4 ms·

They could rule against personalised recommendations (YouTube) vs while protecting recommendations where everyone sees the same thing (HN). In HN’s case I’m not

by owisd 4y ago

They could rule against personalised recommendations (YouTube) vs while protecting recommendations where everyone sees the same thing (HN). In HN’s case I’m not sure it would matter much either way. HN is pretty heavily moderated already. If stories went into a moderation queue before hitting the main page rather than being retroactively moderated I’m not sure many of us would notice a difference.

eli 4y ago
The comments too? Everything in a moderation queue and potentially serious penalties for getting it wrong? I'm pretty sure you would notice. And would the developer of a Mastodon client be personally liable if their algorithm recommends someone harmful as a new account to follow?
shagie 4y ago
The heavy moderation of HN would mean that they would be more liable for content. And the algorithms showing the front page recommendations would likely be found to be similar to the "what a visitor to YouTube who isn't signed in sees" or "what you see if you go to https://twitter.com https://twitter.com without being logged in." Instead, HN's view would likely become "everyone sees https://news.ycombinator.com/newest https://news.ycombinator.com/newest and showdead is set to 'yes'" I'm not sure how to construct an argument that would allow HN's front page while at the same time curtailing YouTube's not signed in front page - both are recommendation algorithms.
notahacker 4y ago
They could rule against personalised recommendations whilst protecting recommendations where everyone sees the same thing, but logically it seems more likely they'd do the opposite (more reasonable to consider a single centralised top stories system consistently highlighting content to all its users a reflection of a "publisher" preference than an algorithm which highlights content based on each individual user's activity and filters the individual user may have set, moderators tend to manually intervene to influence the former more, and of course it's less reasonable to demand that all potentially libellous content is screened from procedurally generated individual user links than from a "top stories" list or home page.) I think most of us would notice the difference if HN was allowed only to rank comments only in chronological order, never mind if for liability reasons the stories permitted to appear in order of upvotes on HN were restricted to the ones Dang was satisfied weren't libellous, or possibly none at all if YC decided it wasn't worth the risk

by owisd 4y ago

eli 4y ago

The comments too? Everything in a moderation queue and potentially serious penalties for getting it wrong? I'm pretty sure you would notice. And would the developer of a Mastodon client be personally liable if their algorithm recommends someone harmful as a new account to follow?

shagie 4y ago

The heavy moderation of HN would mean that they would be more liable for content. And the algorithms showing the front page recommendations would likely be found to be similar to the "what a visitor to YouTube who isn't signed in sees" or "what you see if you go to https://twitter.com https://twitter.com without being logged in." Instead, HN's view would likely become "everyone sees https://news.ycombinator.com/newest https://news.ycombinator.com/newest and showdead is set to 'yes'" I'm not sure how to construct an argument that would allow HN's front page while at the same time curtailing YouTube's not signed in front page - both are recommendation algorithms.

notahacker 4y ago

They could rule against personalised recommendations whilst protecting recommendations where everyone sees the same thing, but logically it seems more likely they'd do the opposite (more reasonable to consider a single centralised top stories system consistently highlighting content to all its users a reflection of a "publisher" preference than an algorithm which highlights content based on each individual user's activity and filters the individual user may have set, moderators tend to manually intervene to influence the former more, and of course it's less reasonable to demand that all potentially libellous content is screened from procedurally generated individual user links than from a "top stories" list or home page.) I think most of us would notice the difference if HN was allowed only to rank comments only in chronological order, never mind if for liability reasons the stories permitted to appear in order of upvotes on HN were restricted to the ones Dang was satisfied weren't libellous, or possibly none at all if YC decided it wasn't worth the risk