I don't think the problem is algorithmic curation, the problem is _bad_ algorithmic curation.
I personally find quite a lot of interesting content on YouTube's and Spotify's recommendations.
I personally find quite a lot of interesting content on YouTube's and Spotify's recommendations.
YouTube optimizes for engagement and time on site. If that leads you to a bunch of conspiracy videos and radicalizing content then it thinks it did its job well.
Algorithmic feeds goal seek and the problem is that 1) you don’t control the goal (algorithmic cruelty) and 2) the maxima of chasing that goal might have disasterous consequences (paperclip problem).
As a simple example, I would like to be able to tell my feed to prioritize posts by my close friends over posts by people I don't know very well.
The phrase “algorithmic cruelty” is best demonstrated with the most seemingly innocuous efforts. Like reminding you of a special birthday photo with a friend who has died and the computer has no way of knowing that.
The paperclip problem never goes away even if you’re in control. It’s like the butterfly effect. At least if everyone has a slightly different algorithm then the overall system wouldn’t align to produce mobs and harassment quite as easilly. Also without centralized control then mitigating those effects becomes much more complicated.
Even when it works flawlessly with no “side effects” it can have negative consequences. If it’s too good or you have too much fun with it then maybe you spend less time with real friends or ignoring other things. I use a chronological timeline and it gets boring sometimes. That boredom is a useful signal to me to go do something else. ( chronological is still an algorithm we just tend to not think of it as one)
At the end of the day I agree it’s better to have a distributed and Democratic feed then be at the mercy of someone else. That still doesn’t mean ALL of the problems with algorithmic feeds are solved by giving the user more control. It also doesn’t begin to get into the complexity of how a non-programmer would begin to tune such an algorithm without sliders and buttons that go into an algorithm someone else ultimately wrote.
It doesn't seem to do that anymore though. The amount of complaints about this is significantly down in the last few years and the comment section isn't hell like it used to be.
One of the larger problems in this space is: since we cannot view the inputs that created the problem, we cannot verify that the problem is actually gone (rather than, say, shifted somewhere else less visible but just as harmful).
If this effect was achieved by a word denylist for example: then I expect new slang and code words to pop up to combat the filter.
We should ask for independent review and high standards rather than declaring the problem gone when we individually are no longer impacted by it.
If the developers of a social network have incentives that are more aligned with their users then it would be possible to create genuinely useful and interesting algorithmic content feeds.
That's the ability, that should be a right, to know in particular for widely available or impactful systems, what is the algorithm behind their feed, from raw data sources (and also the parameters should be public). Choices are made for us that could be very bad or against or interests (for example, to promote engagement or ad consumption), and we have pretty much no way of really knowing that. Let's fight for algorithmic transparency!