Facebook already defines "the Web" for many people. Now it's looking to devour Web publishing entirely. This could be a very bad thing, but I'm hoping it will just drive publishers to develop faster-loading and more readable sites.
Today, Facebook is launching its "Instant Articles" feature, where publishers like the New York Times move their articles off their own sites directly into Facebook so they load faster. In the big picture, this is bad, because it gives notoriously manipulative Facebook way too much power.
The Web works because it's open and decentralized. Yes, companies control bits and pieces of it, sometimes tyrannically, but it still basically works on the principle of seeing bad user experience as an error and routing around it. Anyone with a dollar and a dream can start a new website and disrupt all that has come before.
Some social platforms play well with this philosophy. Twitter, for instance, integrates beautifully into the Web. Facebook is protected, hived off, and unreadable to those outside it. Some of this comes from Facebook's history as a platform for "friends," where your non-friends shouldn't get to read what you write, but it's resulted in a non-Web bubble inside the Web.
Facebook Will Screw With the News
Facebook is particularly abusive with how it displays content, too. The ultimate example is how it decided to manipulate people's emotions by changing the content of their news feeds in 2012. The filtering is strong with this one, much stronger than with Google.
Facebook is particularly abusive with how it displays content, too. The ultimate example is how it decided to manipulate people's emotions by changing the content of their news feeds in 2012. The filtering is strong with this one, much stronger than with Google.
And Facebook has started to dominate how people find stories on the Web. According to Shareaholic, Facebook now drives a quarter of many publishers' overall traffic, up from a mere 8 percent in late 2012. A Pew poll from last year said39 percent of America gets political news from Facebook.
Is this any worse than being dependent on Google, or Reddit for that matter? Sure. Facebook's opacity and history of screwing with what people see show that it's even more capricious than Google. Facebook's news feed algorithm is also highly controversial in terms of whether it creates a "filter bubble," hiding opposing political views from your feed in a way that general Web searches don't. That's another brick in the wall between the hostile camps our society is becoming.
And rather than referring readers to publishers' own sites, Facebook now wants to capture the publishers' content and dictate what they can do with it. If Facebook suddenly decides that you're less relevant, tough for you; there's no appeal process.
Facebook isn't turning the screws yet, of course. It's still in the customer-acquisition phase, where it offers to share the wealth with publishers. If they become dependent on Facebook, look for the terms to change quickly—and if more Americans become dependent on Facebook for their news, look for non-participating publishers to slowly become irrelevant. Facebook will only deliver the news from partners who kick them back some bucks. That should scare you.
Driving Us to Do Better
There's a level to which publishers only have themselves to blame here. Facebook is identifying a real problem which I've mentioned before: how a thick crust of ads and redirects make a lot of Web pages load really slowly, especially on smartphones. Mobile Web users want simple, clear, quickly readable pages, and Facebook's pre-caching of pages will indeed make those articles appear instantly.
There's a level to which publishers only have themselves to blame here. Facebook is identifying a real problem which I've mentioned before: how a thick crust of ads and redirects make a lot of Web pages load really slowly, especially on smartphones. Mobile Web users want simple, clear, quickly readable pages, and Facebook's pre-caching of pages will indeed make those articles appear instantly.
Hopefully, this will be a refreshing slap in the face for all those sites you like to read, but find annoying from a design perspective. It will drive publishers away from designs like slideshows and towards smoother, faster native reading experiences. I know you, as readers, want a fast-loading and easily readable Web. Facebook's instant articles will set the standard. Still, though, don't click on them unless you want Facebook to be the boss of you, and ultimately, of all of us.
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