8 ms·

That's because the "marketplace of ideas" is being distorted by algorithms that are going to favor "provocative" ideas that drive clicks. Exciting lies defeat b

That's because the "marketplace of ideas" is being distorted by algorithms that are going to favor "provocative" ideas that drive clicks. Exciting lies defeat boring truths.

Nursie 5y ago
That may well be a big factor, and that's something that needs to be looked at more closely. Lots of people describe being drawn down the rabbithole by algorithmically driven suggestions which nudge them ever more extreme.
- suzzer99 5y ago
  I have thought this for a while. Algorithms are something entirely new to human discourse. Apparently I watched some alt-right-adjacent podcast or something, so for weeks youtube kept recommending seriously racist, fascist, white nationalist content. The algorithm was actively trying to lead me down the rabbit hole. Obviously it's learned that doing so increases engagement.
justbored123 5y ago
That tells you that "marketplace of ideas" is a dumb idea, because we already have proved a million times that people are not the rational creatures that we were sold we were for a long time. We are smart apes, but apes none the least: emotionally driven by our limbic system, very tribal and status seeking. Prone to rationalize all these basic impulses in a million different ways creating the illusion of rational individualism. The algorithms just shows us our true nature, don't make the mistake of shooting the messenger.
- readflaggedcomm 5y ago
  If the algorithm distorts conversation, then how can you be sure it more accurately reflects human nature? How does something that isn't a marketplace of ideas prove it's dumb? Or should this question be punished by your algorithm?
  - notahacker 5y ago
    The main agenda the algorithm has is selecting stuff human nature has a high propensity to click on...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwaway316943 5y ago
      Alternatively, it simply makes it easier to click on the presented content than to purposely seek out other content. Front pages and headlines dominate media for a reason.
    - acituan 5y ago
      Kind of like drug cartels having the agenda of producing drugs that human nature has a high propensity to be drawn to? In the face of hyperstimuli, we can't talk about mere human propensities as a justification, else we would have already turned ourselves into junkies many times over. How many years did it take for heroin go from a cough medicine to a schedule I drug? Amphetamines, cigarettes etc. There is a reason you can't put simply everything on the marketplace, and that is OK. That doesn't mean the idea of a marketplace is broken.
    - readflaggedcomm 5y ago
      That's an assumption which critics of these algorithms would disagree with.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  The marketplace of ideas works. It may not work in the timescale you want or with the tradeoffs you want while the truth settles out, but I think these claims that it doesn’t work are hasty. Furthermore there isn’t a better alternative. Right now censorship from platform owners is abusively used to skew political discussions, using the pretense of factuality. I regularly see fact checkers make mistakes or make misleading claims or they inconsistent apply scrutiny. I see trusted organizations like old newspapers and health organizations (like the WHO) regularly make mistakes or sell their own speculation as incontrovertible truth. Trust cannot be given to a few lone entities. The marketplace of ideas doesn’t have this problem since it is decentralized.
  - mandmandam 5y ago
    >The marketplace of ideas works. It may not work in the timescale you want I'm astounded anyone can say that with a straight face. The misinformation for profit strategies employed by big tobacco, oil, military, pharma etc. have proven extraordinarily effective, time and time again. The timescales are nothing to do with "what I want" and everything to do with the fate of people's lives. From losing relatives to cancer and COPD caused by smoking, to the extreme and rapid and irreversible loss of species, this idea that we can trust in invisible forces to save us from demonic ultra-wealthy cunts with no conscience whatsoever is baldly stupid, to the point of criminality. That said - censorship from platform owners *is* abusively used to skew political discussions, and indeed I'd agree "trust cannot be given to"a few lone entities." But the record shows quite clearly that the marketplace of ideas, as such exists, is corrupt, perverted, poisoned, bought, sold and not fit for purpose.
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      How can you say that with regards to tobacco? It's all but illegal, completely banned in most public places, you can basically only use it in your home or outdoors alone. "Not on the timescale you want" is the salient point.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kbelder 5y ago
  There is a marketplace of ideas. That's not anything that is ever going to change. Concepts spread and are accepted or they don't. The question is only how. Is it going to be by dictate? Is a church or government or institution going to enforce which ideas spread, or is it going to be free, spreading at the level of the individual? There is no moral alternative to the free exchange of ideas. The only alternative is a restricted exchange... censorship and punishment.
  - Nursie 5y ago
    > or is it going to be free, spreading at the level of the individual? And what are the consequences of that? When people talk about the marketplace of ideas they tend to think of good, beneficial, ideas winning out over foolishness, conspiracy and just plain inaccuracy. This has been shown up as naive lately. And if we really are talking about the "marketplace of ideas" being raw, Darwinian, strongest wins, then are we prepared to deal with the fallout of the fact that loud, motivated, well funded bullshit merchants will continue to have a huge grip over the public dialogue?
    - tekknik 5y ago
      Censorship has also turned out recently to be a bad idea. Neither solution is perfect but since censorship has the basis to destroy information we should choose the less dangerous path of “do nothing”. What is so dangerous lately that has you concerned?
    - mythrwy 5y ago
      I feel you are possibly too cynical about the ability of people to (eventually) figure things out. Because something is posted on the internet doesn't mean large numbers of people actually believe it. There will always be "wrong" people. That will never change. But there is a degree of wisdom in crowds. Proper education and "good" cultural values are extremely important and we haven't done so well instilling those lately.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Or that a few algorithms created by a few companies does not constitute anything remotely resembling a marketplace.
