7 ms·

Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do

52 points by jacobobryant 6y ago

onion2k 6y ago
In fact, preventing filter bubbles (so to speak) is an explicit design goal of recommender systems. This is one of those annoying articles where someone talks about their specific interest as if it's a universal truth for an entire domain of problems. For an Amazon product listing or a Buzzfeed news page that thrives on users seeing new and exciting stuff to click on and buy, sure, the recommender system needs to avoid getting stuck on one specific type of content. For your Facebook newsfeed or YouTube video sidebar where divisive politics rules the day it is not absolutely not goal because that would stray in to challenging user's beliefs, and that would push people away.
endisneigh 6y ago
I’ve never understood this logic - algorithms are written by people. It’s not like they descend down from heaven.
- dfxm12 6y ago
  It's more of an idiom than a prepositional formula. It means that people would create their own filter bubbles, even in the absence of an algorithm, so blaming algorithms or trying to do away with them if your goal is to eliminate filter bubbles is moot.
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    That's a strawman argument. Seeing filter bubbles as bad doesn't mean the only approach is to remove all filter bubbles in all of existence. You can lessen the number of and ease of making filter bubbles and still have a positive impact on society.
- bregma 6y ago
  Are you using the term 'algorithm' in the mathematical and computer-science sense of "a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations", or are you using it in the SV-marketing-hype sense of "an ML trained to produce the answer we want to see"? It can be very confusing switching back and forth.
- nivenkos 6y ago
  Except Paxos, no man understands that.
- optimalsolver 6y ago
  >It’s not like they descend down from heaven They were granted to us by the Ixians.
coding123 6y ago
Read the whole thing before you rage the title.
hirundo 6y ago
> That, however, is one of the reasons I spend so much time working on recommender systems. There is always an algorithm. The default one promotes rage, controversy and misinformation. But we don’t have to stick with the default. No we don't. But does anyone think that Twitter would have risen as it has if it did not select for rage and controversy? There is an algorithm on another layer of the stack that filters out more neutral content: The free choices of users in an open market. If Twitter (et al.) did make an effort to screen out its most viral content it would simply lose market share to a platform that doesn't.
dash2 6y ago
On the subject of "should we blame algorithms", here is some nice new research with an elegant field experiment, which suggests that yes, Facebook's algorithm does lead to filter bubbles: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3653388 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3653388
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 6y ago
  That would make a great submission in its own right.
  - dash2 6y ago
    Done! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26411818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26411818
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Isn't that a distraction from the real issue? If people want filter bubbles (for themselves but not others like usual) it doesn't matter who made a particular one. People don't want spam or crap they will never agree with and want stuff they are interested in.
  - dash2 6y ago
    I think it's non-obvious that Facebook's only following consumer demand here. People are on FB for lots of reasons, including network effects that are hard to change, and the company probably has a lot of leeway to alter its bubble without changing that. Indeed, they've already made many changes. There's also a lot of possible variation in the strength of the bubble. Suppose I click on "Fox News". Should FB feed me more right wing news? Probably: as you say, people want news they are interested in, perhaps for good reasons. Should it try feeding me more extreme stuff, to see if I'm interested in QAnon? Maybe not, but it's easy to imagine how recommender algorithms could end up doing that.
vages 6y ago
The crux of the article, summarised by its two final sentences: > That, however, is one of the reasons I spend so much time working on recommender systems. There is always an algorithm. The default one promotes rage, controversy and misinformation. But we don’t have to stick with the default.
AlexandrB 6y ago
I think the conclusion sums it up: > There is always an algorithm. The default one promotes rage, controversy and misinformation. But we don’t have to stick with the default. And I guess the real problem is that the financial incentives are set up such that sites like Facebook are motivated to choose[1] algorithms that are most suited at stoking engagement via rage and controversy. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-division-top-executives-nixed-solutions-11590507499 https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-di...
umvi 6y ago
I created my own bubble on Facebook. People would write or share these inflammatory political posts I disagreed with, but I just knew if I commented it would cause contention (which I wanted to avoid since these are my friends), so instead I "unfollowed". A few dozen unfollows later, and I'm now magically in a bubble where my feed is devoid of inflammatory political posts! I did the same thing with reddit. Unsubscribed to subreddits I didn't want to see anymore and subscribed to ones I did, and now my reddit front page is 100% programming links, gamedev links, 3d modelling, cooking, and a few other niche interests I have.
