Facebook has some obvious problems and now frequently draws the attention of politicians and news sources describing how Facebook spreads tainted information and stokes negative emotions. There are things any user can do to limit personal damage. The first would be to be aware that Facebook feeds our personal biases to increase our engagement and time spent in order to show us more ads. In other words, we are complicit in the damage that Facebook does, but awareness offers the opportunity to limit the damage.
I have recommended my personal strategies before, but here is a quick review. First, I limit my purpose for using Facebook. My focus is on political discussion. Yours might be on sharing with family. Mixing the two is probably not a good idea. There are plenty of social media services you can use for other purposes. Second, understand that Facebook learns your biases from your actions – what you post, like, comment. I try to respond rarely and do so mostly by providing comments. The easy, mindless likes give away too much information for little value. Avoid all of those silly requests for input such as identifying a dog name that does not contain an A. Third, I friend quality news sources and not just people. If you use Facebook to keep up with the happenings in the world, it is probably best to do more than tap into the biases of your friends. Select some solid news sources to broaden your perspective (e.g., New York Times). In the search box where you might occasionally search for people, enter the names of news sources you trust. Friend these sources. Finally, I don’t block people no matter how much they irritate me. Inane comments are a reminder that Facebook is not about factual information and it is helpful to be constantly reminded.
You can limit the damage done by the Facebook algorithm. Switch your feed to “Most recent” so you get the input from all of your sources arranged by time and this will eliminate the prioritization of the news feed by the algorithm. You may have to search a bit, but “Most Recent” should appear somewhere in the left side column (on a computer) of the Facebook display.
Here is an interesting hack you might explore. There is a way to arrange the Newsfeed on the fly. Use this link to connect to Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr instead of your normal link. You should be able to evaluate whether you are seeing a chronological list rather than an algorithmically controlled list by the dates/times associated with the posts in your feed.