  - Natsu 5y ago
    The usual idea of a marketplace is preserving people's freedom to go to alternatives. Yes, sometimes that freedom has to be preserved via intervention to preserve choices (e.g. antitrust laws), but it's always weird to me to see the critique used as a reason for less freedom rather than more.
  - verdverm 5y ago
    People can choose to get their information from places other than the large platforms. To me, the "marketplace" is the internet as a whole. If people choose to stay on the platform, is it not similar to choosing CNN and not ever looking at Fox? In the end, people have many options but choose to limit which options they engage with
    - tekknik 5y ago
      There’s a section in the EFF on why not being on the large networks is a detriment.
  - mythrwy 5y ago
    Also the shock "wrongthink" things we see on the internet might not be a representative sample of what the general public actually believes.
galaxyLogic 5y ago
That is no doubt true (about how the algorithms work). At the same time what we see is that there is a market, demand, for misinformation. And some people are making money from that. Why is there so much misinformation about Covid vaccines and vaccines in general? Because people want to believe in such misinformation and because that allows websites to make money from their readership. Therefore the peddling of misinformation continues. It is not so different from what publications like National Inquirer and Weekly World News have been doing for a long time. But instead of paying for National Inquirer you can now get such misinformation for free on the web, because you are paying for that by spending your time seeing the advertisements. Information wants to be "free" whatever that means, but people want misinformation, to give them the feeling they are right about their prejudices. SEE: https://fortune.com/2021/05/14/disinformation-media-vaccine-covid19/ https://fortune.com/2021/05/14/disinformation-media-vaccine-...
- Applejinx 5y ago
  Because there are sociopolitical actors who can extract direct benefit from OTHER people believing misinformation to their detriment. You are omitting this motivation, and it's a significant factor, worth spending money and energy on if your motivation is to harm a population that you see as your enemy. This assumes a global marketplace of information propagation. That's the new factor here: the actual motivation isn't all that new.
  - galaxyLogic 5y ago
    I wonder how prevalent the will to "harm a population" is. I think it's more about benefitting oneself financially than trying to harm others. Politically speaking yes politicians try to harm (the popularity of) their opponents. But politicians are a very small slice of the population.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > Weekly World News This has always been obvious satire.
worker767424 5y ago
I actually think algorithms are more likely to promote things that either reinforce your existing beliefs or incite outrage.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  That is an idea extremely unlikely to be contested, given what we've known for a few years now.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tlholaday 5y ago
It seems unfair to deprecate algorithms which "favor 'provocative' ideas that drive clicks" as a `distortion` of the marketplace of ideas. It seems more that by driving clicks, the algorithms are `facilitating` the marketplace. People are signaling the ideas they prefer, idea suppliers are producing more of such ideas, and the people get these ideas at ever-lower prices. How is that in any way a distortion of an ideal marketplace?
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  There is no ideal marketplace of ideas. It takes years to fully develop an understanding of any particular ideology. How are you supposed to judge which one is better at interpreting the world on such a short term system? There is simply too much friction in the ideological marketplace for it to approximate even loosely an ideal market.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  It's an ideal "twitch" marketplace, not an ideal "deep thought" marketplace. "The marketplace of ideas" wasn't usually considered to be about gossip, rumor, or entertainment. Those are... something, but not "the marketplace of ideas".
- naasking 5y ago
  Provocative ideas are not the same as good ideas. These algorithms artificially promote provocative ideas because that drives revenue. That's a market distortion, just like subsidies distort economic markets.
trentnix 5y ago
The lab-leak hypothesis is provocative (and probably true), but got smothered anyway. It was just inconsistent with the narrative.
- the_gipsy 5y ago
  You believe in the narrative?
  - tekknik 5y ago
    There was quite a public display last election about news orgs agreeing to not cover Biden in negative light so as to not hurt his chances. What would you call this?
    - the_gipsy 5y ago
      I don’t know, newspapers support one party or another. The narrative with emphasis makes you sound like a nutjob.
      - tekknik 5y ago
        > I don’t know, newspapers support one party or another. Yea that’s one, extremely light-footed, way to explain it. It doesn’t cover all left biased news sounding near identical though nor does it cover the dangers of group think mentality which we see manifesting now. > The narrative with emphasis makes you sound like a nutjob. That's a pretty petty thing to have issue wouldn't you say? But ok, dems now say using italics makes you a nut job, lets ban italics now.
        the_gipsy 5y ago
        Same could be said about right biased news, and this has always been like that (both sides of spectrum) since the invention of newspapers basically. I'm not American, hell I can't even remember which of democrats/republicans are more or less conservative - or which animal logo is which. What I'm saying is, that using the narrative makes you sound like a conspiracy nutjob that insinuates that there is some conspiracy going on.
8note 5y ago
I don't think there is a marketplace of ideas that can be separated from the algorithms used to promote them. Every ordering of content is going to favour something, even chronological. Somebody will find a way to abuse any sorting mechanism you use
- Nydhal 5y ago
  Give the user the driving wheel of the recommendation or open up the algorithms. It's not that complicated.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Rd6n6 5y ago
Speaking of, I wish hn would hide upvote counts. If I wrote something provocative and stinging here against social media, it would be karma city, and it feels good to see your number go up. Thats not a temptation I like

