6 ms·

A former Facebook engineer on algorithmic ranking for Facebook Trending

57 points by smoyer 10y ago

mkay581 10y ago
"if you want have computers do everything, for technical reasons, resource limitations, and product positioning, you may want humans to oversee the algorithms" whaaa?? That's exactly why you would NOT want humans to interfere. "...because computers are incredibly stupid" LOL and humans aren't? Who is this guy?
- smoyer 10y ago
  But if computers and humans are both incredibly stupid, at least they're stupid in different ways? And I do agree with his point that both can end up with biases.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  The outputs of the system will reflect the choices that humans made about the inputs and processing. It makes a whole lot of sense to have humans taking a look at the outputs and making sure they are reasonable. You obviously don't need humans reviewing the outputs of simple mechanisms, but as your mechanisms get more complex and opaque, the pretense that they are objective becomes ridiculous.
  - elthran 10y ago
    This. You only have to take a look at what the internet did to Microsoft's learning chatbot to see why humans are a good idea.
    - Kristine1975 10y ago
      OTOH I only have to look at Microsoft's chatbot to see why humans are a bad idea, too ;-)
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  I think you haven't heard of 4chan. What do you think happens when somebody makes an easily gameable system with no supervision and puts in on the Internet?
smoyer 10y ago
A note to the moderators ... The title I included above is what LinkedIn sent in this morning's news feed. Since I think it's more descriptive than the page's title (Algorithm Transparency), I used the feed title.
jasode 10y ago
>What really made this article blow up was the revelation that humans were in the loop. To me, this post by Jonathan Koren doesn't really get to the heart of the outrage by some observers. Yes, humans utimately need to be in the loop for content filtering, but the fact that they seemingly curate based on political agendas is the real controversy. Koren addressed the human part but ignored the political. If we just isolate the "humans must oversee algorithms", I think it's easy to convince people of that. The user generation of stories and determining relevance looks to be a real-world variation of The Halting Problem. Therefore, you can't write a function f(x) where "x" is topics and "f(x)" returns "good story" or "bad story". You can't just let the algorithm run unattended. Hackers could exploit an unknown idiosyncrasy in the content algorithm and all of sudden, everybody's feed has "child pornography is awesome" stories in it. It doesn't matter if you take the latest cutting-edge text analysis algorithms from whitepapers and apply teraflops of Tensorflow on it, humans will still have to be in the loop to keep unexpected behavior from happening. With that necessity of humans conceded, you then consider if the curators have abused their power into a pattern of bias. The other "guidelines" blog post[1] that he linked to doesn't actually address the real transparency that people would love to see: The list of (conservative) stories that curators sent to the bottom of the heap. Unfortunately, making the list of "suppressed stories" transparent can also have the opposite effect of making them prominent... aka... The Streisand Effect. [1]Justin Osofsky, VP Global Operations: "Facebook does not allow or advise our reviewers to discriminate against sources of any political origin, period. Here are the guidelines we use." Outsiders skeptical analysis would be: Publicizing "internal guidelines" is not the same as publicizing the actual list of suppressed stories so people could judge for themselves if the "no politics" guidelines was followed.
- caseysoftware 10y ago
  > Koren addressed the human part but ignored the political. Yes, but most people who are only sort of paying attention didn't catch the political part. So now when someone says "Facebook has an agenda against X!" the response - vocalized or not - becomes "no, they talked about that already." From a PR perspective, it's not a bad move. Towards actually addressing the issue, not so much.. especially since these published guidelines don't include (or at least I can't find), the blacklist numerous insiders have claimed exists, specifically around Twitter and Facebook itself being in Trending.
spoiledtechie 10y ago
What a Crappy article.. My outrage does come from the political bias, not the algorithm. I have since ceased using Facebook.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- optimuspaul 10y ago
  If you don't think it's biased then you probably don't have a strong position. I think your outrage is misplaced.
- jjuel 10y ago
  Do you rely on the trending sidebar on Facebook that much? If you were to stop using everything due to a "political bias" you probably will have to move to an off grid cabin deep in the woods.
  - smoyer 10y ago
    Hmm ... http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf
ucaetano 10y ago
>To Facebook’s credit, they’ve chosen to be radically transparent about this. Wait, they chose to be radically transparent AFTER they were denounced? Kinda like Theranos, who's being really honest about the quality of their tests, AFTER they've been shown to be worthless?
- coroutines 10y ago
  I agree. PR pivot at its finest.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  I actually don't have trouble believing that they had failed to carefully consider the (broader social) implications of what they were doing. I think I find that more believable than attempting to build an elaborate system for manipulating user opinions. If anything, I think they are biasing the feeds in ways that garner clicks, like discussed here: https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/733397126026297344 https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/733397126026297344
  - ucaetano 10y ago
    I agree, I don't see this episode as a systemic, top-down, news manipulation initiative, but more as a deep lack of self-awareness and reflection on the network's impact on what people see. And that hasn't been addressed yet.
badmadrad 10y ago
Its nice to get a perspective from inside but the issue isn't human intervention its rampant human bias.
- Cacti 10y ago
  The issue is people get their news from Facebook...
serdavos 10y ago
Couldn't agree more with his idea that there has to be more transparency. Data scientists/relevance engineers know the biases, problems and goodness with the algos; but regular users have no idea. And so the conspiracy theories come out in force...
fintler 10y ago
What does everyone think about LinkedIn's publishing platform?
shmerl 10y ago
I can't access the article: > Not a member? Join now

