Social media has one goal – keep your eyes on their platform. The more time you spend on social media, the more money they make off ads. Facebook doesn’t like to push external links because they send you away from their site, which means your eyeballs aren’t looking at their ads, which means less money for them. In other words, when a writer puts their links on Facebook, it isn’t in Facebook’s best interest to show that link to a lot of people because by clicking on it you leave their platform.
Facebook like to give you content they think you will enjoy. If you get on Facebook or Instagram over and over and see things that make you unhappy you might quit their platform. These companies spend a lot of money creating algorithms/formulas that predict what they think you want to see in order to keep you on longer to see more ads. Facebook makes more money if they keep content on their own platform in front of people so you don’t go off site and never come back. They want you on their site, with their ads in front of you for as long as possible.
Google has their own bias. When you do a search, you aren’t getting a random assortment of results. You are getting a very carefully curated list of results. Generally speaking, they are going to steer you away from things that don’t line up with their agenda.
If you are relying on social media to keep good Christian content and accurate, balanced news in front of you, you are fighting a losing battle.
The way to make sure you get the content you want is through one of two methods: email subscription to the sites you enjoy reading or RSS feed readers like Feedly.com. RSS feed readers pull all of the new content off the sites you add into your dashboard online so you can read all the new content from the sites you enjoy all in one place.
When you make this move you will get unfiltered results that the algorithms don’t sort out for you. This takes more work but being well informed takes work. Many people have gotten incredibly lazy in how they consume news and information, relying on other people and their agendas to sort out what you see and what you don’t see. Let’s not fall for it any longer.
I don’t say this to promote my blog. I say this because, as Christians, we are going to want access to information that the world is going to do more and more to block from our view. Don’t rely on google. Don’t rely on Facebook. Subscribe to the sites you want to read to make sure you stay informed and that you being informed doesn’t hinge on what someone else’s algorithms decide to put in front of you.
4 Responses
Of course, one could always read a book (you know, those things with paper?)
However, you need to know what the algorithms are delivering when people start typing a google search or a YouTube search. The term “church of Christ” starts getting some interesting results when the next character is typed. Some of the first sites are some hard line articles. Typing an “e” or “ex” on the way to “exegesis” might get you the ex-church of Christ blog and message board which tragically is a place of support for people who were run off or left. Now some of you might want to ignore it and hope your kids and no one else sees it but spending some time there might be good for those who are brave. Sermons at the top of the results list on YouTube aren’t always the ones moderates wished showed up, but some railing against women, IM, and hand clapping. These are the results that need to be countered. I am no expert in search terms and methods of affecting the results but I know that there are people who know how to.
The good thing about reading a book? When you look for it in the store or library, algorithms do not matter.
Very true!