That's because the "marketplace of ideas" is being distorted by algorithms that are going to favor "provocative" ideas that drive clicks. Exciting lies defeat boring truths.

Nursie 5y ago

That may well be a big factor, and that's something that needs to be looked at more closely. Lots of people describe being drawn down the rabbithole by algorithmically driven suggestions which nudge them ever more extreme.

suzzer99 5y ago
I have thought this for a while. Algorithms are something entirely new to human discourse. Apparently I watched some alt-right-adjacent podcast or something, so for weeks youtube kept recommending seriously racist, fascist, white nationalist content. The algorithm was actively trying to lead me down the rabbit hole. Obviously it's learned that doing so increases engagement.

justbored123 5y ago

That tells you that "marketplace of ideas" is a dumb idea, because we already have proved a million times that people are not the rational creatures that we were sold we were for a long time. We are smart apes, but apes none the least: emotionally driven by our limbic system, very tribal and status seeking. Prone to rationalize all these basic impulses in a million different ways creating the illusion of rational individualism. The algorithms just shows us our true nature, don't make the mistake of shooting the messenger.

readflaggedcomm 5y ago
If the algorithm distorts conversation, then how can you be sure it more accurately reflects human nature? How does something that isn't a marketplace of ideas prove it's dumb? Or should this question be punished by your algorithm?
- notahacker 5y ago
  The main agenda the algorithm has is selecting stuff human nature has a high propensity to click on...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway316943 5y ago
    Alternatively, it simply makes it easier to click on the presented content than to purposely seek out other content. Front pages and headlines dominate media for a reason.
  - acituan 5y ago
    Kind of like drug cartels having the agenda of producing drugs that human nature has a high propensity to be drawn to? In the face of hyperstimuli, we can't talk about mere human propensities as a justification, else we would have already turned ourselves into junkies many times over. How many years did it take for heroin go from a cough medicine to a schedule I drug? Amphetamines, cigarettes etc. There is a reason you can't put simply everything on the marketplace, and that is OK. That doesn't mean the idea of a marketplace is broken.
  - readflaggedcomm 5y ago
    That's an assumption which critics of these algorithms would disagree with.
throwawaysea 5y ago
The marketplace of ideas works. It may not work in the timescale you want or with the tradeoffs you want while the truth settles out, but I think these claims that it doesn’t work are hasty. Furthermore there isn’t a better alternative. Right now censorship from platform owners is abusively used to skew political discussions, using the pretense of factuality. I regularly see fact checkers make mistakes or make misleading claims or they inconsistent apply scrutiny. I see trusted organizations like old newspapers and health organizations (like the WHO) regularly make mistakes or sell their own speculation as incontrovertible truth. Trust cannot be given to a few lone entities. The marketplace of ideas doesn’t have this problem since it is decentralized.
- mandmandam 5y ago
  >The marketplace of ideas works. It may not work in the timescale you want I'm astounded anyone can say that with a straight face. The misinformation for profit strategies employed by big tobacco, oil, military, pharma etc. have proven extraordinarily effective, time and time again. The timescales are nothing to do with "what I want" and everything to do with the fate of people's lives. From losing relatives to cancer and COPD caused by smoking, to the extreme and rapid and irreversible loss of species, this idea that we can trust in invisible forces to save us from demonic ultra-wealthy cunts with no conscience whatsoever is baldly stupid, to the point of criminality. That said - censorship from platform owners *is* abusively used to skew political discussions, and indeed I'd agree "trust cannot be given to"a few lone entities." But the record shows quite clearly that the marketplace of ideas, as such exists, is corrupt, perverted, poisoned, bought, sold and not fit for purpose.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    How can you say that with regards to tobacco? It's all but illegal, completely banned in most public places, you can basically only use it in your home or outdoors alone. "Not on the timescale you want" is the salient point.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kbelder 5y ago
