6 ms·
The problem is what facebook says is at odds with what the leaked documents purport to show. Trending items, and hand-curated items are not the same thing, and
by TrevorJ 10y ago
The problem is what facebook says is at odds with what the leaked documents purport to show. Trending items, and hand-curated items are not the same thing, and apparently they have been passing one off as the other which is problematic.
- throwawaykeno 10y ago"Fair and balanced" isn't either. We can argue about whether there's an ethical problem, but the assertion that there's any sort of legal problem seems completely arbitrary and partisan IMO.
- pessimizer 10y ago> "Fair and balanced" isn't either. "Fair and balanced" doesn't mean anything. Editorial control and algorithmic control are two different things. > the assertion that there's any sort of legal problem seems completely arbitrary and partisan IMO. I don't see any assertion that there's a legal problem in the parent.
- throwawaykeno 10y ago> Editorial control and algorithmic control are two different things. It's also a meaningless distinction. The point of contention is the bias, not whether the bias is imposed by an algorithm or by a human. People would still be complaining if Facebook had tweaked its algorithm to achieve identical outputs instead of employing humans to do it manually. The truth seems to be somewhere in-between -- it was algorithmically generated and then the output was human-modified. In general, I think the response to this post demonstrates the prevalence of magical thinking about computers, even by people who ought to know better. Bias is bias regardless of whether it's explicitly programmed behavior, emergent behavior from a carefully trained neural net, or enforced in human processes post-hoc. Distinguishing between these on the basis of where the behavior came from -- rather than whether or not there's a bias -- misses the point. > I don't see any assertion that there's a legal problem in the parent. The point of my post wasn't to contradict the parent post. There certainly are people who do claim it's a legal problem.
- TrevorJ 10y agoIt isn't meaningless in this case at all. "Trending" suggests that it reflects, so some level, popular opinion about what people are discussing. If the items aren't trending, but are hand curated, then you've essentially lied.
- jonathankoren 10y agoNo. It's exactly what the documents say. You see an algorithmic ranking of a set of curated topics. I know. I worked on the ranking.
- iamdave 10y agoI know. I worked on the ranking. Is there any method of validating this claim?
- stoic 10y agoCursory googling would suggest it is valid. I don't think Zuckerberg is gonna call you and verify his employment.
- colordrops 10y agoI think the question is whether there is any way to validate that the code works as he said, not whether he works at facebook or not.
- narrowrail 10y agoYou don't have to bet your first-born on it or anything, but on HN there is an implicit assumption of good faith.
- colordrops 10y agoAccording to who? There is no prescribed and assumed reality for this forum. I do not change my judgement because you say so.
- narrowrail 10y agoYou are correct, I should have prefaced my statement with, "I think" or "I like to believe." I happen to believe cynicism is a seductive methodology, while sometimes useful. I don't care for FB's hegemony either, FWIW.