Time to reinvent Facebook

Facebook started as a platform where people can find old friends and stay in touch with them in spite of the distances. It gave couples a place to interact with each other when there was no instant messaging application. It brought people closer, built friendships and relationships. However, all this has gone for a toss with increasingly new people on board. I rarely see anyone express themselves on Facebook the way they used to do 10 years ago. There is everything and anything on Facebook except the bonhomie.

The Genesis of Problem

One of the reason is increasing use of social media for sharing unverified claims. The personal talks have now been replaced by people convincing each other of their political ideology. The placards of old days have now been replaced by WhatsApp forwards and Facebook posts (which I doubt anyone actually reads). Facebook has not taken any measures to manage content, except for the advertisements, is another reason for aggravation of the situation.

Managing difference of opinion

We must have observed people using each word as a hashtag in their Facebook posts which really makes no sense. One purpose of hashtags is so that your content can easily be listed when someone searches that tag, but with people keeping their posts as restricted this doesn’t really make a sense unless your friend has thousands of friends in their list and it becomes tough for them when they want to search content related to a particular topic. Considering the validity of the mentioned case as it still is difficult to search for posts using tags when people literally use hash before each and every word.

Facebook should come up with a default tag list which people can select from while creating a post. I admire a lot of people because of their intelligence, however, I do not like their opinion on certain matters especially because it is far at either side of the spectrum of the issue. This leads to no other option for me to unfollow them which actually leaves no reason for being on Facebook. The second scenario is I may not be interested in seeing who got married or who is going on a vacation at which place but I certainly might be interested in the interesting articles shared by the person on his timeline.

Needless to say, extreme polarization on my timeline over political issues has also led to me unfollowing people in the past, including people whom I admired once. Similarly, every user should have control over what kind of content they want to see on their timeline. By allowing the categorization of content, the platform will become more relevant than ever and will be extremely organized.

Busting fake news

We have seen people fighting over their post over the validity of their claim. A person shares a random picture making a tall claim and some go gaga over it and others come to explain the reality of the matter. All this eventually leads to the relations turning sour because of Facebook. It has become a new battleground for a cold war between acquaintances. People have started labeling and judging their friends all because of the fact that they have a different opinion and ideology. But is it because of the inherent nature of people or because of the nature of social media, is it possible to admire a person for his certain traits and despise him for others, do we use social media to express or to suppress is something we will have to contemplate ourselves.

Facebook might also want to want to make mandatory to post an authentic link along with a certain category of posts. There may be an option where users can request a link from the owner of the post (instead of liking or disliking) so that the bickering we see in the comment section comes down. The number of requests should be seen just like the number of likes and dislikes against a post.

There should also be an option provided to the user to disable comments on certain posts as they might not want to engage in futile discussions. This will be counterbalanced by the ‘request link’ option as people will be able to judge validity of the claim made in the post based on the number of times a link is requested and whether it is shared or not. All this without the hassle of mudslinging and need of verbal spat.

I personally would also like to see the ‘comment’ option renamed as ‘opinion’ because this is what everyone shares when they comment. The word ‘comment’ also seem to have a negative connotation, at least in Indian parlance.

The Implementation

Since everything is user-driven, there effectively is no additional resources required from Facebook’s end to implement suggested changes. Facebook might be restraining itself to bring many changes because of the impact it may have on their business as they have now become business-centric from users centric. By implementing the suggested changes would actually boost their business because people will now be encouraged to post more in the absence of any filth on the platform. Since people will be posting more on Facebook, there will be more data or advertisement targeting, thus, a win-win for all.