4 ms·

What are the recommendation algorithms? I've read a couple of articles covering this court case, and the algorithms are talked about, justices have wondered if

What are the recommendation algorithms? I've read a couple of articles covering this court case, and the algorithms are talked about, justices have wondered if they are neutral or not. But nobody has asked "What is the algorithm?" We don't know. It could be code that makes recommendations based on similar users, or it could be someone in a basement picking what to push on people based on some agenda, or the algorithm can use any of those hundreds of advertising categories they sort people into - show white people this video, married people this video, people in this country something else, these voters something over here, make exceptions for famous people or the government or the establishment, what some rich person paid us to push, etc. These algorithms affect everything from pop culture to elections to genocides to school bullies and teenage suicides. We have no idea what these big tech companies are doing, except that they are the new mass media, they don't want to accept any responsibility for their actions, and profit is more important to them than social externalities.

phoehne 4y ago
It's in a big, glowing box, in Sergei Brin's basement.
dgreensp 4y ago
This. These companies are selecting and amplifying certain speech. The fact that the process is somewhat automated doesn't change this. If any legal argument relies on "the algorithm" being likened to simple searching and sorting, maybe we should require some transparency there so anyone can know if that's actually the case. On another note, Section 230 isn't a free pass to host illegal content. It doesn't make a website immune to DMCA takedown requests, for example. We could have terrorism takedown requests, and the burden wouldn't harm large, irresponsible companies or small, moderated forums.
matthewdgreen 4y ago
Sure. I’m all in favor of algorithmic transparency and maybe even some new laws from Congress limiting the way algorithms work. I’m not sure the latter part is entirely compatible with the 1st Amendment, but I’m no constitutional lawyer. What I don’t understand is: what does this have to do with Section 230 and with the Supreme Court. Section 230 exempts firms (correctly) from liability for user content even if they moderate content in various ways. It doesn’t exclude complex algorithms because those algorithms weren’t invented at the time the law was written. If people want to write new laws, they should contact their politicians and get them to do that, stop trying to add new requirements to a law that didn’t consider them.
- Zak 4y ago
  Limits on how editorial algorithms work might not be compatible with the legal understanding of free speech in the US, but excluding algorithms with certain characteristics from platform immunity is. I don't know exactly how to write such a law, but I like the concept of treating an algorithm that provides personalized, maximally addictive content as the publisher of that content. Don't want to get sued? Curate your content (Netflix) or don't use that kind of algorithm (reddit).
  - mikem170 4y ago
    Agreed! I always thought it would be nice if there were user-selectable algorithms, like most recent, similar to my friends, popular in my city, random, etc.
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    This makes me really uncomfortable. It seems like you agree that under the First Amendment the government should not have the power to limit the way private publishers use algorithms, but you’re happy to let the same government pressure companies into limiting their algorithms by exposing them to a potentially unsustainable number of lawsuits if they fail to comply with similar rules. I’m not saying you’re wrong on the law. I’m saying that it feels obvious that the goal here is coercion. While I suppose some people might legitimately want to ban all use of algorithms (including moderation?) it seems more that the idea is to “work around” the spirit (and perhaps literal text) of the First Amendment by using the courts to make non-compliant publishers unprofitable. At very least it feels like “Congress passing laws abridging” if not literally banning. I also don’t understand the limits of this approach. Are there any principles here? If some near-future Congress passed a law saying “any algorithms you use must reduce the reach of posts that criticize the Biden administration, else you major platforms lose liability protection,” would that be fine? In my eyes that seems very abusive and problematic.
    - Zak 4y ago
      This comment uses the word "publishers" a couple times. I think it was unintended, but that alludes to an important distinction: publishers do not have platform immunity. Platforms have immunity even if they moderate content, but will likely be treated as publishers if a human editor chooses what content to feature prominently. A human editor who chooses to actively promote libel or terrorist recruitment videos will get sued or maybe even imprisoned. It seems to me the guiding principle should be that a sufficiently smart, personalized algorithm gets treated like a human editor. Of course, precisely defining "sufficiently smart" in a manner that's both reasonable and enforceable might be hard.
