Facebook as viewed by people who don't share your opinions

March 21, 2018 3:17 PM

This is find-that-post filter: I'm pretty sure I read about this here, but searching is coming up dry. During the run-up to the 2016 election, a website appeared that showed, side-by-side, (then-)live news posts from "conservative Facebook" and from "liberal Facebook." It may have been built by or hosted by a major newspaper, like the Washington Post. Searching the web for "filter bubbles" isn't bringing up anything promising, and other search terms about Facebook and bias and the sitting US President are poisoned by the nonstop news stream over the past two years, and also the last two weeks.

In fact, now that I think about it, there may have been four "filtered" feeds: a pro-Clinton feed, an anti-Clinton feed, a pro-Trump feed, and an anti-Trump feed. What I remember at the time was that three of the feeds were completely filled with angry and negative images and headlines, while the pro-Trump feed had soft stuff in it like "candidate Trump calls local police chief to say 'good job'." I remember quite clearly reading that difference in tone and realizing for the first time that Trump had a chance at taking the general election.

I'd like to look at this again in light of recent news about target social media filtering. I think the original side-by-side feed site was still running in 2017, but I'd be happy just with documentation that it existed.

Thanks for any help, awesome people of MetaFilter. I promise from now on to start using favorites as bookmarks rather than asking a find-that-post question once a year.

posted by fantabulous timewaster to MetaFilter-Related at 3:17 PM (6 comments total)

Are you thinking of WSJ's Blue Feed, Red Feed perhaps?
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 4:12 PM on March 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

I love this place. That was totally it.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 4:34 PM on March 21, 2018 [3 favorites]

Deleting Facebook? Don’t worry, I’ll replace it for you.
By Alexandra Petri
posted by Stanczyk at 6:44 AM on March 22, 2018 [3 favorites]

Well Stanczyk, that piece persuaded me to finally actually delete my account. I'd been just letting it quietly molder, untouched, for the last six months or so and that article was the bit that made me go "Yeah, there's definitely nothing about Facebook that I ever want to go back to." So, thanks!
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:51 PM on March 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

Blue Feed/Red Feed- does anyone know if there is a similar resource for other countries (or how to go about putting one together?) I'd like to see the Australian version.
posted by freethefeet at 3:44 AM on March 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

freethefeet, there's a "methodology" section at the bottom of the page (after you pick a topic).
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 5:20 PM on March 27, 2018 [1 favorite]