Newsfeeds are a poor intervention for distributing and discovering relevant information
Authored By:: Rob Haisfield
What are powerful interfaces for entering information into a discourse graph
Newsfeeds are an intervention for displaying a never ending stream of information to social media users.
Newsfeeds show you primarily what is new, which is not ideal when considering a discourse graph to facilitate synthesis. We want people to be able to bring together information from the past and surface it precisely when it is relevant.
In their attempt to show you only what’s relevant to your interests, newsfeeds generally overindex their algorithms on revealed preferences. They show you more of what you pay attention to, but this may not always reflect people’s true intentions for what they want to consume, especially for their stated research goals. There are meaningful directions to explore in creating a better choice architecture for newsfeed management.