Hacker News Reader

Comment by systemvoltage | Hacker News Reader

The discussion is about whether people can see what the algorithms are doing. Read only access to the code so they cannot manipulate people into their belief system or arbitrary shadow-ban rules.

You’re right about human judgement but that’s not the topic. The central point, I repeat emphatically, is about transparency, not governance.

Twitter can continue exactly the same way but just be transparent. The intense pushback is because they’ve holed themselves into an untenable position? Not sure why people are so against transparency. Maybe they lied in congressional testimonies?

View on HN

I'm pretty sure the "algorithm" is "we count the number of end-user flags/reports, and if > X we remove it"?

Public knowledge of what "X" is doesn't really help, I think, other than to aid spammers? And a requirement to "talk to a human" upon hitting X would surely immediately degrade into "Google has reviewed your appeal and has determined that the infinite block of your account remains in effect. There is no further appeal"?

There are a whole host of algorithms. Recomendation, feed, suggested followers, interest-based suggestions, etc. I am suspecting algorithms for how "trending" topics are picked are quite involved. It probably goes through filters, blacklists, whitelists, some AI-voodoo and gets increasingly promoted based on engagement in real-time.

That secret sauce is ripe for manipulation and extremely powerful.

Against combating spam - I mean, isn't this how something gets stronger? HN has a strong view that open source software is more secure because it gets hardened through exposure, not through obfuscation.

> Twitter can continue exactly the same way but just be transparent.

No it can't. If the algorithm was transparent the only thing you'd see is spammers who have put tons of resources into figuring out the exactly optimal way to maximize engagement. Grassroots engagement would be impossible.

Some are arguing that the algorithm is so simple that there is nothing to disclose. That means that spamming has reached a plateau and can't get anyworse.

Also, Twitter's spam control has been objectively bad.

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1487022342630957062?lang=en

People think that the entire platform has been hijacked by left-wing / progressives and the reason for lack of transparency is more insiduos than "spam". For example, being liable for what they told Congress.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com