Editorial: Question your feed

It seems nearly impossible to remember the days in which we were unquestionably confident in the news we read and information we absorbed.

In 2004, a website was created with the purpose of connecting college students together on a single network. This website has changed the course of communication as we know it.

Its omnipresence doesn’t only factor prominently in our social lives. It now holds political, financial and commercial stakes in just about two billion users’ lives. It even impacts the state of our nation.

You guessed it. This digital Goliath is Facebook.

Facebook has a humongous influence in the way two billion people — and counting — consume and digest information.

But how has this come to be?

Facebook has gone beyond just being a way to connect with friends. It is now a website used to distribute all types of information in addition to promoting products and brands. It is a channel for memes, videos and articles to be shared.

Over the course of its life, Facebook has acquired many users and, as a result, has an unbelievable amount of data on them.

Facebook keeps track of each user’s friends, pages liked, joined groups, post reactions and clicked links. Facebook even goes beyond your “on-site” activity and extends to which websites you travel to once you close out of the site’s main page.

Think about it. After searching on Google for a cool new restaurant in the area, it is likely that an ad for that restaurant will pop up on your Facebook sidebar.

As a business, Facebook has the tools and the rights to the information it has collected. But it is not a content creator.

Facebook removes nudity and/or sexually explicit content, hate speech and attacks, content containing self-harm, fake profiles and spam. Fake news, however, often does not qualify for removal.

Because Facebook is able to track each user’s activity, they construct a completely customized news feed for each profile.

A person who tends to click on a more liberal article will have similar liberal stories on their newsfeeds. With this customization, there is a lack of diversification of ideologies and discussions.

With the way Facebook is run, consumers are less likely to be exposed to information they disagree with. Because of this, they will not see the opposing side of issues, making it almost impossible to come up with their own informed opinions.

Most of the time what you read doesn’t tell you the full story.

People have the tendency to use new information and sources to reaffirm what they already think. This is known as confirmation bias which can lead to greater polarization between contrasting viewpoints. This can cause hostility and negative discourse between disagreeing groups instead of fair, open-minded discussions.

Confirmation bias, paired with the constant exposure to misinformation is making it difficult for all consumers to make informed decisions and have educated well-rounded conversations.

With this specialized information pushed upon Facebook users, are they the most informed about both sides? Or are they just on the receiving end of information that confirms what they already believe?

As college students, we were always told when we were young that the Internet is a scary place filled with corrupting content. Now it has become a scary place because of its lack of diverse content.

Ten years ago, millennials and preceding generations were exposed to the news in a pre-Facebook era.

They know what it is like to have to do research beyond what they are exposed to. Younger generations, however, run the risk of knowing only what they are exposed to on social media without the motivation to challenge and research.

It is impossible to avoid Facebook’s direct impact on the information we actually receive, but it is not impossible to question this information. Instead of being a sponge and unquestionably absorbing every sentence thrown at you, don’t be afraid to reject or challenge what appears on your news feeds.

We are being impacted, so it’s our responsibility to get the full story.