Facebook's New News Feed Isn't Progress

July 5, 2016 8:30 AM EDT

By Cass R. Sunstein

Facebook has a lot to learn from John Stuart Mill, one of history’s greatest thinkers about freedom and democracy. In 1834, Mill wrote, “It is hardly possible to overstate the value, in the present low state of human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with other persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar. . . . Such communication has always been, and is peculiarly in the present age, one of the primary sources of progress.”

Last week Facebook announced a change in its News Feed service, designed to put human beings in contact with people similar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action like those with which they are familiar. That is not progress.

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