Old school FUD! I haven't read anything like this in awhile. they greatly underestimate the complexity of preference algorithms. Facebook is said to have more

Old school FUD! I haven't read anything like this in awhile. they greatly underestimate the complexity of preference algorithms. Facebook is said to have more than 100,000 variables in their news feed algo; I can't imagine what's under the hood at Facebook. In a system that complex, making gross decisions trying to compromise one particular set of results without compromising everything else is not just idiotic, it's impossible. Also, I enjoyed the yellow journalism gems in there, such as phrasing like "Google refuses to apologize for" etc. BUT just because the idea is stupid and unworkable, does not mean we should discount the article. It will resonate with a lot of non-engineers, and it will be repeated. So I would advocate for some kind of "common carrier" laws for enormous information brokers like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Never mind that actually manipulating the results would be prohibitively difficult and dangerous to the health of the company, and proving manipulation would be effectively impossible. If such a legal framework makes people who don't understand complex engineering sleep better, I support it.