Brexit: can you really blame Facebook?

Facebook is so good at giving us what we think we want that we never see anything that challenges our world view, says Merryn Somerset Webb. We need to burst our own online bubbles.

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Sometimes we need to burst our own online filter bubbles

One of the oddest things said to me in the post Brexit meltdown of the Remainers was that everything was Facebook's fault. Who could have known, asked my friend (on Facebook) that so many people were planning on voting leave when none of his Facebook friends were, and when the news fed to him by Facebook algorithims suggested that everyone with any sense was planning to vote Remain. This bemused me. Didn't he read a newspaper? Listen to the Today programme? Watch the news of an evening? Apparently not.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.