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Comment by chimeracoder | Hacker News Reader

> "Facebook denies systematic bias but admits their current process allows bad actors to apply bias and takes remediating steps"

If their system allows bad actors to apply bias, that's literally a systematic bias. Unless they're claiming all of their 'bad actors' are symmetrically distributed along every relevant axis[0], that's the same thing as saying that there is a systematic bias.

There is no reason to believe that any 'bad actors' are perfectly representative of the population at large and cancel each other out, and plenty of reasons to suspect otherwise, even based solely on our prior beliefs about Facebook employees (before this story broke).

[0] I say 'every' axis, because even though we're talking about a one-dimensional spectrum (liberal/conservative), in reality, there are many different dimensions along which bias could be introduced.

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I took "systematic bias" to have similar meaning to "systematic error" meaning that there is a constant shift on every data point. Admitting the possibility of bias is very different than admitting bias in every single trending content decision.

I think you are confusing "systemic" and "systematic". When someone indicates a problem is systemic, they mean it is rooted in the core of the system, and is thus deeply engrained in the system and present system-wide (and generally therefore requires a change that will affect everything from top to bottom in order to fix).

Edit: though I see you've used systematic from the start, so maybe that was your intention.

> Admitting the possibility of bias is very different than admitting bias in every single trending content decision.

They don't have to admit bias in every content decision. They have to admit systematic bias in content decisions in the aggregate, which does not necessarily imply bias in every content decision.

While it is technically, theoretically possible that their system is open to the introduction of these biases but does not actually exhibit those biases in the aggregate, it is astoundingly unlikely.

> While it is technically, theoretically possible that their system is open to the introduction of these biases but does not actually exhibit those biases in the aggregate, it is astoundingly unlikely.

We're in agreement there. A company that is progressive-liberal by nature is going to show some of that bias the company's actions. Even with a conscious effort to avoid bias they'll fall prey to biases they aren't aware of.

Reading this thread, I'm tempted to think the real headline should be "Facebook screwed over conservative media outlets, but didn't mean to"

This seems to be a game of how much complexity and nuance one can add to a simple story. By introducing "bad actors" and "systemic risk", I'm not sure we're helping anybody understand anything better and instead most sixth-grade readers are probably just going to tune out.

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