- ben509 6y ago
  Likewise. What's dismaying is that there's no practical way on Facebook to have civil discussions about politics, it just doesn't work. I don't think it'd even be all that hard. What you'd want to do is have a mode for contentious topics whereby personal identities are hidden, so there's no personal investment and only ideas are presented. And you'd want to be able to cite problems with a claim, i.e. you select some text to flag "this is confusing / inflammatory / unsupported," so that people don't go in circles because they don't understand each other or can deal with something that's insulting by having the person tone it down.
  - optimalsolver 6y ago
    >What's dismaying is that there's no practical way on Facebook to have civil discussions about politics, it just doesn't work I think that applies to the Internet in general, including HN. I've never seen an online community improved by allowing more object-level political discussion.
- overthemoon 6y ago
  That's the ticket. I did the same. Still friends, because staying connected on FB does matter to me on some level, but I don't see the political thoughts that annoy me. For what it's worth, disagreement != annoying. I still read the stuff published by people I disagree with but find challenging in some way, and unfollowed people I agree with but who present their views in frustrating or obnoxious ways. This is purely my own experience, but I find that I need to be in the right mindset to read something that's going to challenge me. If I'm scrolling for a few hits of updates from people I care about, I'm not going to be in the right state of mind to read something that's going to get me riled up. The bubble may or may not be inevitable, but it's a necessity. Being aware of feedback loops and managing your own media intake is probably more important than finding ways to prevent those loops entirely, IMO.
floatrock 6y ago
And "litterbug" was a term invented by the packaging industry in a PR campaign that shifted blame about packaging waste from the manufacturers to the consumers. This is a low-effort content marketing fluff piece that just says this company's recommendation engine has a "serendipity knob." It avoids the pernicious bits like how business models built on eyeball engagement result in a death march towards maximizing engagement metrics, and engineering the most addictive filter bubble has proven a pretty effective way to juice some PM's quarterly numbers. Make a post on how to break that model, don't say "we have a serendipity knob tuned to 9.4%!"
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Litterbug is a real thing though, IMO. I don't want Coke to sell me a handful of Coke; I want it in a watertight container. If, when I'm done with that container, I throw it on the ground, how is that Coke's fault? Same question for a fast-food wrapper. Do we think McDonalds should serve its food loose?
  - dkdbejwi383 6y ago
    They could lease the watertight container to you for a deposit, and when you return the watertight container to them, they clean it and re-use it.
    - dragontamer 6y ago
      What assurances do you have that said containers are washed between uses? A restaurant will wash their stuff to make sure that you're a return customer. But a big advantage of once-opened / once-disposed containers is that I can suddenly trust random street vendors with no relationship to me.
      - simias 6y ago
        If you're willing to trust your restaurant you should also probably trust Coca Cola. Not because I think Coca Cola is more honest, but do you imagine the PR nightmare if employee #832453 captures a video on their smartphone of dirty bottles being reused? This type of fraud/malpractice is much more likely to be seen in small restaurants with little oversight and loose processes that at a multi-million dollar bottling plant.
ben509 6y ago
The "people do" half of the headline isn't really addressed in the article, but it links to a piece[1] that proposes a mechanism. [1]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...
pca006132 6y ago
However, if the bubble is big enough, it won't be boring for the person living within it right? The topics for far left/right can be pretty diverse...
elliekelly 6y ago
> Just say no to filter bubbles. But then... > newsletter, selected based on your interests Maybe I misunderstand what a "filter bubble" is? Because this seems like a type of filter bubble to me. Perhaps a little looser (and less rage-inducing) than Facebook but it still seems designed to keep people reading content only within their bubble-of-interest while filtering out the rest.
- didibus 6y ago
  Ya, I think recommender systems assume a filter bubble. I'm not an expert so hopefully someone can correct me, but filtering based on ones existing interest seems to be the use case no? What I'd like to see is something that can select for quality, and not for interest. I think this is what you often get with human manual curation. For example, I can happily read a well written well researched thought piece even if the content speaks to opinions I don't currently hold. Or news source that at least appear to have done their research and provide ample evidence and facts, no matter what the content is for. Similarly with entertainment too, friends can recommend some new great war movie even if I'm not generally into war movies, or some new great book even if I rarely read fiction, etc. I don't really know how to judge quality though. When someone asks me what kind of music I like, I tend to answer I just like good music. What does that mean? I'm not sure. Could machine learning figure out what that means if it trained on my personal liked music tracks? Would it learn the qualities I'm interested in, or would it end up only learning my personal preferences at the time?
