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Technically sorting by timestamp is an "algorithm" too, so I was just speaking informally rather than drafting the exact language of a piece of legislation. I
by slg 11mo ago
Technically sorting by timestamp is an "algorithm" too, so I was just speaking informally rather than drafting the exact language of a piece of legislation. I would define the categories as something like algorithms determined by direct proactive user decisions (following, upvoting, etc) versus algorithms that are determined by other factors (views, watch time, behavior by similar users, etc). Basically it should always be clear why you're being served what you're being served, either because the user chose to see it or because everyone is seeing it. No more nebulous black box algorithms that give every user an experience individually designed to keep them on the platform.
This will still impact HN because of stuff like the flame war downranker they use here. However, that doesn't automatically mean HN loses Section 230 protection. HN could respond by simplifying its ranking algorithm to maintain 230 protections.
- Manuel_D 11mo agoSo a simple "most viewed in last month" page would trigger a loss of protection? Because that ranking is determined by number of views, rather than a proactive user decision like upvoting.
- slg 11mo ago>So a simple "most viewed in last month" page would trigger a loss of protection? The key word there is "page". I have no problem with news.ycombinator.com/active, but that is a page that a user must proactively seek out. It's not the default or even possible to make it the default. Every time a user visits it, it is because they decided to visit it. The page is also the same for everyone who visits it.
- Manuel_D 11mo agoTo be clear, even the front page of Hacker News is not just a simple question of upvotes. Views, comments, time since posting, political content down ranking, etc. all at a factor in the ordering of posts.
- rafabulsing 11mo agoI think the best way to put it is, users with the same user picked settings should see the same things, in the same order. That's a given on HackerNews, as there's only one frontpage. On Reddit that would be, users subscribed to the same subreddits would always see the same things on their frontpages. Same as users on YouTube subscribed to the same channels, users on Facebook who liked the same pages, and so on. The real problem starts when the algorithm takes into account implicit user actions. E.g., two users are subscribed to the same channels, and both click on the same video. User A watches the whole video, user B leaves halfway through. If the algorithm takes that into account, now user A will see different suggestions than user B. That's what gets the ball rolling into hyper specialized endless feeds which tend to push you into extremes, as small signals will end up being amplified without the user ever taking an explicit action other than clicking or not suggestions in the feed. As long as every signal the algorithm takes into account is either a global state (user votes, total watch time, etc), or something the user explicitly and proactively has stated is their preference, I think that would be enough to curb most of the problems with algorithmic feeds. Users could still manually configure feeds that provide hyper personalized, hyper specific, and hyper addictive content. But I bet the vast majority of users would never go beyond picking 1 specific sport, 2 personal hobbies and 3 genres of music they're interested in and calling it a day. Really, most would probably never even go that far. That's the reason platforms all converged on using those implicit signals, after all: they work much better than the user's explicit signals (if your ultimate goal is maximizing user retention/addiction, and you don't care at all about the collateral damage resulting from that).
- slg 11mo agoYes, you said it better than me. Fundamentally if you know a user's choices, you should be able to reproduce what that user sees.
- Manuel_D 11mo agoBut Meta's content ranking would conform to this too: in theory a user that had the exact same friends, is a member of the exact same groups, had the exact same watch history, etc. would be served the same content. Although I'm pretty sure there's at least some degree of randomization, but putting that aside it remains unclear how you're constructing a set of criteria that does Hacker News, and plenty of other sites but not Meta.
- BrenBarn 11mo agoAnother possibility would be to somehow incorporate the possibility of publishing the algorithm and providing some kind of "under the hood" view that reveals to people what determined what they're seeing. Part of the issue currently is that everything is opaque. If Facebook could not change their algorithm without some of kind of public registration process, well, it might not make things better but it might make it get worse a bit slower.
- terminalshort 11mo agoBut what makes this neutral vs editorial? The definition there has nothing to do with whether it is personalized or universal content selection.