Commentary on Political Economy

Saturday 13 November 2021

 Why Facebook won’t let you control your own news feed


https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/11/13/facebook-news-feed-algorithm-how-to-turn-it-off/


"The documents suggest that Facebook’s defense of algorithmic rankings stems not only from its business interests, but from a paternalistic conviction, backed by data, that its sophisticated personalization software knows what users want better than the users themselves. It’s a view that likely extends beyond Facebook: Rivals such as Twitter, TikTok and YouTube rely heavily on automated content recommendation systems, as does Facebook’s corporate sibling Instagram.

But critics say this view misses something important: the value of giving users more agency over their information diet."

The historical tendency of capital has always been to dictate the needs of workers. But success in this aim will spell the end of capitalism, because it is a mode of production based entirely on the antagonistic push of the worker's autonomous needs - not on the needs that the capitalist determines! A collective capitalist who can determine a worker's needs ceases to be a capitalist in any sense of the word!

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