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No, actually, it's not any of these things. It's on HN that dang applies special rules to your comments if he doesn't like you. FB's algorithm is impersonal. Y

No, actually, it's not any of these things. It's on HN that dang applies special rules to your comments if he doesn't like you. FB's algorithm is impersonal. Your list of criteria is legally inactionable. Neither you nor anyone else can write down what precisely it is that FB should be prohibited from doing. All I see is a bunch of unproductive rhetoric about how this is bad or that is bad. Blah blah, filter bubbles, moderation, whatever. What is the exact definition of the criteria you would use to prohibit ranking algorithms?

specialist 5y ago
Regulating Facebook, making it safe for human consumption, is trivial. No targeted advertising. No algorithmic news feed. Voila. Fixed. RSS feed readers can do it. So can Facebook. > dang applies special rules to your comments if he doesn't like you. What's FB's equivalent to HN's guidelines? When has @dang violated his own guidelines? Are you suggesting that automated curation, moderating is without bias? > FB's algorithm is impersonal. FB's algorithms are hyper personal. Machine mediated curation is sociopathic, utterly lacking empathy, not impersonal. Repeating myself: every FB user gets their own news feed, every HN user sees the same thing.
- quotemstr 5y ago
  > No targeted advertising. Strong disagree. Why the hell shouldn't I be able show ads to people who want to see them? > No algorithmic news feed. HN is an algorithmic feed.
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    > Why the hell shouldn't I be able show ads to people who want to see them? Nobody's stopping you. If you want to show ads to people interested in football, post ads on a football site. If you want to show ads to people interested in horses, show them on a horses site. If this type of non-invasive targeting to display ads doesn't make you as much profit, well that's a you problem. > HN is an algorithmic feed. You seem to be struggling with the idea of a 'bespoke' algorithm where everyone's algorithm is different, informed by an internet-wide surveillance system. This is the difference between HN and FB.
  - specialist 5y ago
    Targeted ads. Targeted. As in specifically and exquisitely targeted to individual people based upon datum gathered from surveiling everyone. Still legitimate, and maybe even encouraged, are contextual ads, banners, sponsorships, branding, swag, paid placement, influencers, misc calls to action, etc. Please rest your concerns. Late stage capitalism will continue unimpeded after Facebook's wings are clipped. Social media will revert to less noxious enterprises, like metafilter and craigslist. > HN is an algorithmic feed. Opt-in. Transparent. What is FB's equivalent to HN's /newest? I'm not crazy about HN's ranking. It's pretty good, non-toxic, seems fair. But someone other than me is making judgement calls. I much prefer client side (user controlled) filtering and sorting, like with any generic RSS reader. Repeating myself: All HN visitors see the same feed. A crucial qualitative point you pointedly do not acknowledge. Nor do you answer any of my questions.
    - quotemstr 5y ago
      Ad targeting is just a bugbear for a section of the tech activist crowd. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with a site like Twitter noticing that I tend to post a lot about cats and showing me cat ads as a result. No, it's not self-evident that targeting is bad, and no, behavioral targeting doesn't require "surveiling" everyone internet-wide. > Late stage capitalism I don't subscribe to the neo-Marxist worldview that uses this "late stage capitalism" frame all the time. Capitalism is the natural order of the universe, not some temporary aberration on the way to your Utopia. > Opt-in. Transparent. Not transparent, and hardly opt-in: HN feed ranking is the default. > I much prefer client side (user controlled) filtering and sorting, like with any generic RSS reader. Okay, so people seeing different feeds is good... > Repeating myself: All HN visitors see the same feed. A crucial qualitative point you pointedly do not acknowledge. ... and now people seeing different feeds is bad. Make up your mind. Different people should see different feeds because they're interested in different things. There's nothing sinister or nefarious about showing people stories about topics that interest them and not showing them stories about topics that don't. I think even you'd agree that someone should be able to opt into seeing stories about "cooking" and opt out of stories about "motorcycles". Okay, that's good, right? Now what's wrong with using ML to infer, based on what someone reads, that he's interested in "cooking" and not "motorcycles"? This interest inference is what FB is doing. There's nothing bad about it. I maintain that the criticism you and others are lobbying against algorithmic feeds is logically incoherent, emotionally rooted, and unworkable as public policy.

