Is Facebook's algorithm a bit… rubbish?

The sheer power of Facebook’s news feed is not a matter of debate – especially for publishers. But Om Malik makes a different challenge in this thoughtful piece for the New Yorker:

However, every time Facebook’s news feed, introduced almost a decade ago, is manhandled, I am left wondering whether it has to change the feed with brute force because its algorithms are just too dumb to improve the service in a way that suits both Facebook—by making money and monopolizing our attention—and its 1.6 billion users.

In short: every time Facebook has to manually intervene in the workings of the newsfeed like this – it’s an indication of a failure of the algorithm.

What are the realistic abilities and limits of Facebook’s news feed? The more the company tweaks the feed in a crude and blunt manner, the more one has to wonder if Facebook’s alogrithms are not only rudimentary and basic but also possibly the company’s Achilles’ heel.

About Adam Tinworth

Adam is a digital journalism analyst, trainer and consultant. He started his career publishing newspapers for the children on his street in the 1980s, edited student magazines in the 1990s, and then spent a decade as a business journalist. In 2006, he moved full-time into digital journalism development. Since 2012, he's been trading as an independent consultant, and has worked with everything from national and international newspapers, to small local charities.