Why does Facebook want me to watch videos?

Maybe they’re trying to induce a trance state and get you to disengage your critical thinking and spend more time mindlessly absorbing crud of Facebook.

Facebook doesn’t gain anything (other than validation for its native video features). Videos are rated more highly by the site’s algorithm, however, so content creators have everything to gain by posting them. And since Facebook is now tracking how long its users spend looking at each individual item, there’s not much incentive in making sure your video plays at high speed. I’ve even been seeing static images converted into video just to get them seen.

There’s an interesting plug-in (or extension, I guess, I don’t understand the difference) called “Social Fixer”. I don’t have a link or time to post one now, but it was easy to find (and I’ll be back here later) that lets you control Facebook a lot better than the defaults that are native to it.

Recommended: Social Fixer

Videos require you to watch it to the end – FB wants more eyeball time. I hate videos because there is no way to fast forward to skim the content.