“Facebook had changed the default setting of the Most Recent feed to ‘Friends and pages you interact with most’, so that the feed most users believed to represent every update from every friend in a real-time stream, in fact became an edited one, much like the Top News filter.”
This short excerpt from the Bucher, “Want to be on the top?” reading, caused me to raise an eyebrow. People were quite upset with the fact that Facebook changed the formatting of the website so that one would view the recent activity of those they most interact with as opposed to the recent activity of ALL of their Facebook “friends”. I put friends in quotations because even though they accepted your friend request, or vice-versa, are they really your friend?People complained that their “friends” disappeared from their timelines, but the very reason that they disappeared was because of the lack of interaction between the individual and said “friend(s)”. I see and know people who have over a thousand Facebook “friends” yet I am 100% sure that he/she is not in regular contact with 95% of those “friends”. So, that causes me to ask a few questions. Why are people so concerned about what’s going on in the life of those who they rarely, or never, interact with? They virtually have zero connection to these people other than being their friend on FB or follow them on Twitter, yet you want to be able to see what they’re up to. Sometimes they can be someone you attended school with, but had no little to no interaction with. Or, they can be a complete stranger. Yet instead of un-friending/unfollowing these people (who you have no interaction with other than a friend request), we’re viewers of their lives. What is the psychology behind that? Why are we so eager to be viewers of the lives of, essentially, strangers? Furthermore, why do we allow strangers to view our lives and activity?