There is a marketplace of ideas. That's not anything that is ever going to change. Concepts spread and are accepted or they don't. The question is only how. Is it going to be by dictate? Is a church or government or institution going to enforce which ideas spread, or is it going to be free, spreading at the level of the individual? There is no moral alternative to the free exchange of ideas. The only alternative is a restricted exchange... censorship and punishment.
- Nursie 5y ago
  > or is it going to be free, spreading at the level of the individual? And what are the consequences of that? When people talk about the marketplace of ideas they tend to think of good, beneficial, ideas winning out over foolishness, conspiracy and just plain inaccuracy. This has been shown up as naive lately. And if we really are talking about the "marketplace of ideas" being raw, Darwinian, strongest wins, then are we prepared to deal with the fallout of the fact that loud, motivated, well funded bullshit merchants will continue to have a huge grip over the public dialogue?
  - tekknik 5y ago
    Censorship has also turned out recently to be a bad idea. Neither solution is perfect but since censorship has the basis to destroy information we should choose the less dangerous path of “do nothing”. What is so dangerous lately that has you concerned?
  - mythrwy 5y ago
    I feel you are possibly too cynical about the ability of people to (eventually) figure things out. Because something is posted on the internet doesn't mean large numbers of people actually believe it. There will always be "wrong" people. That will never change. But there is a degree of wisdom in crowds. Proper education and "good" cultural values are extremely important and we haven't done so well instilling those lately.
tshaddox 5y ago
Or that a few algorithms created by a few companies does not constitute anything remotely resembling a marketplace.
- Natsu 5y ago
  The usual idea of a marketplace is preserving people's freedom to go to alternatives. Yes, sometimes that freedom has to be preserved via intervention to preserve choices (e.g. antitrust laws), but it's always weird to me to see the critique used as a reason for less freedom rather than more.
- verdverm 5y ago
  People can choose to get their information from places other than the large platforms. To me, the "marketplace" is the internet as a whole. If people choose to stay on the platform, is it not similar to choosing CNN and not ever looking at Fox? In the end, people have many options but choose to limit which options they engage with
  - tekknik 5y ago
    There’s a section in the EFF on why not being on the large networks is a detriment.
- mythrwy 5y ago
  Also the shock "wrongthink" things we see on the internet might not be a representative sample of what the general public actually believes.

galaxyLogic 5y ago

That is no doubt true (about how the algorithms work). At the same time what we see is that there is a market, demand, for misinformation. And some people are making money from that. Why is there so much misinformation about Covid vaccines and vaccines in general? Because people want to believe in such misinformation and because that allows websites to make money from their readership. Therefore the peddling of misinformation continues. It is not so different from what publications like National Inquirer and Weekly World News have been doing for a long time. But instead of paying for National Inquirer you can now get such misinformation for free on the web, because you are paying for that by spending your time seeing the advertisements. Information wants to be "free" whatever that means, but people want misinformation, to give them the feeling they are right about their prejudices. SEE: https://fortune.com/2021/05/14/disinformation-media-vaccine-covid19/ https://fortune.com/2021/05/14/disinformation-media-vaccine-...

