Hacker News Reader

Comment by khuey | Hacker News Reader

tl;dr: yes, it's "the algorithm"

Facebook (and Youtube et al) have chosen not to be content-agnostic distribution platforms (unlike the postal service and SMS). They perform a variety of editorial functions to curate content and provide recommendations with the objective of maximizing engagement and hence advertising impressions that they can sell. This is popularly known as "the algorithm".

Given that these platforms have chosen to selectively display content for profit, many people believe that they should have some sort of responsibility for the editorial decisions they make.

View on HN

Facebook isn't an editor, though, it's a curator. You use them interchangably but I think there's a crucial difference. An editor modifies to inject their own standards into the work. A curator just includes or disincludes as-is.

Curating on a fine grained enough level, you are not only an editor but even a story teller. You can make a narrative only quoting other people and it has been done many times in books and movies.

That this story is driven only by an advanced self-adjusting Skinner box to maximize advertiser revenue, is very weird. You never expect sci-fi to be so mundane when it becomes reality, but it always is.

Facebook does modify content at the level of the feed; first it includes sponsored posts, second it promotes posts to people leading them to promote them to others.

But "the algorithm" is impartial. Editorialized content implies there's a message being driven.

The selection of the algorithm is not impartial. Algorithms are chosen to maximize some quantity for the benefit of the corporation.

Impartial as in it's not treating certain types of content differently. It's one thing if "the algorithm" decided to push (or censor) an anti-Pelosi agenda across the board, another if it pushes anti-Pelosi content to people who already are anti-Pelosi.

The entire point of a content algorithm is that it handles different content differently.

Regardless, the selection of the algorithm is not impartial. Content is pushed up or down to maximize engagement or whatever metric Facebook has decided it wants to maximize.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com