The Daily Mail, Sun, Express and Telegraph newspapers were in a celebratory mood today with the news that a major social media platform has changed its timeline algorithm to force youngsters to talk to their racist uncles.
“It’s going to mean young people flocking in droves to read the Daily Mail again,” P Dacre, speaking while shopping for a brick, told LCD.
“It’s really important that social media platforms help print media survive in an environment where advertisers are withdrawing their money from patriotic publications out of a fear of getting ink on their fingers.”
Under the changes conversations between family members will reappear constantly in everyone’s newsfeed until they go in and contribute a minimum of thirteen “engagements”.
“Families should talk to each other more,” Facepamphlet’s CEO told us, “recent studies reveal no family members on the globe have spoken to each other since 2000. It’s probably the fault of the millennium bug. We’re going to stamp it out.”
The real impact will mean that if you’re friends on Facepamphlet, with, for example, an uncle who constantly shares racist misinformation, but you haven’t unfriended him because you don’t want your Mum (or worse, the uncle) phoning up to ask why, the new algorithm will force you to read his posts, and engage, to make it go away, even if you’ve unfollowed him.
“It’s going to do a lot for community cohesion. It will effectively rebuild civilisation overnight.”
But our own social media analyst, Professor Addict, is not so sure,
“I wish facepamphlet would introduce a model like Spotify, where you can pay a small subscription to get free of the advertising, or accept them if you don’t mind or can’t afford it. I would pay not to have my mind constantly analysed.”
The other option is to just stop messing with it out of some need to feel godlike, and set newsfeeds back to just the most recent post and let people choose what to interact with.
“Remember when you could catch up with the latest news from your family and friends just by scrolling down the timeline? Yeah, forget that, it’s gone for good.
Get ready for the phone call from uncle whoever demanding to know why you blocked him so you didn’t have to constantly read his conversations with one hundred bots about how Western society is over.”
We wait expectantly for the change to facepamphlet to bear fruit.