The page that only reposts

A food page followed by half of Maadi says it does not pick favourites. It only reposts what its readers send in: a plate of stuffed vine leaves, a new shawarma counter, a bakery that opened last week.

But hundreds of photographs arrive each day, and four or five are posted. Someone decides which. Someone decides which goes first, which gets a warm caption, which gets nothing. When a restaurant pays to be shown, someone decides that too.

That is not a neutral pipe. It is a choice, made every evening, by a person.

There is nothing wrong with that. Choosing is the whole value of the page. Nobody wants to scroll through all two hundred photographs. They follow it because someone has already narrowed it down. Selection is a service, and a good one.

The problem is pretending it is not happening. Saying we just share what people send while deciding, quietly, what half a neighbourhood eats this weekend. Being open sounds generous. Often it is a way of avoiding being asked why one place was shown and another was not.

A small truly open space, where anyone posts anything and nobody is in charge, tends to fill up with noise. A space where someone chooses tends to be useful. What separates the trustworthy version from the other one is whether the person choosing will stand behind it.

The honest page says: I chose this, here is why, and if it disappoints you, tell me.

Whoever decides what others see next is already responsible for it. The only question is whether they admit it.