ineedasername 6y ago
preventing filter bubbles (so to speak) is an explicit design goal of recommender systems. Of course it's a goal. They're just not very good at achieving that goal. I wouldn't expect someone who makes their living building these things to be unbiased on the question of whether or not they're currently a bad thing. If I search incognito youtube for "Trump Speech" and select the first video, 3 of the next 4 "up next" are also Trump speeches, and the other one is "McCarthy SHREDS Pelosi". If I click on of those 4, the next "up next" videos are different, but also 3 of the first 4 are Trump speeches. The other one is a Trump-Biden debate. This is a filter bubble. Sure, human psychology plays a part, that's why algorithms like this work in the first place. But compare this to the opposite extreme pre 24-hour news networks and there was simply much less opportunity for playing into this. That's what algorithms provide: The ability to "instantiate" filter bubbles much more readily than content that is passively delivered without consideration for past choices, and the consumer has to make all of their choices without that outside influence.
nojito 6y ago
This is a terrible piece we know that Algos have caused bubbles because they chase engagement. https://www.algotransparency.org/ https://www.algotransparency.org/ https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.03318.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.03318.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/how-youtube-helps-form-homogeneous-online-communities/ https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/how-youtube-helps-form-...
DC1350 6y ago
Reddit doesn’t use algorithmic curation (or pretends not to?) but it’s one of the most polarized sites I’ve ever used. Blaming machine learning or misinformation is just a comforting and easy way to dismiss real problems.
specialist 6y ago
Heh. This line would be a full-stop for my librarian SO: > It’s referred to in the literature as “serendipity.” But otherwise I'm very grateful for this article. For it reminds me that someone should update (adapt) the Propaganda Model for social media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model#Filters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model#Filters That would be far more constructive than the alternative theories floated, eg Eli Pariser (filter bubble), Ben Thompson (aggregation model), and this technopositivistic missive. Has anyone asked Chomsky? I've looked, but no joy. -- Edit: > There is always an algorithm. The default one promotes rage, controversy and misinformation. But we don’t have to stick with the default. Clap louder, and surely Tinkerbell will fly.
cdrini 6y ago
I think recommendation algorithms provide a useful service, but I think the main issue is that for a lot of sites there's no way to explore the content _without_ that algorithm which is heavily biased in your favour. Things you dislike are minimised and slowly hidden from you to make it seem like no one likes these things. Things you enjoy are proliferated to make it seem like everyone likes these things. This gives a warped view of the world. Showing a random article 10% of the time isn't going to help with that. An experimental interface I worked on last year (and am working on) is using classification systems to let people explore the books of Open Library, https://openlibrary.org/explore https://openlibrary.org/explore (beta warning :) ). The idea being that you can quickly dive deep into a topic you're interested in, but just because you're interested in "Science", that doesn't mean the "Arts" or the "Religion" bookcases adjacent to it will become any smaller. You're always in the context of the bigger picture of the entirety of human knowledge.
sufehmi 6y ago
"Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do" "There is always an algorithm. The default one promotes rage, controversy and misinformation" This guy is a massive idiot and he doesn't know it yet.
- sufehmi 6y ago
  it's worth preserving as a warning to future generations. https://web.archive.org/web/20210309163058/https://news.findka.com/p/algorithms-dont-cause-filter-bubbles https://web.archive.org/web/20210309163058/https://news.find...
amai 6y ago
The problem is not the filter bubble. The problem is who controls the filter bubble. If I can control my own filter bubble I'm fine with that. If some BigTech company or some Government is controlling my filter bubble I call that censorship. Shameless plug: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/filterbubble/amgnookcdbjfnnppjdddkbjdacdajlmk https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/filterbubble/amgno...
cafard 6y ago
Our household subscribes to The Washington Post and The New York Times. If the radio is on, it is tuned to NPR. I have relatives who do not get a print paper, but tend to read the The New York Post and The Washington Examiner on-line. The watch Fox News and at some point probably listened to Rush Limbaugh. Do we get rather different views of what is going on? I can't see how we could not. Did an algorithm have anything to do with this? You would have to dramatically stretch the sense of "algorithm" to say so.

