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Stop reading what Facebook tells you to read
Before Facebook came along and screwed everything up for everyone, people entered URLs into browser bars. They used bookmarks. Maybe even RSS readers.
Really: Blame Facebook.
The reason they did this was because these websites were publications people trusted, to deliver them a specific kind of information, in a specific way. They loved the website's voice, and ideas, and its utility. They used to read these sites regularly. They subscribed to these sites in all but the most literal sense. They were getting a consistent lens with which to understand the world.
And because of that, they were reading things as much because of who was covering them as the things that were being covered themselves. And believe it or not, the writers and editors of these sites (human beings! And not robots!) were encouraged to create things that kept people coming back, above all else. And not, say, an arbitrary dartboard where (if they're lucky) they hit the content bullseye and brought in a bunch of traffic (and reader data). Which is where we're at now.
And as for that place we're at now? Yes, you can blame the media people making these things—me, us, whoever—sure. Or yourselves, for clicking on it. But really, blame Facebook.
Really: Blame Facebook.
Remember the 2008 financial crash? The (dumb, wildly over-simplified) reason it happened was thanks in large part to giant investment banks like Goldman Sachs or J.P. Morgan. These enormous institutions figured out a way to make money off of home loans people didn't have the means to pay back. As a result, a bunch of people who should've never been given home loans were, of course, given home loans. And of course, they couldn't pay the loans back. The entire thing kept going and going until the financial system fell in on itself.
The big parallel: Those investment banks incentivized the creation of a shitty product.
Which is exactly what Facebook did. Yep. Hi. We're there.
Their goal, as a company, is to keep you on Facebook—and away from everything else—as long as they possibly can. They do that by making Facebook as addictive to you as possible. And they make it addictive by feeding you only the exact stripe of content you want to read, which they know to a precise, camel-eye-needle degree. It's the kind of content, say, that you won't just click on, but will "Like," comment on, and share (not just for others to read, but so you can say something about yourself by sharing it, too). And that's often before you've even read it!
[We're not saying you do that. But, come on. You know people who do. Most of them, really.]
And as smart as you think the people who run Facebook are, trust us when we tell you that they are far, far, far smarter than you could imagine (and if not the people, then definitely those algorithms).
If you're getting your news from Facebook, you've got far less choice than you think.
They understand human psychology to a stunning degree, which is how they've been able to capitalize on it for the last few years. It's why Facebook is filled, mostly, with the things you agree with, or are seemingly helpless against clicking on. But because you're a human being, something about it probably rubs you the wrong way. As it should! You're a human, and not a hamster doing a stupid pet trick, which is what Facebook has turned both readers and publishers into. Credit where it's due: They're that good. And yeah, fake news is a problem—but before we learned about it being a problem, where Facebook was concerned, it was a feature....
