I’ve been using Facebook since 2006, back when it still required a college or university email address to sign up. These days, I use it for two main purposes:
- To keep up with friends and family
- To participate in groups related to my interests
My use of Facebook groups to discuss and read about my interests has more-or-less completely replaced my use of forums and mailing lists for this purpose.
Recently, I’ve noticed an increasing number of posts in my feed that are not from groups or pages I follow and it feels like the whole thing is inundated with sponsored ads.
So I decided to do a little survey, and I scrolled through the first 150 items in my feed, categorising them into the following:
- Posts from Friends – exactly what it says on the tin.
- Posts from groups & pages I follow – for example, groups like Woodworking UK that I have joined
- Posts from groups & pages I don’t follow – groups and pages that Facebook thinks I might be interested in, even though I haven’t joined
- Sponsored ads – mostly picture and video ads which link to external sites like Amazon
This is not a discussion on how Facebook decides what to show me, and how “the algorithm” uses my personal data – merely the composition of my feed.
| Posts from Friends | 7 | 5% |
| Posts from groups & pages I follow | 66 | 44% |
| Posts from groups & pages I don’t follow | 31 | 21% |
| Sponsored ads | 46 | 31% |
It seems my gut feeling was correct! About a fifth of my feed consists of items from pages and groups I don’t follow, and a third is sponsored ads. In total, a little over half my feed is content that I didn’t ask for!
I saw ads from a variety of sectors – technology, food & drink, holidays, clothing, entertainment, and I saw some of the ads several times.
The content from groups I don’t follow is irritating to me. For example, I like classic Jaguars (the car, not the big cat) and so I’ve joined a couple of groups dedicated to Jaguars. “The algorithm” has picked up that I like cars, and a lot of the content it shows me is from groups dedicated to other cars (such as BMWs), or other geographic areas (such as the Pittsburgh Classic Car Meet).
I noticed that some of the posts from friends were several days old, so I don’t know why they are only now appearing in my feed.
I don’t have data to back this up, but I believe Facebook is prioritising content from groups over content from friends, and making a big effort to users into as many groups as possible and to follow as many pages as possible, not to mention serving as many ads as possible. It feels like its usefulness to me is declining.
Jonathan Gazeley 