the.com/news feed
A river of everyone else's highlights, engineered to make you keep scrolling.
means A continuously updating stream of posts, articles, and updates from the people and sources you follow, arranged by an algorithm (not strict time order) to keep you engaged.
from A straightforward compound: 'news' meaning tidings or information, and 'feed' in the sense of a continuous supply — the same 'feed' used for wire feeds and RSS feeds, which piped updates to subscribers as they happened. Early web services like RSS popularized 'feed' for a syndicated stream of content in the 1990s-2000s, and when Facebook launched its own aggregated stream in 2006, it borrowed that existing word rather than coining a new one. The name is literal: something that feeds you items, one after another, without end.
- original sin
- Facebook launched it in 2006, users revolted calling it creepy
- ranking goal
- optimizes for engagement, not truth or importance
- not chronological
- an algorithm decides what you see first
- infinite by design
- no natural stopping point, unlike a newspaper