4 ms·

There’s no proxy for content quality. Simply: it’s all content and it’s impact depends on the people who take the information in and then apply their beliefs a

There’s no proxy for content quality. Simply: it’s all content and it’s impact depends on the people who take the information in and then apply their beliefs and understanding to it. Some content is simple - recipes for example. Others are impossible to parse: “they want to reduce hate speech” translates as “they want to remove conservative/right wing speech” (this actually happened in a conversation yesterday. Suggesting that the term hate speech is being transformed/co opted) Engagement in contrast, is simple, reliable and measurable.

CharlesColeman 8y ago
> There’s no proxy for content quality. I don't think that's true, it's just that the proxies are imperfect. But the specific alternative metric wasn't that important to my point. > Engagement in contrast, is simple, reliable and measurable. That's the root of the problem: the algorithms have been designed to use "simple, reliable, and [easily] measurable" things as their whole input, and then narrowly A/B tested to maximize some other easily measurable output. Looked at holistically, it's too simple to do an acceptable job. If you took a similar attitude, and applied it to create an algorithm for another discipline, like medicine for instance, it'd be pretty clear it'd be a disaster.