You Must Change Your Feed

You may have noticed that your Facebook feed is now full of posts from sources you don't know or didn't previously follow. Facebook has broadly shifted to these so-called "suggested posts," taking the "black box" quality of the experience to new levels, and basically, feeding you whatever it wants for who knows what reason.
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Maybe that's fine! and Facebook has our best interests at heart and knows our interests best. However, if you think, possibly not, there's actually a quick and powerful way to completely reverse it. When you start reading, you can select a "Feeds" views that shows posts only from your friends, favorites, groups, or followed pages—or a combination of those.
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Here is the "how," followed by a few notes on why this matters, for soul and State.
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The 3-Step "De-Algorithm" Hack

1.Open the Menu: In the Facebook app, tap the three-bar menu icon in the top right.

2. Find Feeds: Select the Feeds shortcut (you may need to scroll slightly).

3. Find Feeds: Select the Feeds shortcut (you may need to scroll slightly).

Done! You should now see posts only from the categories you chose. (Yes, you still get ads—they shall have their pound of flesh).

The Bigger Picture: A Political/Philosophical Note

It has been possible to "de-algorithmify" Facebook like this for years—as far back as I can recall. Yet, having engaged with the critiques of social and algorithmic media for over 15 years, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this pointed out by critics.

Granted, most people rarely change default settings, or are likely to select a non-default view each time they start reading Facebook. Default settings are the mostly non-escapable, or at least rarely-escaped, "gravity" of digital environments.

But also, outrage and critique are prevailing tenors of current-affairs media, and that outrage tends to serve the interests of the people invested in it. If we addressed the problem ourselves on an individual level, or even knew more about how we might, perhaps this would spread ideas for wider, structural change?

My long-standing interest here is: what can algorithmic media do to help us meet our own self-determined goals, be socially constructive?

Most algorithmic media we know—the timelines and feeds—have been designed in ways we increasingly feel are manipulative, "reptile-brain"-oriented, bias-reinforcing, and therefore damaging. But I don't think this is deeply inherent to the technology; it’s a result of the goals that have been designed for.

An algorithm is just a described method. It can be designed for pro-social reasons—e.g. to diversify your views or challenge your perspective—rather than just for maximizing "engagement".
Current media rewards our immediate impulses. I want us to build media that serves "second-order desires": what we want to want, not just what we happen to click on in a moment of boredom.

As Rumi wrote: "Intelligent people want self-control. Children want candy."​
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The concept of "second-order desires" was coined by philosopher Harry Frankfurt in his 1971 essay, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person". He argued that to be human is to want to want things—to not merely act on impulse.

Possibly, this capacity for second-order desire is what distinguishes us from the machines and the AI species apparently jostling to supersede and replace us. It's also something we often fail to live up, personally and in our institutions: when we let our lesser selves, in ourselves and others, generally have their way. Living so, too often are interactions, our social experiences, remain "nasty, brutish, and short" (as Hobbes described life in a state of nature).

We can do better; we may have to, to survive. As Rilke wrote, ending his 1908 sonnet "Archaic Torso of Apollo", about a broken, headless ancient sculpture that somehow blazes with more life than the living observer standing before it: "Du musst dein Leben ändern" — you must change your life. You can change your feed to start.
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Rainer Maria Rilke. "Archaic Torso of Apollo" (1908). Translated by Stephen Mitchell
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​We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
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gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
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Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:
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would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
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