Anyone who saw this must-read post last month, calling the promoted posts system on Facebook the “biggest bait and switch in history”, or, you know, literally any single person who has logged onto the site lately, will have recognized that there is something fishy going on with the content we’re seeing in our news feeds. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been afforded an uninterrupted, unfiltered look at the actual posts being shared by my friends. Although I have a couple thousand people I’m supposed to be interacting with, in theory, my feed seems to stay stagnant, with the occasional update from a handful of people, and, more importantly, from companies and businesses who are obviously paying to get to the top of my stream. That would be bad enough on its own, if at least somewhat understandable—Facebook is a free service, after all, and I’m not required to use it. But a new behavior may just be a bridge too far.
As Bernard Miesler points out , many of us are also starting to see phantom likes and interactions between our friends and companies that they never even initiated themselves, rise to the top of our pages. Even worse, it’s happening with people who are dead, or who would never have liked the company in question in the first place. Sometimes it’s both.
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