The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Lawmakers’ latest idea to fix Facebook: Regulate the algorithm

Whistleblower Frances Haugen says the software that decides what we see in our social feeds is hurting us all. But reforming it won’t be easy.

Analysis by
Staff writer|
October 12, 2021 at 9:00 a.m. EDT
Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen told lawmakers Oct. 5 what policies the company could adopt to make its products safer. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
10 min

On Facebook, you decide whom to befriend, which pages to follow, which groups to join. But once you’ve done that, it’s Facebook that decides which of their posts you see each time you open your feed — and which you don’t.

The software that makes those decisions for each user, based on a secret ranking formula devised by Facebook that includes more than 10,000 factors, is commonly referred to as “the news feed algorithm,” or sometimes just “the algorithm.” On a social network with nearly 3 billion users, that algorithm arguably has more influence over what people read, watch and share online than any government or media mogul.