[strogonoff]

Facebook’s news feed in 2006 was not even remotely what’s being discussed in this branch.

It was a simple timeline of all of your friends’ actions. A raw chronological feed.

The outcry it caused was because it felt like stalking. The following dominance of Facebook did not have anything to do with people’s “revealed preferences” in favour of the algorithmic instrument being discussed (which individually selects content to appal or otherwise engage you so that you spend the most time and generate the most ad profit). News feed wasn’t that instrument—until MySpace went away and Facebook had users reliably locked in.

Facebook didn’t win because users liked the algorithmic news feed that maximises corporate profits by amplifying troll takes and aggravating our psychological well-being, Facebook won before that. It’s important to get the causal relationship right.