4 ms·

Ryan Mac's series of reporting on the matter at Buzzfeed is commendable: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/author/ryanmac https://www.buzzfeednews.com/author/ryanmac

Ryan Mac's series of reporting on the matter at Buzzfeed is commendable: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/author/ryanmac https://www.buzzfeednews.com/author/ryanmac They intentionally protect right wing bad actors like Breitbart because they along with their milder counterparts (Ben Shapiro, etc.) continuously score the top posts of the day on the network.

fatnoah 6y ago
In the end, I think the main issue here is that algorithms are designed to show you what you're likely to engage with. FB actually does have pretty good tools to limit what you see in your feed. Making use of the "Hide this Post" (or whatever it's called) on my own FB feed has all but eliminated all political ads or any of the stuff in my feed that I'm not interested, i.e. anything that's not about my friends' lives. That functionality needs to be MUCH more prominent, IMHO. The ease of sharing and retweeting also means that little or no effort is required to propagate whatever you come across. Even without the algorithms, people will essentially do that work themselves. There's a reason Fox News, Breitbart, and these types of "news" sources are popular. People are comfortable when their beliefs are reinforced and not challenged. I don't think this is a conscious action, but it happens nevertheless. My anecdote here is my father-in-law. He's glued to Fox News, right wing podcasters, and the like. He's as up to date on every bit of news propagated by those sites as anyone I know that's regularly on Facebook.
tqi 6y ago
That is proof of nothing. If the stereotype that "only old people are on Facebook" is true, and old people tend to be more right leaning, then it would follow that the top posts ranked by # likes or # views would skew toward their interests even with a completely neutral ranking scheme.

4 ms·

Ryan Mac's series of reporting on the matter at Buzzfeed is commendable: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/author/ryanmac https://www.buzzfeednews.com/author/ryanmac

by VHRanger 6y ago

fatnoah 6y ago
In the end, I think the main issue here is that algorithms are designed to show you what you're likely to engage with. FB actually does have pretty good tools to limit what you see in your feed. Making use of the "Hide this Post" (or whatever it's called) on my own FB feed has all but eliminated all political ads or any of the stuff in my feed that I'm not interested, i.e. anything that's not about my friends' lives. That functionality needs to be MUCH more prominent, IMHO. The ease of sharing and retweeting also means that little or no effort is required to propagate whatever you come across. Even without the algorithms, people will essentially do that work themselves. There's a reason Fox News, Breitbart, and these types of "news" sources are popular. People are comfortable when their beliefs are reinforced and not challenged. I don't think this is a conscious action, but it happens nevertheless. My anecdote here is my father-in-law. He's glued to Fox News, right wing podcasters, and the like. He's as up to date on every bit of news propagated by those sites as anyone I know that's regularly on Facebook.
tqi 6y ago
That is proof of nothing. If the stereotype that "only old people are on Facebook" is true, and old people tend to be more right leaning, then it would follow that the top posts ranked by # likes or # views would skew toward their interests even with a completely neutral ranking scheme.