> Give me a break. It's not Facebook's job to tell the truth from the lies. They provide a social network, for profit. They are not a charity or a non profit. They sell ads. If "news filtering" aligns with their bottom-line they'll do it, if it doesn't, they won't, that's business.

This is a technology forum, so I'll warn beforehand that my opinion, although it has political conclusions, is from a systems perspective and not meant to cause a flame war.

Your position, above, is a very common defense of capitalism. Each agent should act on its best interest, and disregard all else. Distilled like that, it's the purest form of capitalism.

While that position has its merits, we should understand its limitations. It prevents capture of companies by the power struggle. On the other hand, in this case, it is failing to act on FB's exploitation of a negative externality.

FB, by keeping users in their comfort zone is preventing society from improving. And is profiting from it. It gains the profit, sheds some costs to the society at large.

Capitalism is the best society optimization mechanism we know. It is not perfect, though. It creates local maximums, it is short sighted and we must always be careful about its limitations.