Figuring Out the Fact Check Shuffle

This post (below) keeps showing up claiming that their posts are being limited by a mysterious Facebook algorithm that limits your posts to just 25 people. It will automatically receive the dreaded "false information" tag and be blotted out. This makes people mad because the "KNOW" that Facebook is blocking them with some kind of algorithm. 

WELL THAT'S NOT WHAT'S HAPPENING.  

So technically the Fact Checkers are correct - it's misinformation.  Facebook isn't limiting you directly. Actually all your friends pages limit who they can see. Truth is, you are probably limiting which of their posts you can see because your account's newsfeed is set on a setting called "Top Stories" which gives Facebook permission to limit what posts you see in your newsfeed. Here's the post that turns out to be wrong on almost all counts except that you and your friends are limited as to what posts they can see.

• The post reads: Finally made it !! Thank you everyone for telling me how to bypass. Good to know: it’s ridiculous to have so many friends (692)and only 25 are allowed to see my posts I ignored all these posts earlier, but IT WORKS!! Thanks for the dribbling tip Facebook… Now I have a completely new profile. I see posts from people I haven’t seen in a long time. Facebook’s new algorithm chooses the same people — about 25 — who will see their posts. Press your finger anywhere in the post and click on “copy”. Go to your page and it says “what are you thinking about”. Tap your finger anywhere in the empty field. Click and paste. This will go around the system. Hello new and old friends hello Trying this because I just get adverts on my feed

And if the fact checkers flag you,
you've got to deal with these guys.

Turns out, because it's not Facebook that limits what we can see and the solution above is bogus, the fact checkers can label your post misinformation. The fact checkers are using a technicality to throw you off the scent. The fact check debunking of this posts exploits a misunderstanding as to what is actually going on. They want us to think that Facebook isn't limiting what we post and technically that's true, but it's a trick. The limiting is not happening to the "visibility of what we post." Limiting is still happening, just in a more stealthy way.

Your friends themselves (and probably you yourself) are collectively limiting what we can see of each others' posts. There is a setting on your newsfeed (where you should be seeing your friends' posts) that gives Facebook permission to limit what you see. The default setting is "Top Stories". This is the "curated" setting which filters out what FB thinks are unimportant posts and gives you what it believes is a "best of" assortment of posts; an assortment I might add that seems to lean decidedly in favor of either innocuous posts or posts which support the mainstream narrative. And we know which direction of that lean.

The good news is that you can solve the problem permanently. I'm not going to give you the convoluted process of switching your newsfeed from "Top Stories" where your views are limited to "Most Recent" where you see everything your friends post. It won't do you any good, because Facebook automatically switches you back to Top stories after a day or two and then you don't know you're being limited again and you have to go through the whole convoluted process of setting your newsfeed back to "Most Recent".

Here's what to do! There's a delightful little app called "Facebook Purity" that's free and downloadable. It's also called "Fluff Busting Purity" which for a while allowed people to post the link on Facebook. But Facebook caught on and blocked people from posting the link. Here on Blogger, I can, however post the link. And here's where to go to download it.

https://www.fbpurity.com/ 

Once you install it, it rides herd on your newsfeed setting and when Facebook tries to reset it to "Top Stories", FBP automatically resets your feed to "Most Recent".  FBP also helps you control other settings and improves your Facebook experience by letting you hide all the Ads, Suggested Posts / Related Posts / Sponsored Posts / Upcoming Events / Games your Friends are playing / Games You May Like / Similar To / Related Articles / More Like / More From etc.. It even lets you insure the posts on your newsfeed are in chronological order. This stops Facebook from putting 3 day old posts at the top of your newsfeed and keeps them coming in current time order. FBP also lets you create your own filters, block posts with specific words, turn off autoplay and a whole bunch of other things that let you see Facebook the way you want to see it without all the annoying fluff that comes with the default account setting Mr. Zuckerberg saddles you with when you sign on.

Keep an eye on your newsfeed, though. Facebook does an update ever once in a while and disables FBP. The developer is very good about coming up with a fix in short order. Sometimes FB even succeeds in removing the FBP icon so you can't use it. Just go to the website and reload it.

This app is really useful and it's FREE!  If you like it, it would be nice if you sent the guy a few bucks to say, "Thanks for making Facebook more like it ought to be and not what it is!"

Happy Facebooking all you subversives out there!

© 2023 by Tom King