You — and You and You — and the Algorithm

In explaining your personal Facebook feed, Nick Clegg forgets about everyone else

“Although Facebook’s critics often talk about sensational content dominating News Feed… many of the most popular posts on News Feed are lighthearted. They’re feel-good stories. We want to show people that the overwhelming majority of the posts people see on News Feed are about pets, babies, vacations, and similar. Not incendiary topics,” Nick Clegg, Facebook’s head of global affairs told Casey Newton last week, as they discussed his recent lengthy defence of Facebook’s algorithm, and its role in social and political polarization,. “In fact,”Clegg went on, “I think on Monday, one [of the] most popular posts in the US was a mother bear with three or four baby cubs crossing a road.”

The bulk of Clegg’s post outlines a simplified perspective on Facebook’s News Feed ranking technology — why you see the stuff you see when you sign into Facebook — placing, as Facebook frequently does, much of the onus on the user. “Thousands of signals are assessed for these posts, like who posted it, when, whether it’s a photo, video or link, how popular it is on the platform, or the type of device you are using,” Clegg writes. “From there, there algorithm uses these signals to predict how likely it is to be relevant and meaningful to…