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Why Facebook Should Stop Judging Content Quality

Authors: Brian Carter Brian Carter
Posted Under: Social Media
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badge-guest-post-FLATTERTechCrunch put an article out on August 23, 2013 reporting that Facebook will soon begin to punish “LOLCats-style memes” in the Facebook newsfeed. Facebook believes memes are low quality, but did not explain why, and I completely disagree. This post is entirely my opinion.

Facebook Shouldn’t Be Judging Content Quality

This action is a huge shift in Facebook’s modus operandi. It’s new for them to make a judgment, outside of what people interact with, on the quality of any type of content. (I’m not including in this things that are illegal or indecent – we have clear cultural standards for age, alcohol, medications, sexual content and the like, and I support those guidelines.) The newsfeed algorithm’s job is to surface what people interact with, thus improving the quality of their feed. Now, Facebook is saying you’re wrong. “You are too stupid to recognize quality posts. Even though you interact with these memes, we’ll help you be more sophisticated by not showing them to you.” Instead of relying on their own democratically-driven newsfeed algorithm, Facebook will apply its own aesthetic, with no explanation of that aesthetic.

Facebook Memes

This Decision Hurts Small Businesses The Most

For the last year, among other things I teach, I’ve shown companies how to leverage memes to help their business market on Facebook. Many companies, especially small ones, are at a disadvantage in this new world of publishing interesting content EVERY day. How does the understaffed, undertrained, and underfunded small business create something new and effective every day? The fuel that social media burns is novelty. Sometimes you achieve novelty with something just a little bit new, or by combining two old things to get attention. Memes accomplish that. They are a time-efficient and effective way to get a message out.

I find this a disturbing precedent, because whatever alternatives to memes we develop may later be penalized as well. If Facebook says memes are crappy, what do they view as ideal content? Should we just expect years of case by case elimination of certain kinds of content? I think Facebook just stepped onto a slippery slope: judging content apart from illegal/indecent things, and it disturbs me that it’s not better defined.

Why Facebook Will Probably Get Away With It

Facebook can do whatever they want, and despite user griping, people won’t leave. How many people left when they got mad about having to pay to promote their posts? They’re making more money than ever, and if Facebook continues with this path of censoring posting tactics that work, companies will have to pay more for visibility. There’s a financial gain for them here in this unexplained decision.

I have no problem with Facebook making money, and I love marketing with it. I’m a huge evangelist for them and have written two books about it. I look forward to continuing that, but with this particular decision, I completely disagree. What do you think?

The second edition of Brian Carter’s internationally bestselling book The Like Economy is out! If you buy it on Amazon today, September 5, and email him the receipt, he’ll send you his Social Media Strategy Planning Worksheets for free ($97 value) and enter you in a sweepstakes to win a Social Media Audit ($3,500 or more value) for you or your client. Go here for all the details.

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