2 ms·

How do you define where the boundary is for what is and isn't politics? Ads paid for by overtly political organisations may be easy to identify, but what about

How do you define where the boundary is for what is and isn't politics? Ads paid for by overtly political organisations may be easy to identify, but what about content from individuals?

pjc50 6y ago
Indeed. We tried the "politics ban" at HN and the result was every story had a top comment explaining why it was political and you should flag it. Completely unworkable.
- arethuza 6y ago
  I suspect that pretty much any discussion of politics is essentially political so under that ban this story probably shouldn't be discussed.
avian 6y ago
I feel like a good approximation would be to just turn Bayesian priors on or off (or whatever is their equivalent of "push this widely popular thing, even if it's not supported by this person's specific interests learned from their usage data"). My anecdote: I recently made a Twitter account specifically to follow some artists and share some art. There is nothing in what I wrote on Twitter, or in who I follow or tweets I liked or in fact my IP-based geolocation (I'm not from US) that would say to the Algorithm that I'm in any way interested in American politics. On the contrary, for a long time I tried clicking "not interested in this" for anything related to politics. And yet, the AI timeline in that account is regularly swamped by US political drama I'm not interested in, can't do anything about and generally just makes me miserable. My only explanation is that these posts get pushed to me because they are overwhelmingly popular overall on Twitter, and the high prior swamps out the negative evidence specific to my account. Of course, the other, more sinister explanation is that it's a (human) editorial decision from Twitter to actively push this kind of content to people, but I find the technical explanation easier to believe.

2 ms·

How do you define where the boundary is for what is and isn't politics? Ads paid for by overtly political organisations may be easy to identify, but what about

by arethuza 6y ago

How do you define where the boundary is for what is and isn't politics? Ads paid for by overtly political organisations may be easy to identify, but what about content from individuals?

pjc50 6y ago
Indeed. We tried the "politics ban" at HN and the result was every story had a top comment explaining why it was political and you should flag it. Completely unworkable.
- arethuza 6y ago
  I suspect that pretty much any discussion of politics is essentially political so under that ban this story probably shouldn't be discussed.
avian 6y ago
I feel like a good approximation would be to just turn Bayesian priors on or off (or whatever is their equivalent of "push this widely popular thing, even if it's not supported by this person's specific interests learned from their usage data"). My anecdote: I recently made a Twitter account specifically to follow some artists and share some art. There is nothing in what I wrote on Twitter, or in who I follow or tweets I liked or in fact my IP-based geolocation (I'm not from US) that would say to the Algorithm that I'm in any way interested in American politics. On the contrary, for a long time I tried clicking "not interested in this" for anything related to politics. And yet, the AI timeline in that account is regularly swamped by US political drama I'm not interested in, can't do anything about and generally just makes me miserable. My only explanation is that these posts get pushed to me because they are overwhelmingly popular overall on Twitter, and the high prior swamps out the negative evidence specific to my account. Of course, the other, more sinister explanation is that it's a (human) editorial decision from Twitter to actively push this kind of content to people, but I find the technical explanation easier to believe.