57 points by smoyer 10y ago

"if you want have computers do everything, for technical reasons, resource limitations, and product positioning, you may want humans to oversee the algorithms" whaaa?? That's exactly why you would NOT want humans to interfere. "...because computers are incredibly stupid" LOL and humans aren't? Who is this guy?

smoyer 10y ago
But if computers and humans are both incredibly stupid, at least they're stupid in different ways? And I do agree with his point that both can end up with biases.
maxerickson 10y ago
The outputs of the system will reflect the choices that humans made about the inputs and processing. It makes a whole lot of sense to have humans taking a look at the outputs and making sure they are reasonable. You obviously don't need humans reviewing the outputs of simple mechanisms, but as your mechanisms get more complex and opaque, the pretense that they are objective becomes ridiculous.
- elthran 10y ago
  This. You only have to take a look at what the internet did to Microsoft's learning chatbot to see why humans are a good idea.
  - Kristine1975 10y ago
    OTOH I only have to look at Microsoft's chatbot to see why humans are a bad idea, too ;-)
TeMPOraL 10y ago
I think you haven't heard of 4chan. What do you think happens when somebody makes an easily gameable system with no supervision and puts in on the Internet?

smoyer 10y ago

A note to the moderators ... The title I included above is what LinkedIn sent in this morning's news feed. Since I think it's more descriptive than the page's title (Algorithm Transparency), I used the feed title.

jasode 10y ago

>What really made this article blow up was the revelation that humans were in the loop. To me, this post by Jonathan Koren doesn't really get to the heart of the outrage by some observers. Yes, humans utimately need to be in the loop for content filtering, but the fact that they seemingly curate based on political agendas is the real controversy. Koren addressed the human part but ignored the political. If we just isolate the "humans must oversee algorithms", I think it's easy to convince people of that. The user generation of stories and determining relevance looks to be a real-world variation of The Halting Problem. Therefore, you can't write a function f(x) where "x" is topics and "f(x)" returns "good story" or "bad story". You can't just let the algorithm run unattended. Hackers could exploit an unknown idiosyncrasy in the content algorithm and all of sudden, everybody's feed has "child pornography is awesome" stories in it. It doesn't matter if you take the latest cutting-edge text analysis algorithms from whitepapers and apply teraflops of Tensorflow on it, humans will still have to be in the loop to keep unexpected behavior from happening. With that necessity of humans conceded, you then consider if the curators have abused their power into a pattern of bias. The other "guidelines" blog post[1] that he linked to doesn't actually address the real transparency that people would love to see: The list of (conservative) stories that curators sent to the bottom of the heap. Unfortunately, making the list of "suppressed stories" transparent can also have the opposite effect of making them prominent... aka... The Streisand Effect. [1]Justin Osofsky, VP Global Operations: "Facebook does not allow or advise our reviewers to discriminate against sources of any political origin, period. Here are the guidelines we use." Outsiders skeptical analysis would be: Publicizing "internal guidelines" is not the same as publicizing the actual list of suppressed stories so people could judge for themselves if the "no politics" guidelines was followed.

caseysoftware 10y ago
> Koren addressed the human part but ignored the political. Yes, but most people who are only sort of paying attention didn't catch the political part. So now when someone says "Facebook has an agenda against X!" the response - vocalized or not - becomes "no, they talked about that already." From a PR perspective, it's not a bad move. Towards actually addressing the issue, not so much.. especially since these published guidelines don't include (or at least I can't find), the blacklist numerous insiders have claimed exists, specifically around Twitter and Facebook itself being in Trending.

spoiledtechie 10y ago

What a Crappy article.. My outrage does come from the political bias, not the algorithm. I have since ceased using Facebook.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
optimuspaul 10y ago
If you don't think it's biased then you probably don't have a strong position. I think your outrage is misplaced.
jjuel 10y ago
Do you rely on the trending sidebar on Facebook that much? If you were to stop using everything due to a "political bias" you probably will have to move to an off grid cabin deep in the woods.
- smoyer 10y ago
  Hmm ... http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf

ucaetano 10y ago

>To Facebook’s credit, they’ve chosen to be radically transparent about this. Wait, they chose to be radically transparent AFTER they were denounced? Kinda like Theranos, who's being really honest about the quality of their tests, AFTER they've been shown to be worthless?

coroutines 10y ago
I agree. PR pivot at its finest.
maxerickson 10y ago
I actually don't have trouble believing that they had failed to carefully consider the (broader social) implications of what they were doing. I think I find that more believable than attempting to build an elaborate system for manipulating user opinions. If anything, I think they are biasing the feeds in ways that garner clicks, like discussed here: https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/733397126026297344 https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/733397126026297344
- ucaetano 10y ago
  I agree, I don't see this episode as a systemic, top-down, news manipulation initiative, but more as a deep lack of self-awareness and reflection on the network's impact on what people see. And that hasn't been addressed yet.

badmadrad 10y ago

Its nice to get a perspective from inside but the issue isn't human intervention its rampant human bias.

Cacti 10y ago
The issue is people get their news from Facebook...

serdavos 10y ago

Couldn't agree more with his idea that there has to be more transparency. Data scientists/relevance engineers know the biases, problems and goodness with the algos; but regular users have no idea. And so the conspiracy theories come out in force...

fintler 10y ago

What does everyone think about LinkedIn's publishing platform?

shmerl 10y ago

I can't access the article: > Not a member? Join now