Why Facebook’s Latest Dual News Feed Pilot Is a Nightmare for Publishers

Facebook recently announced a massive experiment that they’ve rolled out in six countries. The social network is piloting the idea of splitting its news feed into two, which would effectively result in the bucketing of posts from the pages you have ‘liked’ into a separate tab (called ‘Explore’), while updates from your friends and family remain on your primary news feed.

However, anyone can advertise with Facebook to get their content seen in the primary news feed alongside updates from friends and family. In order words, Facebook unilaterally controls what gets seen by user in their primary tab and sells that privileged access for a price even if that content is not liked by the user. On the other hand, the content that the user has actually liked is relegated to a secondary tab.

Why would Facebook decide to run such a pilot? What impact would it have on publishers?

Facebook is doing a commendable job in terms of their strategic acquisitions, with two extremely popular platforms in WhatsApp and Instagram sitting in their kitty. Going by how serious they are about Oculus, their futuristic stance on augmented and virtual reality also warrants appreciation. But it’s important to analyse a very basic facet of this social network - how content on their platform is performing, especially content that is disseminated by publishers and commercial pages.

Facebook has been grappling with some major issues in recent times. The organic reach of their content has hit an all-time low, plummeting from 16% in 2012 to below 2% in 2016. Posts created by brands and publishers has seen a fall in the engagement rate by over 20% since January 2017. In the midst of this all, they’ve been making far too many changes in their algorithms month on month, transitioning a more personalised news feed to a feed dominated by sponsored posts.

Facebook already prioritises paid posts. But if there ever was a raw deal, it’s their latest pilot. Perhaps with a larger motive to increase their advertising revenue in trying times, Facebook is virtually extorting money from publishers by telling them that if they want to be seen on the primary feed of their users (in a dual news feed world), they need to pay more. While the pressure of creating quality content is already cut-throat, Facebook is adding another pay-to-play layer to make matters even more difficult for commercial pages, publishers and social media managers by seemingly holding them to ransom.

What happened to making the internet a fair and a neutral medium? If the internet is going to be controlled by a few big giants, it creates a major dent to the very idea of net-neutrality, a complex issue that has undergone its fair share of discussions over the last couple of years. Ironically, Facebook was in the thick of things back then as well. Remember the Free Basics fiasco in India? We are seeing shades of that again today. 

It may seem like I am jumping the gun. Yes, it is only a pilot run after all, and it is only being tested in six countries. Facebook’s argument is that the move will in fact increase organic reach for publishers because the Explore tab will throw up content from pages that users have not liked as well, but caters to their interests. The counter question to that is if users will actively click on the Explore tab to access this content in the first place, when their primary news feed is where they will probably spend most of their time.

Facebook may not end up rolling this out globally at all, especially after the flak it has been receiving ever since it started running the experiment. But what this goes to show is that there is a fundamental problem in the social network’s mindset.

It is the fundamental problem of trying to assume power by controlling what a certain section of users can do on their platform, and displaying this intent through their various initiatives.

I think the solution here is simply going back to the basics. Surely, good quality content needs to be given precedence over dollars. The one and only rule of thumb to increase organic post reach was to create good quality content, and there is no reason why that should change. While the onus is on publishers to a large extent to contribute to the increase of page interactions and link clicks, Facebook should not create new barriers that renders quality content irrelevant. The very pillar on the basis of which news media should function loses its value.

The situation will become even more conflicted as Facebook is exploring content creation of its own. In the game that is going on, Facebook needs to decide whether it wants to be a player, a linesman or a referee. How will Facebook deal with its own content vs. that from other publishers? There are similarities with how Google treats results from shopping related queries in its search results, which were deemed unfair recently in Europe and heavily fined. 

To elaborate further, with Facebook's content ranking algorithms being proprietary black boxes, it may run the risk of legislators taking a contrarian view to its methodology. Google recently was slapped with a hefty fine by EU as it was found to have abused market dominance by manipulating its search engine results to favour its own comparison shopping service in its search results. There are semblances and there are resemblances. And things do not seem to be moving in a healthy direction to make it easy and financially viable for independent original news and entertainment content creators. We probably need the entire internet coalition to stand up and refute Facebook’s larger ideologies, let alone a single news feed experiment.  

(Written based on ideation and research from Avinash Mudaliar and Ashwin Menon)