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> In the real world, I have a few friends that don't make recommendations really often. But when they do, I jump. Their recommendations are always solid gold.

> In the real world, I have a few friends that don't make recommendations really often. But when they do, I jump. Their recommendations are always solid gold. Can't we solve this by allowing users to internally rate their friends? Just like you, I only care about the recommendation of some of my friends. So if can somehow rate my friend's recommendation from 1 to 5, then the algorithm could just to only recommend me stuff from the friends I value the most. You can even use machine learning to do this automatically. Instead of bothering users to rate friends, if I often like the recommendations you give to me, I should get more recommendations from you. If I often ignore your recommendations, I should get less of it. G+ circles could even be used for further context. I might like your recommendation for food, but not for tech. So the engine could could separate each content with a context (this is a tech blog, or that is a food blog) and relate that to my circles. So I would get tech recommendation from people on my tech circle, but not from people on my food circle. I think the big picture problem here, is that social networks usually put all 'friends' in the same bucket of equal value. When in the real world we have different values for different friends, and for different contexts. So a solution would be to simply have additional variables for friend rating, then use machine learning to try to automatically match them to each context.

bravura 15y ago
This is a partial solution, but one that is already implemented. The problem is that people have different semantics for clicking "Like" on something, or giving it five stars. This becomes problematic when giving something five stars means that it's at least "pretty good to you". In that case, you lose the dynamic range of expressing "this is AWESOME. simply AWESOME." So a machine learning algorithm cannot distinguish between good and AWESOME if the user is lumping them into one category. Which is why I propose actually creating scarcity around the amount in which you can promote or approve or content, perhaps backed by a currency of cool. I can only click like five times a day, for example. That would limit people's ability to blithely approve of everything, and their ability to collapse the distinction between good and AWESOME. This approach is much stricter than the optional "gentleman's agreement" proposed in the article, but might also create more desirable properties, and a fun incentive around only sharing AWESOME.
cheatercheater 15y ago
Can't we solve this by allowing users to internally rate their friends? I think Facebook already does that. Notice they put lists in your profile now called "Friends", "Close Friends", "Acquaintances", etc. The one thing that annoys me about this notion is that those relationships change IRL. What if I suddenly want to have a party and invite only my "Close Friends", which then ends up including some guy I very much hate by now? One of the biggest problems with social network evaluation schemes is that they always work on the assumption that relationships between people are static. They are, however, dynamic. And the rate of dynamics changes from person to person and changes over time as well. It's not as simple as saying "this guy makes the best content ever". Maybe tomorrow his dog will die and he'll start posting emo poems.

bravura 15y ago

This is a partial solution, but one that is already implemented. The problem is that people have different semantics for clicking "Like" on something, or giving it five stars. This becomes problematic when giving something five stars means that it's at least "pretty good to you". In that case, you lose the dynamic range of expressing "this is AWESOME. simply AWESOME." So a machine learning algorithm cannot distinguish between good and AWESOME if the user is lumping them into one category. Which is why I propose actually creating scarcity around the amount in which you can promote or approve or content, perhaps backed by a currency of cool. I can only click like five times a day, for example. That would limit people's ability to blithely approve of everything, and their ability to collapse the distinction between good and AWESOME. This approach is much stricter than the optional "gentleman's agreement" proposed in the article, but might also create more desirable properties, and a fun incentive around only sharing AWESOME.

cheatercheater 15y ago

Can't we solve this by allowing users to internally rate their friends? I think Facebook already does that. Notice they put lists in your profile now called "Friends", "Close Friends", "Acquaintances", etc. The one thing that annoys me about this notion is that those relationships change IRL. What if I suddenly want to have a party and invite only my "Close Friends", which then ends up including some guy I very much hate by now? One of the biggest problems with social network evaluation schemes is that they always work on the assumption that relationships between people are static. They are, however, dynamic. And the rate of dynamics changes from person to person and changes over time as well. It's not as simple as saying "this guy makes the best content ever". Maybe tomorrow his dog will die and he'll start posting emo poems.