Are you the boss of your feed?

Virtually everyone today has some kind of “feed.” Whether it is a news and information feed from Google Discover or Apple News, or just the social media feed on X, TikTok, or Facebook, we all seem to have a barrage of news, articles, videos, and who-knows-what-else coming at us in a steady, endless stream.

I do worry about what the feed is doing to us. But I can remember when it was television that was going to rot our brains. Concerns about “too much screen time” meant something different back then. And it didn’t take long for similar concerns to arise about video games. I can’t say if those worries panned out, but people seem to be less worried about too much television and gaming today. Certainly, those concerns have been overtaken by concerns about social media.  

I’m not sure anyone knows exactly what the harmful effects of the social media feeds are, but there are plenty of people who believe that they aren’t good. Concerns about teenage mental health certainly seem legitimate. Laws have been passed to limit access to children, and the information TikTok gathers is so ominous that the US government has passed a law forcing the Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the app. There is concern, and it seems likely it isn’t unfounded.

What to do? I confess I don’t know.

Healthy relationships

There’s no doubt that our feeds are designed to manipulate us to swipe and swipe some more. Who among us hasn’t caught ourselves “doomscrolling” when we’d rather be doing something else like, say, going to sleep.

I do know what my relationship with my feed is. I’ve worked hard to curate it. But I find those efforts both reasonably successful and somewhat frustrating. What I have done is take advantage of some of the features the sites provide to limit what I see. For instance, I made a personal decision to limit very strictly my exposure to political news of any kind. I have told Google Discover what my preferences are via the like and dislike options. However, I find that they don’t always let me say, “Don’t show me stuff like this ever again,” so I often see things I don’t want to see. Nevertheless, the feed on my Pixel phone delivers mainly technology and sports news—just like I want it. 

With Facebook, they have the lovely feature that tells the algorithm to “Stay friends but don’t show me any more posts from this person,” and I have, to be frank, used this feature to remove many folks who can’t seem to do anything but post political and controversial content. 

For Twitter, I have created a short list of about a dozen people who I want to read and I only pay attention to them.

As a result, my social media feeds are fairly pleasing to me. I mostly see things from people I want to see things from, and I don’t see much from folks who are, well, less pleasant.

But there doesn’t seem to be a way to get social media sites to show me just the stuff that I have chosen to see and nothing more. They all insist on “suggesting” things to me. That is, they all show me posts that they think I might like to see. I have a love-hate relationship with this.

I confess that the recommendation algorithms have indeed brought to my attention content that I love seeing. But in the end, what I’d really like is to see only what I’ve chosen to see. If I want to add someone to my feed, I’ll search for things or listen to recommendations by friends (and I mean active recommendations, not the “the person you follow also follows that person” kind of recommendations).

Ads for better or worse

And of course, all the feeds show me ads. Call me weird, but I’m totally fine with this. I like targeted ads. Really.

First, I know that ads are needed. They pay for the services I like to have online. And if I’m going to see ads, I’d rather see ads geared towards what I’m interested in. I also like the efficiency of it. Showing me ads for makeup or coffee or trucks is a complete waste of time. 

Second, I find that I can tell the system I am not at all interested in a particular ad that they are showing me. That makes sense, because they obviously want to show me ads that I am interested in. 

Third, I know that targeted ads are great for small businesses. All the ad services allow local businesses to show me ads for things that I’m interested in, which I really like, because I’d rather buy from a small business close to home.

And if I see an ad for something interesting that the algorithm cooked up for me, I will often click on it, knowing that I’ll see ads for any number of similar competing products, helping me know my options and research a potential purchase. So, I don’t mind the ads.

My final point is this: I would literally pay money for a feed that is 100% just what I ask for and nothing more. I’d love my feed to be purely updates from friends and groups I’m in, posts from people I’ve chosen to follow, and nothing else—zero suggestions and zero ads. Just what I want, and nothing more. I’ve been on Facebook long enough to remember when it was exactly that, and I’d like that back. 

Why can’t I have that?