By Gina Miller
Audio version: The Evil Face of Facebook Censorship
For many years I resisted joining Facebook. I looked at it with disdain, as nothing more than a do-it-yourself surveillance network, a government spy's treasure trove, which, of course, it is. I finally decided it could also be a useful tool in sharing my columns and networking with fellow patriots. I knew I wouldn't stupidly post information about myself that I didn't want everyone and their dog to know, like photographs of my lunch and when and where I'm away from home at the moment (hello, house burglar!), so I broke down and joined last October.
I quickly learned how the site works, and I also observed the strange way the "news feed" page doesn't seem to make sense, how some stories take off with lots of attention and others of equal or more importance are hardly noticed. You can organize your news feed by "top stories" or "most recent," and I set mine to "most recent," but Facebook keeps changing my setting back to "top stories." Why? I believe it's because Facebook manipulates these "top stories," whatever they consider them to be. It likely manipulates the "most recent" stories, too, by simply omitting some and showing others.