Why Did Evil Mark Zuckerberg Change the Algorithm for Sudan?

Fred
Nov 1
4 min read

As the years went on and on, Facebook de-emphasized the very thing that built it, and that's the concept of connecting with friends.

As a Facebook user for over a decade, few friends even post anymore. And the friends that do post, they are mostly one-trick ponies, hardly a renaissance man amongst them. Using Facebook has mostly been reduced to ads, groups, and, most importantly, Reelz.

Now I don't have Tik Tok or Instagram, but I am exposed to both platforms because Facebook Reelz seems to play a lot of re-runs from other social media sources.

But when it comes to news, I don't rely on Facebook for anything. Right now, my primary sources are Drudge Report and Google News. Whatfinger does a nice job of filling in the blanks not covered by corporate sources.

In the last 3 major world events though, Facebook, responding to criticisms that they were a slanted platform, were suspiciously quiet on all three.

When Russia invaded Ukraine the were a ton of "Pray for Ukraine" posts from my friends, but nothing that was autogenerated from Facebook. I even followed entities like the Kyiv Post and the Kyiv Independent, yet their posts still don't show up on my feed unless I search for them. Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene howled that she didn't want her kids to die on the shores of the Dnieper River, but I never knew where she was getting her news from, I never saw ONE SINGLE POST that said we needed to send American Troops to Ukraine. Ever.
In the 2024 Presidential Election, I had both friends that were impassioned Trump Supporters and die-hard Biden Supporters complaining that their posts weren't being seen by anyone. On my feed, you wouldn't have even known when the election was except for a few posts from Facebook reminding you to register to vote and that voting was important right before election day. Vague, low-produced, non-partisan type statements.
Oddly, we have a Bluesky account. Bluesky is the strangest place in the world, it's like an old abandoned mall with a bunch of old, hippie-type, liberals loitering around. After October 7th, Facebook did seem engaged with that one specific world event, then de-emphasized everything moving forward. For the last 6 months, every other day the lead post at Bluesky was different celebrities yelling at me "why don't you care about the Genocide in Gaza?" I don't know Alex Winter from "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure," but, man, is that guy locked in on the Middle East, I don't know when he became the Ambassador from Palestine.

What is on my Reelz right now? Sometimes I wonder what comes across my feed, because some of it is some really, really, random stuff. I am aware though, that the longer I linger on any video, the higher chances that another similar video will come up. Soccer Highlights, Bigfoot AI, and Eastern European Women in Bikinis, that would have been the predominant topics in the week that ended October.

Why do I keep rambling on about Facebook Reelz? In a week where Donald Trump threatened to invade both Venezuela and Nigeria, I just watched 18 straight videos viewing atrocities from the Darfur Region of Sudan on Facebook.

I don't know how to say this in a nice way, so I'll be blunt: I don't care what happens in Central Africa. It is a mess. Other than Haiti, I can't think of a worse place to live than Sudan. Donald Trump had a term for places like Sudan a half a dozen years ago, I just can't recall it right now. (Sarcasm).

When it comes to Beacon of Speech, we try to stay engaged in World Events, but our focus is Free Speech in America.

With that being said, we have been intrigued by Vladimir Putin since the formation of the blog. Our official position is that we wish that the "special military operation" was over. We root for Ukraine, but they have no path to victory. We have written about it ad nauseum. We have probably written 50 articles about Putin and/or Ukraine.

We rarely wrote about Israel. It wasn't that we didn't care, we just weren't engaged. Since October 7th, though, we have written about a dozen articles.

In 1,546 articles, we have written about Sudan exactly once, in 2017, and that was only in reference to the Death of Manute Bol. I think I made a passing reference to the Darfur region once, but I couldn't even find that reference.

So if I don't talk about Sudan, don't write about Sudan, don't search information about Sudan, and don't click links about Sudan at Google News, how did my Facebook feed get saturated with a Sudanese slaughter?

I mean, some real graphic images. I had to google the Sudanese Flag to even know where some of the videos were coming from. Most videos aren't even in English, or any Western Language, but appear to be in Arabic. I follow zero Arabic news sources.

But there's a REASON that the algorithm is pumping out those images to the world. I just can't figure out what it is.