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Comment by gaucheries | Hacker News Reader

I think YouTube locked down their APIs after the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

in the end, that scandal was the open web's official death sentence :(

The issue wasn't the analytics either. The issue was the engagement algorithms and lack of accountability. Those problems still exist today.

So as usual, the exploitative agents get to destroy the commons and come out on top.

We need to figure out how to target the malicious individuals and groups instead of getting creeped out by them to the point of destroying most of the so praised democratizing of computing. Between this and locking down the local desktop and mobile software and hardware, we've never got to having the promised "bicycle for the mind".

no one promised you anything

And what kind of accountability is that? An engagement algorithm is a simple thing that gives people more of what they want. It just turns out that what we want is a lot more negative than most people are willing to admit to themselves.

I would rephrase that to 'what we predictably respond to'.

You can legitimately claim that people respond in a very striking and predictable way to being set on fire, and even find ways to exploit this behavior for your benefit somehow, and it still doesn't make setting people on fire a net benefit or a service to them in any way.

Just because you can condition an intelligent organism in a certain way doesn't make that become a desirable outcome. Maybe you're identifying a doomsday switch, an exploit in the code that resists patching and bricks the machine. If you successfully do that, it's very much on you whether you make the logical leap to 'therefore we must apply this as hard as possible!'

Engagement can be quite unrelated to what people like. A well crafted troll comment will draw tons of engagement, not because people like it.

If people didn't like engaging with troll comments, they wouldn't do it. It's not required, and they aren't getting paid.

This comment has a remarkable lack of nuance in it. That isn't even remotely close to how how human motivation works. We do all kinds of things motivated by emotions that have nothing to do with "liking" it.

I don't think people "like" it as much as hate elicits a response from your brain, like it or not.

If people had perfect self-control, they wouldn't do it. IMO it's somewhat irresponsible for the algorithm makers to profit from that - it's basically selling an unregulated, heavily optimized drug. They downrank scammy content for instance, which limits its reach - why not also downrank trolling? (obviously bc the former directly impacts profits, but not the latter, but still)

This is really a child like understanding of the world.

In which ways were the Cambridge Analytica thing and the openness of Youtube APIs (or other web APIs) related? I just don't see the connection

The original open API from the Facebook was open for the benefit of the good actors to use their data. You can disagree with how it's used, but u can't disagree with the intention.

With the CA scandal, now all the big companies would lock down their app data and sell ads strictly through their limited API only, so the ads buyer would have much less control before.

It's basically saying: u cant behave with the open data. Then we will do business only

CA was about 3rd parties scraping private user data.

Companies are locking down access to public posts. This has nothing to do with CA, just with companies moving away from the open web towards vertical integration.

Companies requiring users to login to view public posts (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit) has nothing to do with protecting user data. It's just that tech companies now want to be in control of who can view their public posts.

I'm a bit hazy on the details of the event but the spirit still applies: there were more access to the data that were not 100% profit driven. Now the it's locked down as the companies want to cover their asses and do not want another CA

Wasn't the "open" data policy used to create Clearview AI to create a profile and provide it to US govt departments?

They actually held out for a couple of years after Facebook and didn't start forcing audits and cutting quotas until 2019/2020

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