Facebook keeps trying to cover the sun with a finger. In its latest crusade against misinformation on its social network, the company has decided to rename the iconic “News Feed” to just “Feed.” The reason? A modest effort to clean up its reputation as one of the largest centers of disinformation on the Internet.
The change represents, more than anything, something symbolic. Mark Zuckerberg's company stopped giving news as much priority a long time ago; by focusing his Feed algorithm on posts from friends instead of media outlets. Because of this, the name change will have no real consequence, and is just one of Facebook's attempts to “better reflect the diverse content people see in their Feeds”; according to the comments of one of the company's spokespersons on his official blog.
However, Facebook does not give up in its attempt to enter the world of news. For worse or worse, the company has launched an exclusive news section in France under the name of Facebook News. The company has ensured that in this new tab users will be able to find “the stories that matter most to them”; words that do not calm down too much due to the demographics of users who usually use Facebook as their main means of information.
One of the Facebook spokespersons commented to the TechCrunch portal that this is “a change that has been planned for a long time”; while at the same assures that this change “is not related to the announcement of the News Tab in France”.
Facebook keeps trying to cover the sun with one finger
Photo by Dima Solomin on Unsplash Mark Zuckerberg's company continues to take desperate measures to clear his name. A few months ago, Facebook surprised us with a new name: Meta. A movement that came cataloged as the intention to put the company's metaverse as the core of its new identity; however, it was also an attempt to dissociate itself from the privacy scandals that it had faced in the past.
However, it seems that the name change of the matrix has not been enough for the world to forget the dark past of Facebook. The social network saw, for the first time in its history, a drop in its daily user base; this translated into a multimillion-dollar loss of the value of Meta on the stock market. The latter is not only linked to the low popularity of the company among young people; but also with the little confidence that the company generates in its investors.
Goal is sustained by inertia . However, this inertia is capable of dragging everything in its path; and it is that the company has positioned itself as one of the largest companies in history. However, it is interesting to think about how much more the pedestal could resist.
Facebook's attempt to reduce misinformation is something to celebrate. However, to what extent can we continue to applaud a company that has spent almost its entire existence trying to clean up the messes it creates? The worst of the case is that they have not been very successful. Of course, Facebook is not the only problematic company – not by a long shot – but it has managed to generate a new controversy with each passing week.