Applejinx 5y ago
Because there are sociopolitical actors who can extract direct benefit from OTHER people believing misinformation to their detriment. You are omitting this motivation, and it's a significant factor, worth spending money and energy on if your motivation is to harm a population that you see as your enemy. This assumes a global marketplace of information propagation. That's the new factor here: the actual motivation isn't all that new.
- galaxyLogic 5y ago
  I wonder how prevalent the will to "harm a population" is. I think it's more about benefitting oneself financially than trying to harm others. Politically speaking yes politicians try to harm (the popularity of) their opponents. But politicians are a very small slice of the population.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
heavyset_go 5y ago
> Weekly World News This has always been obvious satire.

worker767424 5y ago

I actually think algorithms are more likely to promote things that either reinforce your existing beliefs or incite outrage.

robertlagrant 5y ago
That is an idea extremely unlikely to be contested, given what we've known for a few years now.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tlholaday 5y ago

It seems unfair to deprecate algorithms which "favor 'provocative' ideas that drive clicks" as a `distortion` of the marketplace of ideas. It seems more that by driving clicks, the algorithms are `facilitating` the marketplace. People are signaling the ideas they prefer, idea suppliers are producing more of such ideas, and the people get these ideas at ever-lower prices. How is that in any way a distortion of an ideal marketplace?

sudosysgen 5y ago
There is no ideal marketplace of ideas. It takes years to fully develop an understanding of any particular ideology. How are you supposed to judge which one is better at interpreting the world on such a short term system? There is simply too much friction in the ideological marketplace for it to approximate even loosely an ideal market.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
It's an ideal "twitch" marketplace, not an ideal "deep thought" marketplace. "The marketplace of ideas" wasn't usually considered to be about gossip, rumor, or entertainment. Those are... something, but not "the marketplace of ideas".
naasking 5y ago
Provocative ideas are not the same as good ideas. These algorithms artificially promote provocative ideas because that drives revenue. That's a market distortion, just like subsidies distort economic markets.

trentnix 5y ago

The lab-leak hypothesis is provocative (and probably true), but got smothered anyway. It was just inconsistent with the narrative.

the_gipsy 5y ago
You believe in the narrative?
- tekknik 5y ago
  There was quite a public display last election about news orgs agreeing to not cover Biden in negative light so as to not hurt his chances. What would you call this?
  - the_gipsy 5y ago
    I don’t know, newspapers support one party or another. The narrative with emphasis makes you sound like a nutjob.
    - tekknik 5y ago
      > I don’t know, newspapers support one party or another. Yea that’s one, extremely light-footed, way to explain it. It doesn’t cover all left biased news sounding near identical though nor does it cover the dangers of group think mentality which we see manifesting now. > The narrative with emphasis makes you sound like a nutjob. That's a pretty petty thing to have issue wouldn't you say? But ok, dems now say using italics makes you a nut job, lets ban italics now.
      - the_gipsy 5y ago
        Same could be said about right biased news, and this has always been like that (both sides of spectrum) since the invention of newspapers basically. I'm not American, hell I can't even remember which of democrats/republicans are more or less conservative - or which animal logo is which. What I'm saying is, that using the narrative makes you sound like a conspiracy nutjob that insinuates that there is some conspiracy going on.

8note 5y ago

I don't think there is a marketplace of ideas that can be separated from the algorithms used to promote them. Every ordering of content is going to favour something, even chronological. Somebody will find a way to abuse any sorting mechanism you use

Nydhal 5y ago
Give the user the driving wheel of the recommendation or open up the algorithms. It's not that complicated.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Rd6n6 5y ago

Speaking of, I wish hn would hide upvote counts. If I wrote something provocative and stinging here against social media, it would be karma city, and it feels good to see your number go up. Thats not a temptation I like