Facebook is rigging the game and then asking users to pay to level the playing field.

An Op-Ed posted by popular tech site Mashable written by Matt Silverman points out how Facebook is rigging the game.

Has anyone noticed since Facebook’s plunge into the stock market that Facebook itself is no longer about connecting people and being a true social media site? Instead it’s now all about profit.

What really stings is that Facebook is now abusing the myopia it created. Essentially, the network is “hiding” your updates from friends, and then turning around to say, “Hey, if you want friends to see your updates, you could pay us!”

It’s what economists call artificial scarcity: rigging the supply of something to create inflated demand. Facebook status updates are free for everyone to post and consume. But when EdgeRank makes them scarce for some people and not for others, it creates an artificial market for visibility. Facebook is rigging the game and then asking users to pay to level the playing field.

Do you know about EdgeRank? It’s an algorithm designed by Facebook that works out what you see in your newsfeed based on 3 key factors Affinity, Weight & Time. See here for more info.

If you do use Facebook and want to have a bit more control about what you see then i suggest changing the Sort option (located just underneath and to the right of the What’s on your mind? box) to MOST RECENT.

Though this isn’t a 100% fix in order to see all the posts by fan pages and friends but it will help.

via Facebook Is Rigged: Why Personal Promoted Posts Are Bad for Users.