It’s fine if someone says something horrible or false on the internet, it’s not fine if a ranked newsfeed amplifies that message to millions of people because it’s engaging.
This free speech or not argument is a complete straw man.
I don't have a problem with alex jones. I have a problem with social media companies promoting lies about reality in the name of engagement. Polluting our information ecology in the name of a quick advertising dollar is lazy and dishonest and they know it.
Fortunately, I know a trick that makes my feed better behaved in all of these ways. Some day they're going to kill it (they briefly did break it once already due to sheer incompetence) and then Facebook will become unusable again.
I use a trick as well. I use the "Stop Showing Me This" option in the FB newsfeed. It took a couple days, but now I get zero political content.
That's .... a kind of ranking. Personalized ranking made by algorithms based on what they want to show you using their own patterns is still ranking. Dynamically adjusting ranking based on new data (or not) is still ranking.
And, "as anyone who has worked with software development probably knows (definitely should know), ranking/ordering/sorting can be done in many different ways".
Citation needed. "Ranking" in plain English is practically synonymous with sorting, and it's no different in computing, unless you're in some very specialized pocket where they've twisted it. The difference is that it's possible to show different posts first within the same set and IMO that's not particularly problematic. What's problematic is when Facebook selects a different set. Those posts I didn't ask for shouldn't just be at the bottom of the list; they shouldn't be on it.
In an infinite-scroll world these phases do get interleaved a bit. Query, sort, show top N, repeat. Some posts might get dropped in the "show top N" part, but the point is that those posts I didn't ask for should never even have come back from the first query. In SQL terms, it's the WHERE that's broken, not the ORDER BY or LIMIT. (Yes, I know it's not SQL. I could tell you exactly what it is, but I'm still bound by a legal document that says I shouldn't.) It's really not that subtle or unusual a distinction, and I'm sure most people understood it. Why are you so invested in a weird definition?
HN's formula may be hidden but I think we have a good sense of its inputs: recency, upvotes, moderation to remove crap, and perhaps some boosting to promote YC interests.
Showing them what who wants? The users? That’s be great, but today they are trained to show what the company wants, and the company wants to keep you on the site as long as possible to generate ad clicks.
It’s designed for making you spiral into a topic.
I know you don't like it, but this very clearly is content that people want to consume.
But that doesn't mean all content is something people want to see, because Facebook can't make money either if users only consume content that doesn't make Facebook money, so they try to avoid that scenario.
The profit-maximizing strategy is to show users a mixture of content they like (to keep them around) and money-making content, preferably all jumbled together so people can't easily tell the difference. (The same calculation is behind Google deemphasizing the difference between paid search ads and actual results.)
Include these two ingredients and you essentially get YouTube.
The big signs include quick cuts of content you had just seen in order to summarize the story till then, previews before commurcial breaks, pre-starting the next episode (starting the next one before a break), and so many more annoying things.
The worst is when you binging it without ads - there's only 15 minutes of new content for the full duration.
Because people are perfectly rational and will never do something when they aren't particularly enjoying it and know is bad for them.
We have ingredients lists on packaged processed food, but we have more than that: the ability to buy ingredients, learn recipes, make recipes, and cook.
We should have the ability to put what we choose (and omit what we don't) in our feeds.
We should have the ability to control it all, though.
It seems like we're trying to force the input to be wrong as opposed to just acknowledging that the output is wrong. Facebook is doing the same "capitalistically moral" thing everyone else is doing, building something people want so that they make money. The input doesn't have to be "theoretically wrong" for the output to still be wrong. Good intentions and all that.
But ranked newsfeeds are not about showing people content they want, but about showing people content that will generate more revenue for the company.
Specifically, if you had a passing interest in a controversial topic, the algorithm will make sure to sink its barbs into you, and exploit you emotionally. This is especially real for older people who didn't grow up with the internet, or people who are blind to this issue. These two groups haven't learned to moderate their emotions and question the nature, or source, of the content.
I might think I am interested in learning about how 5G spreads COVID or about Vaccines causing autism but both of those things are fictions.
The idea that the web needs to be helpful and start showing me more of something I have looked at or even searched for needs to die.
Just because I geolocate as being in Japan does not mean I want my search results in Japanese first, especially when I specify English(Google).
Just because I clicked on a funny looking mousepad that has an ass on it does not mean that I wan advertisements and suggestions for similar things for the next several months(Amazon).
In the name of user engagement and trying to figure out how to capture revenue, I feel that tech is losing sight of how to be a good service. We all railed on Microsoft when Clippy would patronizingly pop up to try and help you write a letter but think we have improved service when we search for one thing and have it show up a number of competing products.
Sorry for being all over the place, I agree that we should be showing people what they ask for but also think that is as far as it need to go. Don't follow them down the street and shove more of the same in their faces.
This is the problem here. It's like gambling addictions: on the one hand the gambler seems to be doing things voluntarily, on the other hand an entire industry is trying to trick them into coming back.
> it’s not fine if a ranked newsfeed amplifies that message to millions of people because it’s engaging
So companies are now restricted in what messages they are allowed to amplify?