3 ms·

… based on one statement by one person.

chris_wot 10y ago
I probably should have linked to this story: http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-conser-1775461006 http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-supp... But not just one person - Facebook had to apologise to John Dickson for deleting his post. So I ask you - what were they doing fooling around with his posts?
- jasonlotito 10y ago
  Read the story you linked to. Still only one person. "This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul..." You're confusing the multiple people who claimed they were asked to inject stories that weren't trending. In fact, you have multiple sources who contradict the opinion of your source: "Other former curators interviewed by Gizmodo denied consciously suppressing conservative news, and we were unable to determine if left-wing news topics or sources were similarly suppressed." Finally, underlying contention, that Facebook was at fault, is even denied by that same individual. "there is no evidence that Facebook management mandated or was even aware of any political bias at work." And finally, this is Gizmodo, so unless you have something from a trustworthy source, I would treat them as suspect at best.
  - chris_wot 10y ago
    Curious, then, that John Dicksons post was specifically removed. Why was someone reviewing it at all? Sure, they accidentally deleted it - they admitted as much when they officially apologised to John. But then again, why was a staffer looking at Dicksons post at all?
emn13 10y ago
...and it sounds like they initially suppressed and injected a lot more stories, too, so it's conceivable that this person was pissed off about these suppressions, but not about others that happened to agree with their own prejudices. And then there's the issue that's these kind of algorithms need tuning - they're not intrinsically neutral. It's unlikely that conservative and liberal social networks/stories have the same kind of structures, and details of how the network is connected can influence what's trending. This makes the complaint a little absurd. Not only are algorithmic results also biased, these manual corrections might conceivably be useful to correct that bias. There's this naive assumption that there exists the One True Fair and Neutral ranking algorithm that's unbiased. But the whole notion is ridiculous: we want that bias, because we want to discriminate in favor of "trending" content - and "trending" isn't even rigorously defined. And even if we had a rigorous definition, that doesn't mean it'd be the most useful definition. Elections have strictly defined protocols, yet that doesn't mean an elected US president has the majority of votes. And lest you believe majority voting is the answer, a majority elected president might nevertheless be inferior to a competitor by majority opinion (i.e. it's not stable)... and of course regardless of election result there's no guarantee that current opinions are a good predictor of future opinions let alone achieved results. In short: not only is this just one person's opinion, the standard they hold Facebook to (no bias) is impossibly high. Perhaps there's some amount of unwanted (by whom) bias, but dealing with that isn't as black and white as the complainer suggests.
- chris_wot 10y ago
  John Dickson wasn't pissed off, but got a big shock when it occurred.

I probably should have linked to this story: http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-conser-1775461006 http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-supp... But not just one person - Facebook had to apologise to John Dickson for deleting his post. So I ask you - what were they doing fooling around with his posts?

jasonlotito 10y ago
Read the story you linked to. Still only one person. "This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul..." You're confusing the multiple people who claimed they were asked to inject stories that weren't trending. In fact, you have multiple sources who contradict the opinion of your source: "Other former curators interviewed by Gizmodo denied consciously suppressing conservative news, and we were unable to determine if left-wing news topics or sources were similarly suppressed." Finally, underlying contention, that Facebook was at fault, is even denied by that same individual. "there is no evidence that Facebook management mandated or was even aware of any political bias at work." And finally, this is Gizmodo, so unless you have something from a trustworthy source, I would treat them as suspect at best.
- chris_wot 10y ago
  Curious, then, that John Dicksons post was specifically removed. Why was someone reviewing it at all? Sure, they accidentally deleted it - they admitted as much when they officially apologised to John. But then again, why was a staffer looking at Dicksons post at all?

emn13 10y ago

...and it sounds like they initially suppressed and injected a lot more stories, too, so it's conceivable that this person was pissed off about these suppressions, but not about others that happened to agree with their own prejudices. And then there's the issue that's these kind of algorithms need tuning - they're not intrinsically neutral. It's unlikely that conservative and liberal social networks/stories have the same kind of structures, and details of how the network is connected can influence what's trending. This makes the complaint a little absurd. Not only are algorithmic results also biased, these manual corrections might conceivably be useful to correct that bias. There's this naive assumption that there exists the One True Fair and Neutral ranking algorithm that's unbiased. But the whole notion is ridiculous: we want that bias, because we want to discriminate in favor of "trending" content - and "trending" isn't even rigorously defined. And even if we had a rigorous definition, that doesn't mean it'd be the most useful definition. Elections have strictly defined protocols, yet that doesn't mean an elected US president has the majority of votes. And lest you believe majority voting is the answer, a majority elected president might nevertheless be inferior to a competitor by majority opinion (i.e. it's not stable)... and of course regardless of election result there's no guarantee that current opinions are a good predictor of future opinions let alone achieved results. In short: not only is this just one person's opinion, the standard they hold Facebook to (no bias) is impossibly high. Perhaps there's some amount of unwanted (by whom) bias, but dealing with that isn't as black and white as the complainer suggests.

chris_wot 10y ago
John Dickson wasn't pissed off, but got a big shock when it occurred.