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Tuesday, December 13, 2022
The power of recommendations
I just went on an incognito browser and searched Google for “MMORPG blog”. Yep, I’m still on the first page of search results, although I renamed my blog and stopped blogging about MMORPGs many years ago. And while my site traffic is way down, I still get most of it from search engines, based an a high Google page rank from times past. Now I stopped taking web traffic seriously a long time ago; my blog has always been just a hobby, and never been a serious source of income or influence for me. But in today’s economy, where “influencer” is actually a job many people aspire to, and visibility is extremely important to businesses and politicians, the people who control what content is recommended to us are extremely powerful.
For most cases, whether your content gets recommended and thus promoted on some platform depends on some algorithm. While the algorithms aretop secret, they can to some degree be reverse engineered. Which then leads to the business of SEO, search engine optimization, and its equivalent for video platforms. With some negative consequences for the content itself, e.g. click bait titles. These days a lot of content creators are putting in a lot of effort to get their content ahead in the queue. But the algorithm not only recommends what it thinks people will want to see, it is also optimized to make the most money for the platform. For example the advertising revenue for financial content is orders of magnitude higher than for let’s say games; so if you are showing an equal interest in both, the majority of the recommendations will be about financial content, as the platform makes more money frim you watching that.
The social media platforms are privately owned. And in some cases, somebody within those companies decides to manually override the algorithm. Thus currently a huge discussion about Twitter, because Elon Musk released internal documents, the “Twitter files”, showing how previously Twitter employees interfered with the algorithms to make conservative politicians less visible, or suppress stories deemed hurtful to the progressive causes they believed in. Which then of course begs the question what Twitter will do tomorrow, with a new owner who is a lot more conservative. Should who owns Twitter, or what the political beliefs of the employees are, determine what stories and people you will see on the platform?
In Europe in many countries there are still state TV stations with strict rules on giving equal air time to different political parties. That might seem antiquated, but there are certain advantages: The people of the UK watching BBC News, or Germans all watching Tagesschau, end up all having all heard the same and balanced version of the facts. While people watching politically affiliated news end up getting served different versions of “alternative facts”. Which makes it a lot harder for people from different sides to even talk to each other, because they aren’t even living in the same world with the same truths. The basic idea of social media is to connect people, but we are apparently well in the way where social media goes the same way as US TV, creating only echo chambers. This is all completely legal, as the constitutional provision for “free speech” only applies to the government, not private companies. But I feel that it just hurts everybody in the end, and further propels the culture wars towards political violence.
- posted by Tobold @ 10:32 AM Permanent Link
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Despite the "Twitter files" assertions both Twitters own Ethics team investigations and independent studies have shown the exact opposite happens on Twitter.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/technology-59011271.amp#cobssid=s
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2025334119
I do think fake news is a real societal problem in a world where most of the voting base gets their news from social media. It's a meme on reddit that no one ever even reads the articles and just forms opinions based off the headline.
In response to "Should who owns Twitter, or what the political beliefs of the employees are, determine what stories and people you will see on the platform?" What I'd ask you is how is this any different from Fox, CNN or the New York Post? It's pretty well known that the billionaires who control the major news conglomerates actively push their agenda through them. Murdoch has successfully done this for years around the world.
I don't know what's the solution to this issue. Governments don't really seem capable of handling the spread of misinformation or combating the influence of billionaires.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/technology-59011271.amp#cobssid=s
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2025334119
I do think fake news is a real societal problem in a world where most of the voting base gets their news from social media. It's a meme on reddit that no one ever even reads the articles and just forms opinions based off the headline.
In response to "Should who owns Twitter, or what the political beliefs of the employees are, determine what stories and people you will see on the platform?" What I'd ask you is how is this any different from Fox, CNN or the New York Post? It's pretty well known that the billionaires who control the major news conglomerates actively push their agenda through them. Murdoch has successfully done this for years around the world.
I don't know what's the solution to this issue. Governments don't really seem capable of handling the spread of misinformation or combating the influence of billionaires.
I fear you are underestimating the capacity of Google (or other) to identify who you are. Switching to incognito is not sufficient, you need to also change IP, and if possible computer. At least on my own PC, you are not on the top - but still appears on the first page ! (Duckduckgo, with region set to 'World')
On the real topic : I would encourage to create a special status for 'world forum' such as Faceboor, twitter or Youtube, where speech right (either freedom or restriction) are decided more democratically - in history of democracy, the right to have political discussion in the 'public' space has been protected, and we can consider that those social netword now play a major role in the political discussion. But the issue is how to do that : avoid giving even more control by dicatorial state to filter out opposing view; defining who is going to pay for the control; who can decide what are the new rules ; ...
So I do not know : I am not that happy with the current situation, but I struggle defining a realistic better approach.
Maybe simpler is better : 10% of the content on those 'public forum' (= social network) should be purely random. Most of it will be trash, but at least it increases the chance of being exposed to different POV.
On the real topic : I would encourage to create a special status for 'world forum' such as Faceboor, twitter or Youtube, where speech right (either freedom or restriction) are decided more democratically - in history of democracy, the right to have political discussion in the 'public' space has been protected, and we can consider that those social netword now play a major role in the political discussion. But the issue is how to do that : avoid giving even more control by dicatorial state to filter out opposing view; defining who is going to pay for the control; who can decide what are the new rules ; ...
So I do not know : I am not that happy with the current situation, but I struggle defining a realistic better approach.
Maybe simpler is better : 10% of the content on those 'public forum' (= social network) should be purely random. Most of it will be trash, but at least it increases the chance of being exposed to different POV.
@Bigeye : As stated by Tobold, in some European country, the TV has the obligation to give faire share of their time to every political party.
In France for example, in the month leading to the election, TV & Radio has to give the exact same time to all candidates, measured and checked every week. In the previous months, there is an equity rule, where they should be proportional to their political weight, as measured by their previous score.
And on public media, some rules applied at all times - I do not know them exactly.
In France for example, in the month leading to the election, TV & Radio has to give the exact same time to all candidates, measured and checked every week. In the previous months, there is an equity rule, where they should be proportional to their political weight, as measured by their previous score.
And on public media, some rules applied at all times - I do not know them exactly.
I joined Mastodon to see what social media was like without a recommendation engine. It got a lot of refugees from Twitter when Elon was acting up a few weeks back but I suspect most of them won't hang around. There is no recommendation engine so you only see posts (toots) from people you follow or who are connected to you in some way. That makes it slow to find new content and it also makes it hard for content to go viral so I expect it will always stay niche. It can be a comfortable place to chat with like minded people because you can choose your own server and each server has its own moderation rules. On the other hand it can also be very echo-chambery because you will normally only ever see posts from like minded people. I am on a very pro diversity and inclusion server which suits me but at times the cosy consensus is too much. I believe there are right wing servers because I have seen toots complaining about them. However the people complaining that "fascists shouldn't be allowed on Mastodon" seem to miss the whole point of federated social media (the fediverse). It is up to you to filter your own incoming and outgoing content.
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