52 points by jacobobryant 6y ago

In fact, preventing filter bubbles (so to speak) is an explicit design goal of recommender systems. This is one of those annoying articles where someone talks about their specific interest as if it's a universal truth for an entire domain of problems. For an Amazon product listing or a Buzzfeed news page that thrives on users seeing new and exciting stuff to click on and buy, sure, the recommender system needs to avoid getting stuck on one specific type of content. For your Facebook newsfeed or YouTube video sidebar where divisive politics rules the day it is not absolutely not goal because that would stray in to challenging user's beliefs, and that would push people away.

endisneigh 6y ago

I’ve never understood this logic - algorithms are written by people. It’s not like they descend down from heaven.

dfxm12 6y ago
It's more of an idiom than a prepositional formula. It means that people would create their own filter bubbles, even in the absence of an algorithm, so blaming algorithms or trying to do away with them if your goal is to eliminate filter bubbles is moot.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  That's a strawman argument. Seeing filter bubbles as bad doesn't mean the only approach is to remove all filter bubbles in all of existence. You can lessen the number of and ease of making filter bubbles and still have a positive impact on society.
bregma 6y ago
Are you using the term 'algorithm' in the mathematical and computer-science sense of "a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations", or are you using it in the SV-marketing-hype sense of "an ML trained to produce the answer we want to see"? It can be very confusing switching back and forth.
nivenkos 6y ago
Except Paxos, no man understands that.
optimalsolver 6y ago
>It’s not like they descend down from heaven They were granted to us by the Ixians.

coding123 6y ago

Read the whole thing before you rage the title.

hirundo 6y ago

> That, however, is one of the reasons I spend so much time working on recommender systems. There is always an algorithm. The default one promotes rage, controversy and misinformation. But we don’t have to stick with the default. No we don't. But does anyone think that Twitter would have risen as it has if it did not select for rage and controversy? There is an algorithm on another layer of the stack that filters out more neutral content: The free choices of users in an open market. If Twitter (et al.) did make an effort to screen out its most viral content it would simply lose market share to a platform that doesn't.

dash2 6y ago

On the subject of "should we blame algorithms", here is some nice new research with an elegant field experiment, which suggests that yes, Facebook's algorithm does lead to filter bubbles: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3653388 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3653388

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dang 6y ago
That would make a great submission in its own right.
- dash2 6y ago
  Done! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26411818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26411818
Nasrudith 6y ago
Isn't that a distraction from the real issue? If people want filter bubbles (for themselves but not others like usual) it doesn't matter who made a particular one. People don't want spam or crap they will never agree with and want stuff they are interested in.
- dash2 6y ago
  I think it's non-obvious that Facebook's only following consumer demand here. People are on FB for lots of reasons, including network effects that are hard to change, and the company probably has a lot of leeway to alter its bubble without changing that. Indeed, they've already made many changes. There's also a lot of possible variation in the strength of the bubble. Suppose I click on "Fox News". Should FB feed me more right wing news? Probably: as you say, people want news they are interested in, perhaps for good reasons. Should it try feeding me more extreme stuff, to see if I'm interested in QAnon? Maybe not, but it's easy to imagine how recommender algorithms could end up doing that.

vages 6y ago

The crux of the article, summarised by its two final sentences: > That, however, is one of the reasons I spend so much time working on recommender systems. There is always an algorithm. The default one promotes rage, controversy and misinformation. But we don’t have to stick with the default.

AlexandrB 6y ago

I think the conclusion sums it up: > There is always an algorithm. The default one promotes rage, controversy and misinformation. But we don’t have to stick with the default. And I guess the real problem is that the financial incentives are set up such that sites like Facebook are motivated to choose[1] algorithms that are most suited at stoking engagement via rage and controversy. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-division-top-executives-nixed-solutions-11590507499 https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-di...

umvi 6y ago

I created my own bubble on Facebook. People would write or share these inflammatory political posts I disagreed with, but I just knew if I commented it would cause contention (which I wanted to avoid since these are my friends), so instead I "unfollowed". A few dozen unfollows later, and I'm now magically in a bubble where my feed is devoid of inflammatory political posts! I did the same thing with reddit. Unsubscribed to subreddits I didn't want to see anymore and subscribed to ones I did, and now my reddit front page is 100% programming links, gamedev links, 3d modelling, cooking, and a few other niche interests I have.

