Explained | The algorithm that runs News Feed on Facebook

For the last few weeks, former Facebook employee, Frances Haugen has been doing a series of interactions with media outlets and government agencies, highlighting serious mishandling by Facebook in curbing hate speeches on its social media platform.

To corroborate her claims, whistleblower Haugen released an internal research document that showed how flawed the algorithmic recommendation of Facebook’s News Feed is.

Before delving into what discrepancies are in the News Feed, we will see how the algorithm works.

In the early days on Facebook, people used to go to an individual’s profile page aka ‘Facebook wall’ to see what they are up to and exchange pleasantries. Facebook in a bid to improve the user experience, introduced News Feed in 2006.