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by VLM 3349 days ago
To answer your question, the only thing worse in practice than no news, is fake news.

There are relationship negatives to censored personal news. My wife was tangentially involved in a family feud where facebook randomly promoted or hid various attacks and defenses and apologies of the two major factions. Its just not a platform useful for social interaction anymore. The censorship of the family feud and the resulting weird interpersonal drama reminds me of some incidents in the meme-war on facebook leading up to the election of Trump which is interesting.

Superficially it sounds awful to have family drama increased by hiding half the posts, much like playing a board game where half the moves are deleted sounds terrible. However, for a short period of time, until the users are completely alienated, FB made money by increasing the depth and length of that family feud by increasing readership during the height of the feud. In the long run people won't use FB at all, of course.