vkou 4y ago
What responsibility does television mass media accept for it's actions, and why should we hold intermediate firms to a higher standard than we do the TV networks?
- Zak 4y ago
  If TV networks in the US were broadcasting ISIS recruiting videos, someone would go to prison.
- mikem170 4y ago
  I thought that television producers are responsible for their content, they are considered publishers and do not have Section 230 protections. For example, NBC was sued by GM over a rigged SUV crash video. Fox News is being sued by Dominion for defamation. There are other examples. TV networs don't have legal immunity.
MR4D 4y ago
I agree with what you're saying, but everyone misses a key point: There is no algorithm. Rather, there are tons of algorithms. Hear me out... If you really want to what a company is doing, then you have to go back to the data ingesting process: - How do they scrape? - How to they choose what to ignore? - How often is something scraped? - How is the scrape timing determined (e.g. is that yet another algorithm?) - What technology do you use to verify that the scraped data is the real site (e.g. MITM, hacked sites, etc) - How do you determine if data should be removed? - Is data removed or just hidden? - Do you have any sites that you blacklist (i.e. don't scrape)? - Do any governments require you to either scrape or not scrape certain sites/pages/etc. These are just some of the questions that I would want to understand. For instance, if I'm an evil guy, I'm only going to scrape evil sites, and then I can use the same "algorithm" everyone else uses, but with vastly different results because my ingested corpus is so different. If we are only focusing on "the algorithm", then we've already lost, because we don't truly understand the scale of the problem, - and most importantly - we definitely don't understand how to regulate it.
- mikem170 4y ago
  I was thinking more of the algorithms that recommend unsolicited content, like on facebook, youtube, and twitter. Were you thinking more of search engine page rank? I think that the user content recommendation algorithms might be (or could be!) easier to describe than search page-rank algorithms, not needing to worry about some of the things you mentioned like scraping (because content is posted by users). Other things you mentioned are still relevant, like blacklists and ignoring content, now that these are platforms are so influential, often being referred to as the new public square. Why can't facebook let you see posts from your friends in chronological order, or geographically close, or some other set of understandable options? Why is facebook protected when they inject unsolicited posts about something outrageous happening, just to keep you online, even if it's something harmful? How does facebook choose which posts to put in front of you, contnent that you did not ask for? Why does youtube recommend flat earth videos so often? How many big override knobs does twitter have to decide what goes viral, and what does not? The same for tiktok. Who at facebook and youtube and twitter and tiktok gets to decide this stuff for the billions of us using their platforms? I haven't thought as much about Section 230 as it applies more specifically to something like google search and page-rank. That is a related topic. But at least you have to ask for something on a search engine, it doesn't bait you with unrelated content like the recommendation engines on the platforms I mentioned. I do agree with you that this can get complicated. These recommendation algorithms are very influential - this is the new media, much bigger than anything before. If they can't describe how or why they promoted a harmful piece of content in a trial, then perhaps they should not be promoting content? Otherwise we are being manipulated on an unprecedented scale by a few insiders with very little oversight.
jcranmer 4y ago
There is an interesting question about when a site's curation of its content (including recommendation algorithms) crosses the line into making its own viewpoint that incurs liability not protected by §230. In an extreme hypothetical, were Youtube to show nothing but terrorist propaganda in its recommended videos, it's challenging to argue that it deserves immunity because it's "just" hosting user-generated content. Whether §230 still applies in such a case is notionally the goal of this SCOTUS case. It's an interesting question--even an important question--and why SCOTUS chose to hear it is clear. Unfortunately, flicking through all the briefs, it seems that no one actually wants to answer that question. Instead, everybody is trying to argue for or against §230 more or less in its entirety. I guess people took Thomas's complaint about §230 in a prior dissent and everyone assumed they could find enough votes on SCOTUS to gut §230 entirely? (Ironically, Thomas seems to be firmly pro-§230 in this specific case).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

