4 ms·

> Neutrality doesn't just happen. No matter how neutral a system it is at one point in time, people will continue gaming it and it will cease to be neutral. The

> Neutrality doesn't just happen. No matter how neutral a system it is at one point in time, people will continue gaming it and it will cease to be neutral. There must be continuous active response to maintain that neutrality. This is a scary thought - an algorithm that "decides" what neutral is, and pushes all its users towards its predetermined neutrality. All of this talk is nonsense if we can't define neutral - which we can't. If Facebook is going to be an arbiter of that, they need to be responsible for the content because they choose what content is shown and when - if it was just a timeline feed, they would bear no responsibility. Facebook wants to make all the money and not scare off customers - a clear conflict of interest.

notacoward 6y ago
> if it was just a timeline feed, they would bear no responsibility. Did that work for Twitter? They've hardly been immune from criticism either, despite being ~1/10 the size of Facebook and being favored by the ruling party in the US. Chronological timelines aren't silver bullets. They're only chronological among that which is shared and there are still huge differences in how much content gets shared/like/retweeted/whatever. Those are the differences that people will exploit, leaving things only "neutral" in a narrow technical sense that has nothing to do with effect. It's naive in the extreme to think they actually solve the problem.
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  I think you are quite misunderstanding the point. My point isn't that a chronological timeline fixes the problem of social media. My point is that if you are going to decide what is shown, you are making a choice, and should be responsible for that choice. It is no longer just the user's post - because you control its avenue, you are responsible for it and how it spreads, and becomes "your" speech, in this case, the algorithm's, and its company's.
  - notacoward 6y ago
    So you're suggesting that Facebook should try to absolve itself of responsibility, but not actually solve the problem? No offense, but that seems exactly opposite to where you started. We're done.

notacoward 6y ago

> if it was just a timeline feed, they would bear no responsibility. Did that work for Twitter? They've hardly been immune from criticism either, despite being ~1/10 the size of Facebook and being favored by the ruling party in the US. Chronological timelines aren't silver bullets. They're only chronological among that which is shared and there are still huge differences in how much content gets shared/like/retweeted/whatever. Those are the differences that people will exploit, leaving things only "neutral" in a narrow technical sense that has nothing to do with effect. It's naive in the extreme to think they actually solve the problem.

ntsplnkv2 6y ago
I think you are quite misunderstanding the point. My point isn't that a chronological timeline fixes the problem of social media. My point is that if you are going to decide what is shown, you are making a choice, and should be responsible for that choice. It is no longer just the user's post - because you control its avenue, you are responsible for it and how it spreads, and becomes "your" speech, in this case, the algorithm's, and its company's.
- notacoward 6y ago
  So you're suggesting that Facebook should try to absolve itself of responsibility, but not actually solve the problem? No offense, but that seems exactly opposite to where you started. We're done.