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There’s a popular narrative that social media companies use algorithms that intentionally favor divisive content. WhatsApp is a useful illustration of how that
by fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
There’s a popular narrative that social media companies use algorithms that intentionally favor divisive content. WhatsApp is a useful illustration of how that narrative might be wrong.
The WhatsApp algorithm can be described as: “show the chat with the most recent reply at the top, then show the most recent reply at the bottom if the user clicks on that chat”.
Suppose the Twitter algorithm was: “show the tweet with the highest count recent replies at the top of the feed, then show the most recent reply at the bottom if the user clicks on that tweet”
That is a pretty natural way to design a social media service that wants to host the global discourse. And that algorithm would inherently promote tweets that provoke a lot of responses. It would take a strong thumb on the scale to make it not be full of divisive content (the major social media companies publicly claim to be attempting this).
WhatsApp is a useful datapoint here because we know the feed is chronological, yet there are a ton of news stories about how the app is rife with divisive content and misinformation, just like Twitter and Facebook.
- ipaddr 4y agoWould you want the most recent reply or would you want to catch up and get the most popular in that order? The most recent is probably not what I would want to see. Close family, friends, social circles first than influencers after.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y agoThat’s a pretty reasonable ask, I believe both Facebook and Twitter give heavy boosts to content from friends. TikTok, on the other hand, doesn’t show you anything from your friends and just tries to show you what will keep you watching. It seems to work well for them.
- nowherebeen 4y agoThat's not true. Whatsapp is a data harvesting platform for your social connections. They match it with their existing Facebook profiles/ shadow profiles to know what your political affiliations, race, gender, age are. With a big enough data set, they can infer a lot about you. How much you chat with your friend tells me how close you are and how similar your politics and shopping habits are. Add that with your location data from your IP address (contrary to popular belief, you don't need to turn on location permission to know). Whatsapp is the perfect power-up for platforms like Facebook. With your Whatsapp connections and Facebook profile combined, your data becomes even more valuable to advertisers. Why do you think Google and Facebook keeps on asking for your phone number?
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y agoThis doesn’t seem related to my comment.
- nowherebeen 4y ago> There’s a popular narrative that social media companies use algorithms that intentionally favor divisive content. WhatsApp is a useful illustration of how that narrative might be wrong. You are making the argument that Whatsapp doesn't use algorithms to favor divisive content, therefore, it doesn't have malicious use. My argument is that Whatsapp still contributes to the data harvesting of Facebook because it is used maliciously to invade your privacy. It's just in a different form and just as bad. You are not looking at the whole picture and only a tiny slice.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 4y agoMany people have different problems with WhatsApp. Disagreeing with the one of them isn’t disagreeing with all of them.
- nowherebeen 4y agoFair enough. You are right.