On Facebook, Jay Rosen is doing what I thought was an experiment or demo of a quirk of Facebook's algorithm. He begins a post there with a phrase like this: "You guys, exciting personal news, I'm moving to New York!"

Then he quickly explains, he was "messing" with Facebook's algorithm.

He's done this three times, at least, and now I'm genuinely confused, fooled, and burnt out, on this tactic, which (here's the alternate view) amounts to spam.

I have other friends who did this, and I unfollowed them. I now have to remember to look at their timeline, and when I do, I see more of the same spammy attempts to game Facebook's algorithm.

Problem is -- the people who read your posts are your friends. They are real people, not eyeballs. You may resent what Facebook is doing, but you're confusing people you like in the process, and eventually, if you keep doing it, sending them away (not in a good way).

I think the way to look at this is that each of these systems have their quirks, things they're good for, things they're not good at. You have to trust the people who really care will find their way to you using the best system for getting the best of Jay.

One more comment.

This is what was behind yesterday's post where I said it's up to the news people to lead us, at least partially, to the news system of the future. If you leave it to the tech people, you'll get more of what you now realize you don't like (but have actually been getting all along).

Let's fix this. Set some examples. Tech people are really good following. We love to steal ideas. Give us some of yours, in real working examples. I've found that's the best way to nudge technology in the direction you want it to go.