Direct Links Into Facebook
Overview
Facebook is a type of discussion forum that attempts to organize content in a personalized newsfeed using multiple factors, including your relationships, interests, and engagement history. From a content provider’s perspective, it allows publishers to easily distribute their content using socialization features to maximize exposure and engagement.
It’s also become a video streaming platform, where videos can be watched like TV, often stripped of their original context. This separation allows videos to circulate independently of the post that contained them.
When news stories gain traction on Facebook, they can reach much broader audiences than traditional paywalled sites. However, many users only consume the headlines. The deeper content may be rehashed in the comments section, undermining the need for a subscription. Governments, such as Australia’s, have pushed back on Facebook’s monetization of unpaid journalistic content.
In theory, Facebook should be ideal for sharing interesting links. In practice, native content (screenshots or reuploads) is often prioritized in the algorithm over links to third-party platforms like Twitter or YouTube.
This leads to practices like #freebooting, where people repost someone else’s video content directly to Facebook to get more reach. See @kurzgesagt's video for more on this issue.
A Feed of Just Posts from Your Friends
If you’re feeling disconnected from actual friends on Facebook, try this link to limit your feed to only friends’ posts: 👉 www.facebook.com/?filter=friends&sk=h_chr
Comment Search Limitations
One frustrating limitation is that Facebook does not index comments in its search. You can search posts, pages, groups, and videos — but not your own or others’ comments, even if they’re public. Some comments might occasionally surface via Google, but this is rare and unreliable.
Your only option for finding old comments is to manually scroll through your Activity Log: 👉 www.facebook.com/edmiidz/allactivity/
