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Instagram does the same thing; my 'Explore' tab is full of beautiful people even though I don't follow them. From a business standpoint it makes sense to promot
by miguelmota 7y ago
Instagram does the same thing; my 'Explore' tab is full of beautiful people even though I don't follow them. From a business standpoint it makes sense to promote the best looking content since it'll lure in more young users. The young kids probably think something like "Hey look at all those beautiful people. I want to be like them and they use Tik Tok so I'm going to use Tik Tok too."
- BurningFrog 7y ago> since it'll lure in more young users The older crowd also prefer to look at beautiful people.
- pedrosorio 7y ago> Instagram does the same thing No, it does not. There is a big difference between: - showing you unconnected content you are likely to engage with - having rules enforced with the help of human reviewers to prevent any user from getting recommendations with people deemed ugly/poor/etc.
- ViViDboarder 7y agoI mean, if it’s the same result does it matter if it’s human or artificial moderation?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pedrosorio 7y agoIt's not the same result. Ugly/fat/poor people can make engaging content and that will be recommended on Instagram. The content you see depends on your interests. Making this up: if you regularly engage with topics that have a majority of fat people posting, say weight loss strategies, you will see a lot of fat people in Instagram Explore. It's the difference between: - Instagram: "I mostly see beautiful people" (because that's the content I and many users engage with). - Tiktok: "I never see ugly people" (because the platform has a guideline that prevents that content from being shown to me)
- haecceity 7y agoThe difference clearly in the mostly and never!
- ehsankia 7y agoI wouldn't say it's "never" on TikTok. Having used both, I wouldn't say i've noticed a difference in how many non-model type persons I see on either platforms.
- miguelmota 7y agoLet's say there's 10 people on Instagram and 5 are ugly and 5 are non-ugly people Suppose 10 users on average interact with 2 non-ugly persons and 1 ugly person. People like commenting on the non-ugly people's content with "wow so pretty!" and "that's awesome! ", etc, etc while ugly people don't get as many comments and maybe even receive neutral to non-positive comments. Now a new person signs up. They get recommend non-ugly people in their feed since that's more popular based on views and interactions. Another new person signs up and they get the same recommendation, and so on. After 100 new sign ups, the recommendation engine has 'learned' that majority of people prefer interacting with non-ugly people. Another new user signs up and all they see in non-ugly people recommendations. The end result is pretty much the same. Ugly people will get pushed out enough either by the programmatic learning engine that becomes over trained and biased, or by manual reviewers that filter content based on data that shows that non-ugly people bring in more users, otherwise they'd promote ugly people content if that was driving more interactions.
- czardoz 7y agoWhat's your point? Are you saying that TikTok having these guidelines is okay? (I work at IG, but not on Explore)
- miguelmota 7y agoThe point is that at the end of the day people will always prefer looking at beautiful people over ugly people, so TikToks practices aren’t really all that absurd.
- TheKarateKid 7y agoMore beautiful people on IG are more likely to have more followers, and therefore more likely to be recommended by Explore. Half of my explore is memes and infographics because that’s what I interact with a lot.
- noobermin 7y agoI think this is striking at the root. Many people in tech have explained away things that where is a selection that occurs algorithmically even if it unsavoury because the black box is a black box and thus has no ill intent. However, the moderation policy does have intent. It just matters whether you value intent vs. actual consequences when you decide whether something is moral or immoral.
- ryandrake 7y agoThere is a school of thought (not sure if I agree with it) that if the outcome of a process is x-ist (racist, sexist, ageist, etc.) then the process itself is x-ist, regardless of whether there was any intent to make it so. It kind of makes sense. Bad results can and do come out of well-intentioned decisions. In other areas (business, legislation) we judge policies by their actual effects, not by their creators' intentions.
- willis936 7y agoLegally, intent defines the difference between manslaughter and murder. One is a plausibly an accident and the other is unjust.
- mgraczyk 7y agoNo, having worked on explore sourcing and ranking I can tell you with certainty Instagram does not do the same thing.
- scarmig 7y agoImplementation is different, but passes all the same test cases.
- mgraczyk 7y agoInstagram explore is actually pretty good at becoming personalized based on usage. Here's mine. https://assets.opentoken.com/sha256/yhEqWEExzLtoLZ_fBRrGsyODO-dIAemW https://assets.opentoken.com/sha256/yhEqWEExzLtoLZ_fBRrGsyOD...
- Summershard 7y agoMaybe it works that way, because users prefer to follow pretty people.
- PunchTornado 7y agothe question is having an algorithm do that (suppresing ugly and therefore unpopular users/photo) is different than having a moderator do it?
- cvlasdkv 7y agoyes because it's a choice.
- lenkite 7y agoNo, it does not. View Cats on Instagram and you will see Cats on Instagram.
- PunchTornado 7y agonew account on instagram, click explore, there are people there, nobody ugly. search for any tag that has mainly people like beach or hiking, all accounts are from very beautiful people with lots of followers. your algorithm promotes people with more followers and likes, which are bound to be more beautiful people. Unless you avoid any interest in tags related to people and see only beautiful bunnies, not ugly bunnies, your feed will be only beautiful creatures. I don't know how you can deny that.
- wastedhours 7y agoAnd my Explore feed is pretty much just pictures of cute bunnies as that's based on the content I interact with (who doesn't love cute pictures of bunnies?!). I'd say that's very much not the same thing - algorithmic interpretation of what I like, vs a moderator deciding to only promote certain things.
- jessaustin 7y agoWhat about the ugly bunnies? Don't be so heartless!
- wastedhours 7y agoNo such thing as an ugly bunny!
- nukst 7y agoConsider the culinary section...
- IkmoIkmo 7y agoIt's just what you've responded to. I've literally got 90% baby yoda memes, I'm not even kidding. The 'for you' is algorithmic, not curated by mods based on beauty like it seems TikTok was.
- maitredusoi 7y agocoz baby yoda memes are considered as "cute" by moderator ;) and by no means a baby yoda seems ugly for anyone ;)
- lowdose 7y agoNot everyones wisdom grows by age that's a privilege. A lot of people plateau on a level before they are twenty, its not just young people doing this.
- stjohnswarts 7y agoHmmm I never used that feature before, I just go through my feed. I checked and yes indeedy if it was a person I would say 9/10 were very attractive humans.