Facebook algorithm found to actively promote holocaust denial | Hacker News Reader

Facebook algorithm found to actively promote holocaust denial

theguardian.com

39 pointselsewhen14 comments

Surely the tech-minded folks of HN understand that this doesn't actually occur under any reasonable definition of "active." This article is a clear example of how the media twists reality due to their lack of understanding and/or maliciousness.

>> Researchers found that when they followed public Facebook pages containing Holocaust denial content, Facebook recommended further similar content.

I can understand that being precise is crucial when making statements like this but instead of getting hung up on that detail, the tech-minded folks of HN would also understand the main argument about the perinicious effect of such feedback of "similar content" reinforcing the false beliefs and conspiracies.

Indeed, often technically correct is not the best kind of correct.

"Actively promote" meaning being treated no different than any other content, unless the article omitted some information about that study. Perhaps technically true, but still a highly misleading title.

This is the full headline:

> Facebook algorithm found to 'actively promote' Holocaust denial > Similar content is also readily accessible across Twitter, YouTube and Reddit, says UK-based counter-extremist group

Reminds me of back when Foxconn was the big media story and every article lead with "Apple uses child labor" (Subtitle: also every other company uses Foxconn too)

What does “actively promote” mean here? The article doesn’t seem to have evidence of this. It seems more like “we found a nonzero amount of holocaust denial content”.

How much holocaust denial content should one expect to find? The internet has increasingly normalized nonsense. I'll bet plenty of people, post- the advent of social media, would think 25%, for example, would be perfectly reasonable.

How much would one find in the pages of a newspaper, transcripts of a public conference, or publications in a university library? Would it even be 1%?

If this new normal on social media is enlightening people and making the world a better place, one would expect to see it reflected in the world around us. I don't think the general consensus is that society has been making big strides in a good direction, over the past decade.

Those are some fine rhetorical questions, but they don't shed any light on whether "actively promote" is grossly misleading in this case.

Okay, I can't go all the way, and describe it as grossly misleading, but "actively promote" uses too strong an adverb. So, I'll concede that, strictly speaking, the headline is misleading.

On the other hand, if a reader gets the impression that Zuckerberg and the other social media CEOs, to the extent that they can get away with it, signal-boost holocaust denial (and propaganda from hate-groups, in general), recent history speaks for itself.

So if someone asked me to rewrite the title, I would go with "passively promote."

How many HN authors are masons?

They wanted a shitty paper on holocaust denial that the trailer park trash can froth at the mouth about how evil it all is and the newspaper got it's clicks.

Pretty good AI, delivered exactly what everyone wanted.

they typed "Holocaust" in fb search box and got suggestions for pages denying Holocaust. So they concluded that Facebook alogorithms promote Holocaust denial but did not check if there is actually any reachable alternative content for the keyword "Holocaust". I don't think facebook users created any educative pages about Holocaust.

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