3 ms·
Excerpts from one of the leaked documents. Disturbing.: > Research conducted in the EU reveals that political parties "feel strongly that the change to the alg
by foofoo4u 5y ago
Excerpts from one of the leaked documents. Disturbing.:
> Research conducted in the EU reveals that political parties "feel strongly that the change to the algorithm has forced them to skew negative in their communications on Facebook, with the downstream effect of leading them into more extreme policy positions." For example, in Poland, "one party’s social media management team estimates that they have shifted the proportion of their posts from 50/50 positive/negative to 80% negative and 20% positive, explicitly as a function of the change to the algorithm… Many parties, including those that have shifted strongly to the negative, worry about the long-term effects on democracy." We have heard similar feedback from parties in India and Taiwan.
> News publishers, too, are concerned about the incentives MSI created. We received direct feedback from BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti that his team feels "MSI ranking isn’t actually rewarding content that drives meaningful social interactions. They feel pressure to make bad content or underperform." Peretti related that "when we create meaningful content, it doesn’t get rewarded, "but more sensationalist and divisive content (such as "fad/junky science", "extremely disturbing news", "gross" images, and content exploiting racial divisions) is more successful.
- kordlessagain 5y agoFuck Facebook.
- owl_troupe 5y ago> For example, in Poland, "one party’s social media management team estimates that they have shifted the proportion of their posts from 50/50 positive/negative to 80% negative and 20% positive, explicitly as a function of the change to the algorithm… Many parties, including those that have shifted strongly to the negative, worry about the long-term effects on democracy." Not only democracy but, eventually, world peace. There are an increasing number of countries turning toward authoritarianism and the effects here could not only polarize political discourse, but also international relations.
- yosito 5y ago> the change to the algorithm has forced them to skew negative in their communications on Facebook I suspect that one of the reasons for this is that negative reactions to posts (like anger) actually have a positive effect on engagement. Facebook never really implemented any kind of downvote like other platforms have. Downvotes tend to suppress content that people don't want to see.