoji feedback display?  Facebook viewers who see the 1 - 10 scale can click on a number to register the grade they'd assign, based on what they got out of the post, and whether they'd recommend it.  An aggregate grade would then appear somewhere nearby.

Sure, this would be a very imperfect way to accommodate feedback, but it would be a first step.  It may be that an alternate Facebook-like platform could come up with a way to incorporate feedback on 'viral' posts that's much more nuanced.  Maybe a user could search for posts a trusted friend has rated highly, or could find out what their 'friends', collectively, rate the highest.  

Even better, perhaps, would be a clearinghouse for in-depth critiques of posts, genres of posts and the networks of bogus click-bait factories that are used to direct traffic to sites which can't stand on their own merit.  A link to this clearinghouse would appear on any post that registered below a certain cut-off grade on the 1 -  10 scale, taking the user to an exposé, critique, or general counseling on "What's up with this kind of post"

And yet, would any of this actually do any good?  Wouldn't it just accentuate the silo-ing that occurs on the internet?  The answer to this objection is probably a mix of resignation in the face of intractable human nature, and a determination to crack the nut.  The internet has only been around for several decades.  There are surely exciting twists and turns yet to come.  Innovation is our friend.

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A dozen digital media experts weigh in on what to do about FB.

Another compilation, this time from 538.