Chris Arnade: As a photographer who works with forgotten people, Facebook used to be my ally. Now it wants me to pay up

Shelley, a heroin addict and homeless prostitute, is excited when one of her pictures and stories appears on my Facebook page. She loves reading the comments. “So many people care about me. Make sure to tell all of them it matters to me," she tells me.



She is one of the homeless addicts I photograph and write about.

As a small-time artist I was loath to put my work on Facebook. The fluffy, light world of social media seemed unable to do justice to the heavy issues of addiction and poverty. Then, three years ago, when my 80-year-old mother joined Facebook, I knew I needed a page. Facebook was everywhere.

It was a great decision. My page now has over 45,000 followers.

I was encouraged by the democratic nature of the Facebook timeline. Whatever I posted would reach everyone who followed me. How many people saw what I did was a function of how many people wanted to see it. The work could speak for itself.

This was especially exciting. My work is not pretty. My posts are not pretty. They are often very graphic and depressing. They are stories of and by people who rarely get heard. Having a Facebook page addressed the very issue I wanted to address: allowing people to see a part of society that most of the media, and most of us, ignore.

Shelley’s struggle with addiction, with trying to get clean, could actually be heard. But recently, things have become very different.

Facebook changed its policy on who sees what, rolling out a new algorithm that determines what is seen on people’s timelines.

This new policy hides most posts unless they quickly generate a great deal of likes, comments, or shares. Basically if a post doesn't generate interest after a short time after posting, it will disappear from most timelines. Since this policy change, the average views for my posts have dropped by 60%.

So, that sweet, fluffy stuff I was wary of – the popular kitten pictures, baby pictures and happy feel-good stories of redemption – all still work.

Ugly, raw stuff, which is most of life (which is what I try to show people), will continue to go unseen on Facebook, just as it is invisible to most comfortable people in real life. Ugly raw stuff is hard to “Like”. Ugly raw stuff doesn’t have money. It’s why most people walk right past the people whose stories I try to tell.

There's a catch. I can turn this around. I can get people to see my work again, to hope they view of the part of humanity that is rejected – if, that is, I pay Facebook. Paying is now the only guaranteed route, other than luck, of getting views. Facebook is not shy about letting me know that. I get notifications and pop-ups regularly encouraging me to “boost post”. They even tell me how my dollars will translate into views: $150 for 38,000-100,000 views, $1,000 will get me from 200,000 to 500,000 views.

It is a sad, but perfect analogy, of how much of the present business and media world works: pretty, rich and simple things get views, and the sadder more nuanced painful things don't.

It’s an unsettling trend in social media, that has morphed from a venue that allowed words, art, thoughts and ideas to rise on their own merits, to one flirting with economically enforced censorship.

The early libertarian ideals, the very reason so many artists, writers, small businesses, entrepreneurs, thinkers, got behind it, are losing out to the corruption of the entrenched, moneyed and loud. Cynical me always expected this.

Pay a middleman for views. Pay a middleman for a voice. Pay a middleman to be heard and seen.

Facebook presently has close to a monopoly. They are using that to extract even more money from their customers. More importantly they are using their monopoly to highlight and benefit other monopolies, those with enough money to pay a “boost post” fee.

As a former businessman I can’t fault Facebook for trying to make money. I can fault them for doing so with little regard to their customers.

Many smaller businesses and artists were highly encouraged to join Facebook by claims of democracy of information. They courted us with the idea that our work, our thoughts, would be as valid as anyone else’s.

Many businesses worked very hard to add followers, encouraged by Facebook’s old policy. It became central to their business model. Then Facebook abruptly changed the rules.

Will we stick around? We might. But when you're running a customer-based business, you can only treat your customers badly for so long.

