Zuckerberg Throttled Traffic to Progressive News Sites
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
In the distant past when newspapers were locally owned and operated, those who owned printing presses lived in the communities that they worked in and published in. Globalization has removed that link. My theory is that losing that link has distorted the nature of publishing. It is now cheaper (more profitable) to publish false news than it is to publish well researched journalism. There is no local reputation to protect. Who needs to pay for fact checkers and editors to reach out to trusted sources to verify a story when the story itself isn't even true? Let's just throw whatever at the wall, and, hey, we can sell more ads if it blows up on social media!
I don’t doubt that Mother Jones lost traffic due to an algorithm change, but implied in the article is that it was deliberate silencing of a specific progressive news source, which doesn’t appear to be backed up by any facts.
Algorithm changes are always going to produce winners and losers. I agree with the argument that privately owned tech companies probably shouldn’t wield this power, but this particular instance doesn’t appear to be news.
The implementers have control of the algorithm. If you choose to go a certain way, then that means you are accepting the output. Why should anyone be able to hide behind "it's just an algorithm change."
Now I understand that many of these machine learning algorithms lead to unpredictable and unexpected results. But again, they have found these risks acceptable by continuing to use them anyway.
There should never be any hiding behind "its the algorithm, not us." You are responsible for your algorithms, whether you understand it or not.
The thing I don't understand is why they continue trying these stupid algorithms. What value is there in them? It's very rare for me to encounter one of these things and go "yes, this is exactly what I wanted." More likely, they get in the way of what I want to do. Maybe I'm an outlier, but I really wish as a profession, we'd be much more frank regarding the actual results of these things.
Not for the teens who have moved on
Not even for the millenials
But the older parents and grandparents
for them Facebook is pretty much how they view the Internet
And WhatsApp is taking over some countries - so there Whats App is the Internet