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Jack Dorsey references [1] Stephen Wolfram's testimony to the US Senate where he outlined a solution for algorithmic transparency and content curation. My start

Jack Dorsey references [1] Stephen Wolfram's testimony to the US Senate where he outlined a solution for algorithmic transparency and content curation. My startup, The Factual, coincidentally built something similar to what Stephen envisioned as a "final ranking provider". Blog post with details: https://blog.thefactual.com/delivering-on-stephen-wolframs-vision-for-addressing-algorithmic-transparency https://blog.thefactual.com/delivering-on-stephen-wolframs-v... [1] https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766086320680961?s=20 https://twitter.com/jack/status/1204766086320680961?s=20

thundergolfer 7y ago
I’m very interested in the area you’re working in so I checked out The Factual. Heads up that the “About OwlFactor” page gave me a 403. From clicking around it seems like you’ve built a cool system for ingesting and scoring articles. I would say that you’re methodology and it’s bias against “highly opinionated” journalism seems to be committing the Argument to Moderation fallacy.
- amoorthy 7y ago
  Thanks for checking out our site! We rebranded from OwlFactor and I forgot to update my HN profile! Doh. Fixed. You're right that our methodology encourages moderation in news articles. But it doesn't penalize far right or far left outlets. Rather, if the style in which an article is written is inflammatory or opinionated then it is dinged. So it's not so much that viewpoints should be moderate but rather that the case for any viewpoint should be made without undue hyperbole and emotion. The real test of our technology is if regular news readers like you and me like this selection bias. So I'd be grateful if you checked out the selections on www.thefactual.com/news and commented further.
  - thanatropism 7y ago
    Can I test your algorithm in some of my writing?
    - amoorthy 7y ago
      Hi there - our Chrome extension rates any news article: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/civikowl/clbbiejjicefdjlblgnojolgbideklkp?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/civikowl/clbbiejji... but it won't rate an arbitrary piece of writing (yet). To be honest, an unknown author with no history on a topic on a site that's also previously unknown will struggle to rate >50%. Lmk if I can answer any other questions.

thundergolfer 7y ago

I’m very interested in the area you’re working in so I checked out The Factual. Heads up that the “About OwlFactor” page gave me a 403. From clicking around it seems like you’ve built a cool system for ingesting and scoring articles. I would say that you’re methodology and it’s bias against “highly opinionated” journalism seems to be committing the Argument to Moderation fallacy.

amoorthy 7y ago
Thanks for checking out our site! We rebranded from OwlFactor and I forgot to update my HN profile! Doh. Fixed. You're right that our methodology encourages moderation in news articles. But it doesn't penalize far right or far left outlets. Rather, if the style in which an article is written is inflammatory or opinionated then it is dinged. So it's not so much that viewpoints should be moderate but rather that the case for any viewpoint should be made without undue hyperbole and emotion. The real test of our technology is if regular news readers like you and me like this selection bias. So I'd be grateful if you checked out the selections on www.thefactual.com/news and commented further.
- thanatropism 7y ago
  Can I test your algorithm in some of my writing?
  - amoorthy 7y ago
    Hi there - our Chrome extension rates any news article: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/civikowl/clbbiejjicefdjlblgnojolgbideklkp?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/civikowl/clbbiejji... but it won't rate an arbitrary piece of writing (yet). To be honest, an unknown author with no history on a topic on a site that's also previously unknown will struggle to rate >50%. Lmk if I can answer any other questions.