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Hot take: subtle differences in algorithm choices have huge real-world implications. Facebook prioritizes engagement as their top metric. This means that divi
by CogentHedgehog 6y ago
Hot take: subtle differences in algorithm choices have huge real-world implications. Facebook prioritizes engagement as their top metric. This means that divisive content which inspires strong emotions bubbles to the top of the feed. This has predictable consequences for discussions and communities.
Reddit prioritizes using user votes, which tends to result in less divisive content. But the way the community is broken down into subreddits can result in clear echo chambers at times as people reinforce each other's behaviors.
- Lammy 6y ago> Facebook prioritizes engagement as their top metric. Slight nitpick, but the top metric is money. If Engagement didn't lead to the most dollars it would not be prioritized. I think this is important to separate because "Engagement → (Ad Impressions + Societal Collapse)" feels so much more fixable to me than just "Engagement → Societal Collapse".
- CogentHedgehog 6y agoThis is true. Engagement -> Ad Views -> $$$ If they down-weighted negative engagement they could easily solve this though. There are pretty trivial content analysis tools that spit out a hostility score for a corpus of text. Facebook just doesn't care to do this.