> Facebook is just a mirror This is an echo of the "dumb pipes" argument, which characterizes social media as neutral carriers of both harmless and harmful con

> Facebook is just a mirror This is an echo of the "dumb pipes" argument, which characterizes social media as neutral carriers of both harmless and harmful content. While I recognize that harmful ideology originate outside of Facebook, it's really unhelpful to deny that in Facebook's capacity as "a fun-house mirror that magnifies some things and minimizes others" it's really very deliberately shaping the discourse, the zeitgeist and, as such, political reality. We don't know the algorithm's ultimate purpose. It is, inevitably, biased. What biases Facebook management has decreed (and how closely its implementation hews) is an unknown to those of us on the outside. But it's certainly not, at this point an accident. Whenever discussing algorithmic bias, I am always reminded of the old programming koan: 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10970937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10970937