Facebook | “You can think for yourself, why there is always a certain kind of content” – Facebook representative at Suomi-Areena: the company does not choose algorithms

Facebook Social relations director responsible for EU affairs Aura Salla told Suomi-Areena’s discussion event on Tuesday that companies like Meta, Facebook’s parent company, must come up with solutions before legislation, because legislation does not keep up with the development of technology.

Among other things, the Meta technology company that owns Facebook and Instagram has threatened to close its services in Europe if the EU Data Protection Council denies it the opportunity to transfer data collected from consumers from Europe to the United States.

Read more: Facebook and Instagram may shut down in Europe – according to an expert, Meta’s threat is not as dramatic as it sounds

According to Salla, Meta does not sell data, but advertising spots, and advertisers are only told what kind of people like certain kinds of things.

Salla also said at the discussion that he believes that many people have the wrong idea about Facebook’s algorithms. The algorithm determines, among other things, in which order and how often the content of users and advertisers appears in users’ news feeds.

“Each of us can choose on our own Facebook whether we want a chronological news feed. A company like ours does not choose those algorithms,” Salla said.

“If you visit certain types of pages, you can think for yourself why there is always a certain type of content”.

Several social media services have come under fire for their algorithms. For example, Tiktok has been sued in California, because last year two elementary school-aged girls died after they tried a fainting challenge that was spreading there.

Professor of Journalism at the University of Tampere Janne Seppänen on the other hand, called Twitter a dangerous and debatable medium and then left the service.

Read more: Tiktok was sued – accused of spreading a dangerous social media challenge after the death of two girls

Read more: The professor left Twitter, which he considers to be socially destructive: “Negative emotions take over, and the use of common sense does not have much of a role”

In a panel discussion the member of parliament of the Greens and the chairman of the parliamentary group who participated Atte Harjanne called the user agreement between Facebook and its user asymmetrical.

“How many people really know that the news feed can be selected chronologically or that how much privacy can be adjusted? In general, these are hardly advertised to the user. And yes, all the data that is collected about us is merchandise,” said Harjanne.

Facebook FAQ –in the section it is mentioned that the social media service does not sell the data of individual users and does not share the data of individual users with advertisers without permission. Instead, advertisers have the option to target ads to specific user groups, for example women aged 25-34 who live in Madrid and like technology.