phoehne 4y ago

It's in a big, glowing box, in Sergei Brin's basement.

dgreensp 4y ago

This. These companies are selecting and amplifying certain speech. The fact that the process is somewhat automated doesn't change this. If any legal argument relies on "the algorithm" being likened to simple searching and sorting, maybe we should require some transparency there so anyone can know if that's actually the case. On another note, Section 230 isn't a free pass to host illegal content. It doesn't make a website immune to DMCA takedown requests, for example. We could have terrorism takedown requests, and the burden wouldn't harm large, irresponsible companies or small, moderated forums.

matthewdgreen 4y ago

Sure. I’m all in favor of algorithmic transparency and maybe even some new laws from Congress limiting the way algorithms work. I’m not sure the latter part is entirely compatible with the 1st Amendment, but I’m no constitutional lawyer. What I don’t understand is: what does this have to do with Section 230 and with the Supreme Court. Section 230 exempts firms (correctly) from liability for user content even if they moderate content in various ways. It doesn’t exclude complex algorithms because those algorithms weren’t invented at the time the law was written. If people want to write new laws, they should contact their politicians and get them to do that, stop trying to add new requirements to a law that didn’t consider them.

Zak 4y ago
Limits on how editorial algorithms work might not be compatible with the legal understanding of free speech in the US, but excluding algorithms with certain characteristics from platform immunity is. I don't know exactly how to write such a law, but I like the concept of treating an algorithm that provides personalized, maximally addictive content as the publisher of that content. Don't want to get sued? Curate your content (Netflix) or don't use that kind of algorithm (reddit).
- mikem170 4y ago
  Agreed! I always thought it would be nice if there were user-selectable algorithms, like most recent, similar to my friends, popular in my city, random, etc.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  This makes me really uncomfortable. It seems like you agree that under the First Amendment the government should not have the power to limit the way private publishers use algorithms, but you’re happy to let the same government pressure companies into limiting their algorithms by exposing them to a potentially unsustainable number of lawsuits if they fail to comply with similar rules. I’m not saying you’re wrong on the law. I’m saying that it feels obvious that the goal here is coercion. While I suppose some people might legitimately want to ban all use of algorithms (including moderation?) it seems more that the idea is to “work around” the spirit (and perhaps literal text) of the First Amendment by using the courts to make non-compliant publishers unprofitable. At very least it feels like “Congress passing laws abridging” if not literally banning. I also don’t understand the limits of this approach. Are there any principles here? If some near-future Congress passed a law saying “any algorithms you use must reduce the reach of posts that criticize the Biden administration, else you major platforms lose liability protection,” would that be fine? In my eyes that seems very abusive and problematic.
  - Zak 4y ago
    This comment uses the word "publishers" a couple times. I think it was unintended, but that alludes to an important distinction: publishers do not have platform immunity. Platforms have immunity even if they moderate content, but will likely be treated as publishers if a human editor chooses what content to feature prominently. A human editor who chooses to actively promote libel or terrorist recruitment videos will get sued or maybe even imprisoned. It seems to me the guiding principle should be that a sufficiently smart, personalized algorithm gets treated like a human editor. Of course, precisely defining "sufficiently smart" in a manner that's both reasonable and enforceable might be hard.

vkou 4y ago

What responsibility does television mass media accept for it's actions, and why should we hold intermediate firms to a higher standard than we do the TV networks?

Zak 4y ago
If TV networks in the US were broadcasting ISIS recruiting videos, someone would go to prison.
mikem170 4y ago
I thought that television producers are responsible for their content, they are considered publishers and do not have Section 230 protections. For example, NBC was sued by GM over a rigged SUV crash video. Fox News is being sued by Dominion for defamation. There are other examples. TV networs don't have legal immunity.

MR4D 4y ago

I agree with what you're saying, but everyone misses a key point: There is no algorithm. Rather, there are tons of algorithms. Hear me out... If you really want to what a company is doing, then you have to go back to the data ingesting process: - How do they scrape? - How to they choose what to ignore? - How often is something scraped? - How is the scrape timing determined (e.g. is that yet another algorithm?) - What technology do you use to verify that the scraped data is the real site (e.g. MITM, hacked sites, etc) - How do you determine if data should be removed? - Is data removed or just hidden? - Do you have any sites that you blacklist (i.e. don't scrape)? - Do any governments require you to either scrape or not scrape certain sites/pages/etc. These are just some of the questions that I would want to understand. For instance, if I'm an evil guy, I'm only going to scrape evil sites, and then I can use the same "algorithm" everyone else uses, but with vastly different results because my ingested corpus is so different. If we are only focusing on "the algorithm", then we've already lost, because we don't truly understand the scale of the problem, - and most importantly - we definitely don't understand how to regulate it.

mikem170 4y ago
I was thinking more of the algorithms that recommend unsolicited content, like on facebook, youtube, and twitter. Were you thinking more of search engine page rank? I think that the user content recommendation algorithms might be (or could be!) easier to describe than search page-rank algorithms, not needing to worry about some of the things you mentioned like scraping (because content is posted by users). Other things you mentioned are still relevant, like blacklists and ignoring content, now that these are platforms are so influential, often being referred to as the new public square. Why can't facebook let you see posts from your friends in chronological order, or geographically close, or some other set of understandable options? Why is facebook protected when they inject unsolicited posts about something outrageous happening, just to keep you online, even if it's something harmful? How does facebook choose which posts to put in front of you, contnent that you did not ask for? Why does youtube recommend flat earth videos so often? How many big override knobs does twitter have to decide what goes viral, and what does not? The same for tiktok. Who at facebook and youtube and twitter and tiktok gets to decide this stuff for the billions of us using their platforms? I haven't thought as much about Section 230 as it applies more specifically to something like google search and page-rank. That is a related topic. But at least you have to ask for something on a search engine, it doesn't bait you with unrelated content like the recommendation engines on the platforms I mentioned. I do agree with you that this can get complicated. These recommendation algorithms are very influential - this is the new media, much bigger than anything before. If they can't describe how or why they promoted a harmful piece of content in a trial, then perhaps they should not be promoting content? Otherwise we are being manipulated on an unprecedented scale by a few insiders with very little oversight.

jcranmer 4y ago

There is an interesting question about when a site's curation of its content (including recommendation algorithms) crosses the line into making its own viewpoint that incurs liability not protected by §230. In an extreme hypothetical, were Youtube to show nothing but terrorist propaganda in its recommended videos, it's challenging to argue that it deserves immunity because it's "just" hosting user-generated content. Whether §230 still applies in such a case is notionally the goal of this SCOTUS case. It's an interesting question--even an important question--and why SCOTUS chose to hear it is clear. Unfortunately, flicking through all the briefs, it seems that no one actually wants to answer that question. Instead, everybody is trying to argue for or against §230 more or less in its entirety. I guess people took Thomas's complaint about §230 in a prior dissent and everyone assumed they could find enough votes on SCOTUS to gut §230 entirely? (Ironically, Thomas seems to be firmly pro-§230 in this specific case).

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]