Facebook's Change of Face

On my Facebook page this week, I shared a photo of my daughter wearing a melted chocolate ice cream bar on her face. I also reposted a cartoon I'd seen on a yoga teacher's page of one half of an avocado chasing the other half with the caption, 'I said you're the good kind of fat!'

This is how I typically use Facebook. I show pictures of my kids. I stare obsessively at photos of yogis twisted in pretzel-like poses. I take quizzes to determine which 'Breakfast Club' character I most resemble.

But in the last few weeks, I've seen a big change. Alongside the BuzzFeed links and Upworthy videos, dispatches from Haaretz, the Israeli news source; the BBC and Al Jazeera are filling my scroll, complete with images of human casualties and videos of carnage. Increasingly, 'friends' and 'friends of friends' are weighing in with their own links and commentary.

This shift can feel jarring to those, like me, who turn to sources like Twitter for news, with Facebook functioning as a more leisurely, lifestyle-focused alternative. We are, in some cases, being exposed to important information. But the juxtapositions of dark and light are often disorienting. One Facebook user grappled with this feeling of discombobulation by posting a quick account of a feed: 'funny cat video ... holiday snap ... Gaza ... pic of *awesome* cappuccino ... dead children in Gaza photo,' lamenting that social media outlets do not present the world 'in a semblance of rational order.'

The recent refashioning of Facebook's complexion has been noted elsewhere. On Salon.com, one writer commented: 'What was once a pleasant jaunt through Facebook is now enough to leave anyone feeling completely bipolar. The only way I know how to respond is: Enough. Or, as Arabs and Israelis would say: Khalas!' The Wall Street Journal published an article offering diplomatic strategies for Facebook users embroiled in ideological debates with 'friends.'

Among the Facebook posters are those trying to share what they consider to be meaningful information and relevant context. John Freeman, a writer and editor in New York, has been traveling in Europe for much of the summer and has been struck by the coverage of the situation in Palestine and Israel in the foreign media relative to that in the United States. So, near a photo he shared of a child doing cartwheels on a golf course, Mr. Freeman last week posted a screenshot of a video from a British news story reporting on damage to a neighborhood in Palestine. 'I'm sure some people will unfriend me for this,' began Mr. Freeman's comment.

The post generated more than 260 'likes' and drew about 60 comments - far more engagement than with his usual slices-of-life posts. As far he knows, no one unfriended him.

'I avoid putting political things on Facebook,' he said in an interview, 'but to not say something felt cowardly.'

But like a child of divorce complaining to her mother about her father, some people are taking to Twitter to bemoan a surfeit of foreign policy chatter on Facebook.

'Good news! The people on my Facebook have this whole Israel-Palestine thing figured out! Apparently it's quite simple,' tweeted John Moe, a writer and radio personality in St. Paul.

Mr. Moe, in an interview last week, explained that he does not object to seeing news stories related to heavy topics on his Facebook feed. But he doesn't care to be confronted by the opinions of those who have no greater knowledge or insight into complicated global situations than he does.

'It would be like me posting, 'Here is a great song by U2 and now you can listen to it with a recording of me playing the tambourine over it,' ' he said. 'Every time I look at Facebook recently, I think, 'Let's see what the blowtorch of humanity has to say about world events.' '

He has taken to availing himself of Facebook's 'hide' feature, which allows users to avoid posts from someone without unfriending them.

Facebook itself says that the sort of content currently filling the site is no more or less newsy than it ever is.

'People use Facebook for the things that matter to them most,' said Justin Osofsky, vice president for operations and partnerships for Facebook, which has 1.3 billion global users. 'That includes celebrating a friend's birthday and important news developments.'

He noted that when the United States government shut down last fall, 17 million users had more than 45 million interactions related to the shutdown in its first three days. During the World Cup earlier this summer, 350 million people generated 3 billion posts, comments and likes about the sporting event. During the last three weeks, 24 million people have had more than 100 million such interactions related to the conflict in Palestine and Israel, according to the company.

Because Facebook allows for wordier posts than social networks like Twitter, people who are opining on the Gaza stories often do so at length. This can result in some incendiary dialogues, which may seem particularly discordant - more so than a World Cup discussion (or even one about a shutdown).

Rabbi Sharon Brous of Los Angeles has found on Facebook far greater engagement related to her writings on Israel and Palestine than on Twitter. Rabbi Brous said she was encouraged by the global sharing of ideas, though she also worries there can be a 'dark side' to the discourse.

'You are facing a computer rather than a person, so there is no check on cruelty,' she said. 'You can post or 'like' an article without much thought or accountability and this exacerbates stridency and polarization.'

Maha Ghanem, a literacy coach from Edgewater, N.J., has noticed a vast shift in dialogue on her Facebook feed. It has moved away from family snapshots, she said, and toward the current crisis in Israel and Gaza. Ms. Ghanem is a Palestinian-American and so the friends and relatives in her network likely are more personally invested in the events than others. But she said the recent change in content is notable to her because this is hardly the first incident of violence in the region and her network of 'friends' has not changed.

'In the last few weeks, this has been the biggest topic I've ever seen flood my news feed,' she said.

Ms. Ghanem believes that as more Arab-Americans see others post on Facebook about the situation in the Middle East, the more motivated they may be to shed a post-9/11 tendency to self-censor. 'It's been a domino effect,' she said.

The writer Naomi Wolf did not anticipate the volume of comments she would provoke when she posted on her Facebook page last month that she walked out of services at her synagogue because she believed that humanitarian concerns for Palestinians were not addressed. It has been 'liked' almost 15,000 times and shared by more than 8,700 users.

Initially, the reactions to Ms. Wolf's post reflected the usual polarizing vitriol that often characterizes debate on the topic of Israeli-Palestinian relations. But some of the barbs have given way to common ground found by people of different backgrounds and religions.

'We're seeing Muslims and Jews and Christians having a really heartfelt discussion about peace and war,' she said this week.

If somehow Facebook becomes a spot for civil discussion of emotionally complex events, you have to imagine that's a good thing for Facebook, a company that profits from the time its users spend on the platform.

But being a destination for news reporting and discussion can bring its own baggage. When Ms. Wolf shared a post depicting disturbing imagery, a user reported to Facebook that Ms. Wolf was publishing content that allegedly violated Facebook's standards. She received a notification from Facebook, pointing her to the platform's published policies governing graphic photos and videos.

In response, Ms. Wolf posted a photo of a black-and-white cat with a caption addressed to Facebook's founder and chief executive: 'I dedicate this breaking news image to Mark Zuckerberg,' she wrote. The post has received nearly 1,300 'likes.' Meow.