What a Facebook experiment did to news in Cambodia

Then, on 19 October, Facebook tweaked its News Feed in Cambodia and five other small countries. Instead of seeing posts from Facebook pages in their general News Feed, users in the test had to go to a new section called Explore Feed to see the content. And so when Ms Harry posted a new video on Facebook on Saturday, just 2,000 of her fans saw it in the first hour, compared to about 12,000 who normally watched. "Suddenly I realised, wow, they actually hold so much power," she said. Facebook "can crush us just like that if they want to". Ms Harry, who quit her job to focus on vlogging, isn't just worried about her livelihood. Cambodia is in the throes of its most severe government crackdown in years ahead of a national election next July that could test the durability of Prime Minister Hun Sen, one of the longest-serving heads of government in the world. The crackdown has already claimed two NGOs, more than a dozen radio stations, and the local offices of two independent media outlets, Radio Free Asia and The Cambodia Daily. Hun Sen's main opposition, the Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP), could be dissolved entirely at a Supreme Court hearing on 16 November. "Out of all the countries in the world, why Cambodia?" Ms Harry asks of Facebook's experiment. "This couldn't have come at a worse time." Opposition leader: 'I don't feel safe in Cambodia' Facebook's News Feed experiment panics publishers Facebook surpassed TV as Cambodians' most popular source of news last year, according to a survey from the Asia Foundation, with roughly half of respondents saying they used the social media network. The platform helped power the CNRP's gains against the governing Cambodian People's Party (CPP) in the 2013 national elections and has been one of the only places for dissent in a country ranked 132nd out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders' 2017 World Press Freedom Index. With most mainstream traditional media aligned with the CPP, Facebook's test could mean that locals only get a skewed version of the day's news, said Von Vorn, a 30-year-old tuk-tuk driver. "It's like a frog in a pond," he said. "If the frog is in the pond, it won't know anything about the world - just the pond."