Wired writer Mat Honan has carried out an intriguing experiment on Facebook: he “liked” everything where he had an opportunity to do so, whether on Facebook itself or on third-party sites. He managed to do so for 48 hours before feeling he had to abandon the project.
The full piece is well worth a look, but the key findings were:
- His Facebook desktop feed very quickly became dominated by brands, while on his mobile feed any original material posted by his friends virtually disappeared.
- Upworthy and the Huffington Post were the most common entries in his News Feed.
- Shortly after “liking” a pro-Israel post, his feed became heavily oriented to political material with a right-wing position. This wasn’t necessarily Facebook itself leaning to the right, but rather that liking material with one stance brings up more opportunities to like material with that stance — the social media echo chamber in action.
- Liking everything on Facebook is a great way to make sure your friends no longer like you.