ben509 6y ago
Likewise. What's dismaying is that there's no practical way on Facebook to have civil discussions about politics, it just doesn't work. I don't think it'd even be all that hard. What you'd want to do is have a mode for contentious topics whereby personal identities are hidden, so there's no personal investment and only ideas are presented. And you'd want to be able to cite problems with a claim, i.e. you select some text to flag "this is confusing / inflammatory / unsupported," so that people don't go in circles because they don't understand each other or can deal with something that's insulting by having the person tone it down.
- optimalsolver 6y ago
  >What's dismaying is that there's no practical way on Facebook to have civil discussions about politics, it just doesn't work I think that applies to the Internet in general, including HN. I've never seen an online community improved by allowing more object-level political discussion.
overthemoon 6y ago
That's the ticket. I did the same. Still friends, because staying connected on FB does matter to me on some level, but I don't see the political thoughts that annoy me. For what it's worth, disagreement != annoying. I still read the stuff published by people I disagree with but find challenging in some way, and unfollowed people I agree with but who present their views in frustrating or obnoxious ways. This is purely my own experience, but I find that I need to be in the right mindset to read something that's going to challenge me. If I'm scrolling for a few hits of updates from people I care about, I'm not going to be in the right state of mind to read something that's going to get me riled up. The bubble may or may not be inevitable, but it's a necessity. Being aware of feedback loops and managing your own media intake is probably more important than finding ways to prevent those loops entirely, IMO.

floatrock 6y ago

And "litterbug" was a term invented by the packaging industry in a PR campaign that shifted blame about packaging waste from the manufacturers to the consumers. This is a low-effort content marketing fluff piece that just says this company's recommendation engine has a "serendipity knob." It avoids the pernicious bits like how business models built on eyeball engagement result in a death march towards maximizing engagement metrics, and engineering the most addictive filter bubble has proven a pretty effective way to juice some PM's quarterly numbers. Make a post on how to break that model, don't say "we have a serendipity knob tuned to 9.4%!"

sokoloff 6y ago
Litterbug is a real thing though, IMO. I don't want Coke to sell me a handful of Coke; I want it in a watertight container. If, when I'm done with that container, I throw it on the ground, how is that Coke's fault? Same question for a fast-food wrapper. Do we think McDonalds should serve its food loose?
- dkdbejwi383 6y ago
  They could lease the watertight container to you for a deposit, and when you return the watertight container to them, they clean it and re-use it.
  - dragontamer 6y ago
    What assurances do you have that said containers are washed between uses? A restaurant will wash their stuff to make sure that you're a return customer. But a big advantage of once-opened / once-disposed containers is that I can suddenly trust random street vendors with no relationship to me.
    - simias 6y ago
      If you're willing to trust your restaurant you should also probably trust Coca Cola. Not because I think Coca Cola is more honest, but do you imagine the PR nightmare if employee #832453 captures a video on their smartphone of dirty bottles being reused? This type of fraud/malpractice is much more likely to be seen in small restaurants with little oversight and loose processes that at a multi-million dollar bottling plant.

ben509 6y ago

The "people do" half of the headline isn't really addressed in the article, but it links to a piece[1] that proposes a mechanism. [1]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...

pca006132 6y ago

However, if the bubble is big enough, it won't be boring for the person living within it right? The topics for far left/right can be pretty diverse...

elliekelly 6y ago

> Just say no to filter bubbles. But then... > newsletter, selected based on your interests Maybe I misunderstand what a "filter bubble" is? Because this seems like a type of filter bubble to me. Perhaps a little looser (and less rage-inducing) than Facebook but it still seems designed to keep people reading content only within their bubble-of-interest while filtering out the rest.

didibus 6y ago
Ya, I think recommender systems assume a filter bubble. I'm not an expert so hopefully someone can correct me, but filtering based on ones existing interest seems to be the use case no? What I'd like to see is something that can select for quality, and not for interest. I think this is what you often get with human manual curation. For example, I can happily read a well written well researched thought piece even if the content speaks to opinions I don't currently hold. Or news source that at least appear to have done their research and provide ample evidence and facts, no matter what the content is for. Similarly with entertainment too, friends can recommend some new great war movie even if I'm not generally into war movies, or some new great book even if I rarely read fiction, etc. I don't really know how to judge quality though. When someone asks me what kind of music I like, I tend to answer I just like good music. What does that mean? I'm not sure. Could machine learning figure out what that means if it trained on my personal liked music tracks? Would it learn the qualities I'm interested in, or would it end up only learning my personal preferences at the time?

