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I'm only responding to the content of the posted article, which doesn't speak of the website owner putting their thumb on the scales to advance a particular nar

I'm only responding to the content of the posted article, which doesn't speak of the website owner putting their thumb on the scales to advance a particular narrative. I'm happy to advocate against that. But if the algorithm responds equally well to highly engaging posts from team A and team B, then ultimately the algorithm is fair, there's a level playing field. Would I prefer it if it boosted boring academic papers about nothingburgers that nobody will ever read? I suppose so, but clickbait is the content humanity wants to engage with, regardless of medium. It's up to each team to make sure that their comms are written in a way that cuts through the noise, like with any other form of marketing.

atmavatar 2y ago
> But if the algorithm responds equally well to highly engaging posts from team A and team B, then ultimately the algorithm is fair, there's a level playing field. If only individuals of Team A see content from Team A and only individuals of Team B see content from Team B, regardless how equally Teams A and B get promoted as a whole on the platform, it's not really democratized. You merely have separate Team A and Team B platforms, except they're hosted on the same hardware and exposed via the same web address. The separation is entirely virtual and intentionally hidden from users. It's little different to a Team A member than if all of Team B was shadow-banned or to a Team B member than if all of Team A was shadow-banned.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y ago
  But isn't this how all media (or everyday life) is already when people are given a choice? People self-segregate into Bluesky vs Twitter. MSNBC vs Fox News. Vox vs Breitbart. Shia mosques vs Sunni mosques. California vs Florida. People really like retreating into their own flock of fellow believers and don't want to be exposed to information contradicting their beliefs. Social media isn't doing anything new here, it's just selling the product people want to buy.
tzs 2y ago
> But if the algorithm responds equally well to highly engaging posts from team A and team B, then ultimately the algorithm is fair, there's a level playing field That doesn't work well for topics where one team, A say, is free to just make up stuff and the other team, B, is constrained by trying to stick to verifiable facts. It gives A a massive advantage. First, it often takes time for B to develop a response to something new from A and by the time B's response comes out A has added several more posts. Even if B's post completely refutes that first A post, people will see that it hasn't addressed the additional A material and might think that means that additional material is fine. Second, it is easier, cheaper, and faster to generate A material than to generate B material, so A can make it so there is always plenty of un-refuted A material. They can also tweak any A material that B has refuted and claim that it was just a minor issue and they fixed it. The result is that readers see a lot more A than B material. Some might figure out from the B material that the people pushing A are not being truthful, but remember there are another dozen or more topics showing up in their feed each with its own A and B. Most people aren't going to be able to successfully figure out which is being truthful in all of those topics, and so we end up with a lot of people getting misled and scammed.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y ago
  I agree it's an issue, you're describing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law . How do we fix it though?
ben_w 2y ago
> But if the algorithm responds equally well to highly engaging posts from team A and team B, then ultimately the algorithm is fair, there's a level playing field. Would I prefer it if it boosted boring academic papers about nothingburgers that nobody will ever read? I suppose so, but clickbait is the content humanity wants to engage with, regardless of medium. It's up to each team to make sure that their comms are written in a way that cuts through the noise, like with any other form of marketing. That assumes it's possible to have a "fair" algorithm. As I don't want to make a point about specific parties, call them Team Purple and Team Mauve. If Purple voters tend to press "share" and Mauve voters tend to comment with a link back to the original, and the algorithm favours shares, should Mauve adjust their comms strategy, or should the maker of the algorithm adjust the algorithm? And what happens if, even with the best will in the world, both update at the same time and therefore Mauve gets more and more out of sync? But even then, marketing is a game of "who has the most money" — one dollar one vote, rather than one person one vote.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y ago
  So what do we do if it's impossible to have a perfectly fair system?
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Make sure that processes involving the development of the system — in this case the social media algorithm — are done publicly, with the kind of democratic involvement you would expect for actual legislation.

atmavatar 2y ago

> But if the algorithm responds equally well to highly engaging posts from team A and team B, then ultimately the algorithm is fair, there's a level playing field. If only individuals of Team A see content from Team A and only individuals of Team B see content from Team B, regardless how equally Teams A and B get promoted as a whole on the platform, it's not really democratized. You merely have separate Team A and Team B platforms, except they're hosted on the same hardware and exposed via the same web address. The separation is entirely virtual and intentionally hidden from users. It's little different to a Team A member than if all of Team B was shadow-banned or to a Team B member than if all of Team A was shadow-banned.

8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y ago
But isn't this how all media (or everyday life) is already when people are given a choice? People self-segregate into Bluesky vs Twitter. MSNBC vs Fox News. Vox vs Breitbart. Shia mosques vs Sunni mosques. California vs Florida. People really like retreating into their own flock of fellow believers and don't want to be exposed to information contradicting their beliefs. Social media isn't doing anything new here, it's just selling the product people want to buy.

tzs 2y ago

> But if the algorithm responds equally well to highly engaging posts from team A and team B, then ultimately the algorithm is fair, there's a level playing field That doesn't work well for topics where one team, A say, is free to just make up stuff and the other team, B, is constrained by trying to stick to verifiable facts. It gives A a massive advantage. First, it often takes time for B to develop a response to something new from A and by the time B's response comes out A has added several more posts. Even if B's post completely refutes that first A post, people will see that it hasn't addressed the additional A material and might think that means that additional material is fine. Second, it is easier, cheaper, and faster to generate A material than to generate B material, so A can make it so there is always plenty of un-refuted A material. They can also tweak any A material that B has refuted and claim that it was just a minor issue and they fixed it. The result is that readers see a lot more A than B material. Some might figure out from the B material that the people pushing A are not being truthful, but remember there are another dozen or more topics showing up in their feed each with its own A and B. Most people aren't going to be able to successfully figure out which is being truthful in all of those topics, and so we end up with a lot of people getting misled and scammed.

8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y ago
I agree it's an issue, you're describing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law . How do we fix it though?

ben_w 2y ago

> But if the algorithm responds equally well to highly engaging posts from team A and team B, then ultimately the algorithm is fair, there's a level playing field. Would I prefer it if it boosted boring academic papers about nothingburgers that nobody will ever read? I suppose so, but clickbait is the content humanity wants to engage with, regardless of medium. It's up to each team to make sure that their comms are written in a way that cuts through the noise, like with any other form of marketing. That assumes it's possible to have a "fair" algorithm. As I don't want to make a point about specific parties, call them Team Purple and Team Mauve. If Purple voters tend to press "share" and Mauve voters tend to comment with a link back to the original, and the algorithm favours shares, should Mauve adjust their comms strategy, or should the maker of the algorithm adjust the algorithm? And what happens if, even with the best will in the world, both update at the same time and therefore Mauve gets more and more out of sync? But even then, marketing is a game of "who has the most money" — one dollar one vote, rather than one person one vote.

8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y ago
So what do we do if it's impossible to have a perfectly fair system?
- ben_w 2y ago
  Make sure that processes involving the development of the system — in this case the social media algorithm — are done publicly, with the kind of democratic involvement you would expect for actual legislation.