4 ms·
That's not a fair comparison. Hacker News isn't making user based recommendations based on the content of the article or user preferences, Facebook is. FB's re
by nend 5y ago
That's not a fair comparison. Hacker News isn't making user based recommendations based on the content of the article or user preferences, Facebook is.
FB's recommendation algorithm is tuned to promote (by their own admittance), divisive content because it promotes engagement. AND it's tuned based on specific user data.
HN doesn't recommend specific content to specific users. It's based on site-wide upvotes, downvotes, and flagging, and doesn't take the actual content of the links in to account at all.
I'm not saying you can legislate the difference and stop FB while keeping a free internet. But HN and FB are not remotely doing the same thing and is not an argument why it's fine for FB to continue doing what they're doing.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago> That's not a fair comparison. Hacker News isn't making user based recommendations based on the content of the article or user preferences, Facebook is. Okay, then consider Reddit. Or Twitter. Or YouTube. Or Spotify's podcast recommendations. or Netflix's what to watch next recommendations. Letting users indicate their interests and then receive recommendations according to their interests is core to every recommendation engine on the internet. Obviously we're not going to ban recommendations engines or disallow recommending content to users based on what they want to see.
- delecti 5y agoWe don't need to draw a specific line where it becomes a problem to be able to say that Facebook has been irresponsible with their recommendations. Though on that note, Youtube's recommendations have also been implicated as pipeline for radicalizing people.
- rapind 5y agoThere exist recommendations engines who’s goals are solely to be useful. It’s the recommendation engines tuned to drive engagement for the purpose of advertising that are the issue. It’s a business model (enabled by tech) problem.