Facebook is responding to the fact that it sucks and makes people sad by removing news from the Newsfeed. This makes it more of a Peoplefeed. But what if that doesn’t solve the problem? What if people are the problem?
As Facebook has gotten bigger and bigger it has more assholes, more dumbness, and is a generally less liberal place. This isn’t a problem with publishers, it’s a problem with people. What Facebook is facing is a set of existential problems you seem to get with humanity at scale.
1. The Asshole Problem
The more people you reach, the more assholes you will encounter.
Since Facebook has over 2 billion users, it has more assholes than ever assembled in the history of the world. Since Facebook has active users it is also more likely to catch otherwise normal people on a bad day. The result is a significant quantity of trolling, fights, racism, sexism, hate speech, death threats, livestreamed violence, etc.
This is not a problem with Facebook per se, it is just a problem with scale. More scale = more assholes. This is a problem with humanity, but it’s Facebook’s corporate responsibility now.
