Facebook WILL Put Porn In Your Newsfeed

Facebook offers several options to customize what you see in your newsfeed. However, sometimes Facebook ignores those settings. Facebook decides that, in spite of your settings, you really need to see something. And sometimes, that something is pornographic.

First, let's review what you can configure: There are several ways to view your newsfeed. The default is "News Feed", in which Facebook decides what content is likely to be most important to you among everything your friends post. In my opinion, no algorithm can ever properly understand what I think is important, and so I use the "Most Recent" option.

This still isn't acceptable for me, which leads us to the next way to configure the newsfeed. Move your mouse cursor over a friend's name. You should see a popup giving some information about that person. Next, click on "Friends", then on "Settings". This should give you a menu showing what postings you see from that friend. That should look something like:

For me, I don't want to miss anything from my friends, and so I choose "All Updates". However, to keep some semblance of  order to my feed, I've deselected certain options. For almost all of my Facebook friends, I've deselected "Life Events", "Games", "Comments and Likes", and "Other Activity". It took me a couple of hours to do this for all of my friends, but I consider it well worthwhile. It makes Facebook a useful tool, whereas before, my newsfeed was a cacophony of useless drivel. With these options deselected, my feed shows me just what I want to see.

However, there's a defect in Facebook's software. Or perhaps it's a conscious design feature. On a regular basis, two or three times a day, I see a comment or like in my newsfeed, contrary to my explicit choice in settings. I've even reported this defect a number of times to Facebook, to no avail. And I know others have too.

Now to the title of this rant. Here's something that appeared in my newsfeed a couple of days ago. One of my friends commented on some page, and that fact appeared in my newsfeed contrary to my settings. Here's what showed up:

Now then, I'm not criticizing the fact that my friend commented on this particular posting. He certainly has that right. And I'm not objecting to the page he posted too either. However, Facebook's algorithm's somehow decided that I should be interested in his comment regardless of my explicit settings. This is extremely annoying, and unacceptable. I went through a lot of trouble configuring Facebook so I won't have to be subjected to this kind of content in my newsfeed.

To summarize, Facebook will, due either to some software defect or explicit design, put content in your newsfeed contrary to your explicit settings. As a consequence, if one of your Facebook friends posts on a page that's offensive to you, you will occasionally be subjected to that posting regardless of your settings. That offensive content may well be pornographic, or of a violent nature, or espousing some contrary political or religious viewpoint. Whatever the reason, you will see content you don't want to see in your newsfeed.

And worse, this may well apply to what your children see too. I know some parents who let their children under 13 sign up to Facebook, contrary to Facebook's rules.

If you're concerned, let others know. And let Facebook know that you're concerned too.

Cheers! Hans