specialist 5y ago

Regulating Facebook, making it safe for human consumption, is trivial. No targeted advertising. No algorithmic news feed. Voila. Fixed. RSS feed readers can do it. So can Facebook. > dang applies special rules to your comments if he doesn't like you. What's FB's equivalent to HN's guidelines? When has @dang violated his own guidelines? Are you suggesting that automated curation, moderating is without bias? > FB's algorithm is impersonal. FB's algorithms are hyper personal. Machine mediated curation is sociopathic, utterly lacking empathy, not impersonal. Repeating myself: every FB user gets their own news feed, every HN user sees the same thing.

quotemstr 5y ago
> No targeted advertising. Strong disagree. Why the hell shouldn't I be able show ads to people who want to see them? > No algorithmic news feed. HN is an algorithmic feed.
- mullingitover 5y ago
  > Why the hell shouldn't I be able show ads to people who want to see them? Nobody's stopping you. If you want to show ads to people interested in football, post ads on a football site. If you want to show ads to people interested in horses, show them on a horses site. If this type of non-invasive targeting to display ads doesn't make you as much profit, well that's a you problem. > HN is an algorithmic feed. You seem to be struggling with the idea of a 'bespoke' algorithm where everyone's algorithm is different, informed by an internet-wide surveillance system. This is the difference between HN and FB.
- specialist 5y ago
  Targeted ads. Targeted. As in specifically and exquisitely targeted to individual people based upon datum gathered from surveiling everyone. Still legitimate, and maybe even encouraged, are contextual ads, banners, sponsorships, branding, swag, paid placement, influencers, misc calls to action, etc. Please rest your concerns. Late stage capitalism will continue unimpeded after Facebook's wings are clipped. Social media will revert to less noxious enterprises, like metafilter and craigslist. > HN is an algorithmic feed. Opt-in. Transparent. What is FB's equivalent to HN's /newest? I'm not crazy about HN's ranking. It's pretty good, non-toxic, seems fair. But someone other than me is making judgement calls. I much prefer client side (user controlled) filtering and sorting, like with any generic RSS reader. Repeating myself: All HN visitors see the same feed. A crucial qualitative point you pointedly do not acknowledge. Nor do you answer any of my questions.
  - quotemstr 5y ago
    Ad targeting is just a bugbear for a section of the tech activist crowd. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with a site like Twitter noticing that I tend to post a lot about cats and showing me cat ads as a result. No, it's not self-evident that targeting is bad, and no, behavioral targeting doesn't require "surveiling" everyone internet-wide. > Late stage capitalism I don't subscribe to the neo-Marxist worldview that uses this "late stage capitalism" frame all the time. Capitalism is the natural order of the universe, not some temporary aberration on the way to your Utopia. > Opt-in. Transparent. Not transparent, and hardly opt-in: HN feed ranking is the default. > I much prefer client side (user controlled) filtering and sorting, like with any generic RSS reader. Okay, so people seeing different feeds is good... > Repeating myself: All HN visitors see the same feed. A crucial qualitative point you pointedly do not acknowledge. ... and now people seeing different feeds is bad. Make up your mind. Different people should see different feeds because they're interested in different things. There's nothing sinister or nefarious about showing people stories about topics that interest them and not showing them stories about topics that don't. I think even you'd agree that someone should be able to opt into seeing stories about "cooking" and opt out of stories about "motorcycles". Okay, that's good, right? Now what's wrong with using ML to infer, based on what someone reads, that he's interested in "cooking" and not "motorcycles"? This interest inference is what FB is doing. There's nothing bad about it. I maintain that the criticism you and others are lobbying against algorithmic feeds is logically incoherent, emotionally rooted, and unworkable as public policy.