ineedasername 6y ago

preventing filter bubbles (so to speak) is an explicit design goal of recommender systems. Of course it's a goal. They're just not very good at achieving that goal. I wouldn't expect someone who makes their living building these things to be unbiased on the question of whether or not they're currently a bad thing. If I search incognito youtube for "Trump Speech" and select the first video, 3 of the next 4 "up next" are also Trump speeches, and the other one is "McCarthy SHREDS Pelosi". If I click on of those 4, the next "up next" videos are different, but also 3 of the first 4 are Trump speeches. The other one is a Trump-Biden debate. This is a filter bubble. Sure, human psychology plays a part, that's why algorithms like this work in the first place. But compare this to the opposite extreme pre 24-hour news networks and there was simply much less opportunity for playing into this. That's what algorithms provide: The ability to "instantiate" filter bubbles much more readily than content that is passively delivered without consideration for past choices, and the consumer has to make all of their choices without that outside influence.

nojito 6y ago

This is a terrible piece we know that Algos have caused bubbles because they chase engagement. https://www.algotransparency.org/ https://www.algotransparency.org/ https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.03318.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.03318.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/how-youtube-helps-form-homogeneous-online-communities/ https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/how-youtube-helps-form-...

DC1350 6y ago

Reddit doesn’t use algorithmic curation (or pretends not to?) but it’s one of the most polarized sites I’ve ever used. Blaming machine learning or misinformation is just a comforting and easy way to dismiss real problems.

specialist 6y ago

Heh. This line would be a full-stop for my librarian SO: > It’s referred to in the literature as “serendipity.” But otherwise I'm very grateful for this article. For it reminds me that someone should update (adapt) the Propaganda Model for social media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model#Filters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model#Filters That would be far more constructive than the alternative theories floated, eg Eli Pariser (filter bubble), Ben Thompson (aggregation model), and this technopositivistic missive. Has anyone asked Chomsky? I've looked, but no joy. -- Edit: > There is always an algorithm. The default one promotes rage, controversy and misinformation. But we don’t have to stick with the default. Clap louder, and surely Tinkerbell will fly.

cdrini 6y ago

I think recommendation algorithms provide a useful service, but I think the main issue is that for a lot of sites there's no way to explore the content _without_ that algorithm which is heavily biased in your favour. Things you dislike are minimised and slowly hidden from you to make it seem like no one likes these things. Things you enjoy are proliferated to make it seem like everyone likes these things. This gives a warped view of the world. Showing a random article 10% of the time isn't going to help with that. An experimental interface I worked on last year (and am working on) is using classification systems to let people explore the books of Open Library, https://openlibrary.org/explore https://openlibrary.org/explore (beta warning :) ). The idea being that you can quickly dive deep into a topic you're interested in, but just because you're interested in "Science", that doesn't mean the "Arts" or the "Religion" bookcases adjacent to it will become any smaller. You're always in the context of the bigger picture of the entirety of human knowledge.

sufehmi 6y ago

"Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do" "There is always an algorithm. The default one promotes rage, controversy and misinformation" This guy is a massive idiot and he doesn't know it yet.

sufehmi 6y ago
it's worth preserving as a warning to future generations. https://web.archive.org/web/20210309163058/https://news.findka.com/p/algorithms-dont-cause-filter-bubbles https://web.archive.org/web/20210309163058/https://news.find...

amai 6y ago

The problem is not the filter bubble. The problem is who controls the filter bubble. If I can control my own filter bubble I'm fine with that. If some BigTech company or some Government is controlling my filter bubble I call that censorship. Shameless plug: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/filterbubble/amgnookcdbjfnnppjdddkbjdacdajlmk https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/filterbubble/amgno...

cafard 6y ago

Our household subscribes to The Washington Post and The New York Times. If the radio is on, it is tuned to NPR. I have relatives who do not get a print paper, but tend to read the The New York Post and The Washington Examiner on-line. The watch Fox News and at some point probably listened to Rush Limbaugh. Do we get rather different views of what is going on? I can't see how we could not. Did an algorithm have anything to do with this? You would have to dramatically stretch the sense of "algorithm" to say so.