facebook circlejerker algorithm

[Deleted]

Every time i talk about politics with friends i can't believe how they all seem to prefer social media and how insulated each side can be when it comes to sources and knowledge of the opposite side's views.

Wether its left or right everyone is in his perfect bubble of funny pictures and converging paradigms
I'm not even talking about american style "SJW vs Cuckservative vs whatever" bullshit meme wars but even within communities with a reasonable political culture this is a growing problem.


And the reason is pretty simple : nowadays if you like something on fb you get computer generated recommendations based on where your interests appear to be.
This is fine for cupcakes recipes and twilight fanfictions but when you apply the same principle to news you basically create self confirmation sects that will almost never interact with each other and may even ban anyone not sharing their opinions.

And then you end up with incredibly polarized populations posting the same threads on mmo champ everyday because they see hundreds of variations of muslim rape stories and white genocide stuff all day long.
Same goes for the opposite side with trudeau fanboys threads, communism vs capitalism, etc


Should we start banning those algorithms ?

Obviously information must be free and uncensored, but we should definitely not let facebook shape the modern political discourse

[Dezerte]

As the popularity and power of social media have risen, yes, I think something needs to be done. Social media needs to take some social responsibility and act more ethically.

[Independent voter]

They can read Associated Press anytime they want. It's on them really and not Facebook.

Now that Facebook is the internet for a lot of people, there are groups who want to want to do social experiments with it.

[Annoying]

Private company means it would be a violation of their 1A rights to stop them from doing whatever they want to do with their code.

[Ravenblade]

It's because they use the same algorithm which determines you like cat videos, pictures with kittens and music about kittens also determining that you like certain types of news. It is rather funny when you manage to confuse it. Facebook has been suggesting several science groups, neonazi groups, antifa groups, grassroot democracy groups, Reichsbürger groups, Christian groups and atheist groups to me every day...all because it's based on some silly heuristic algorithms which claim to know you very well

[twiddler]

It's not their problem. Their algorithm is trained on you, your friends, cookies, likes, clicks, etc. It creates a circlejerk because the user is a circlejerker--if the user wasn't, the user would have clicked on an article from an opposing view which would have lead to an increase in recommendations from that cluster of media instead of what people are commonly crying as biased recommendation. Don't blame the system that people are flawed and they give the people what they commonly like to visit--the recommender is biased because people are biased.

[Miztickow]

They can read Associated Press anytime they want. It's on them really and not Facebook.

Now that Facebook is the internet for a lot of people, there are groups who want to want to do social experiments with it.

All of this ^^^

Social media is a garbage place to get news. People need to learn and research what is a reliable source of news.

[Hotmail]

The thing is that without those algotyurtmn it would take a hell of a long time to find out what you're looking for on youtube.

You'd have to ask Facebook specifically to stop cahooting with Google and they'd lose out on too many clicks if they did that.

[Zyster]

I would more look at it as facebooks algorithm is influential and the people doing this aren't intelligent. I see exactly what you are talking about all the time on Facebook and taking a minute to myself to even just google 9/10 of these articles has resulted in the conclusion that most of it is fabricated and propaganda. However, I am somewhat thankful for this at the same time because although it had lead into what I consider a downhill spiral of ignorance, people like me have probably learned new things or been intrigued bu stuff that this research may of resulted in. Learning new stuff and broadening our knowledge.

[Mormolyce]

Facebook, Youtube etc all customise content to the audience. This has the negative effect of creating insulated circlejerks.

It's certainly a depressing view of the future with people replacing traditional media with online media that is deliberately skewing itself to reinforce personal biases. That was clearly a big factor in the formation of the alt-right for example.

Hard to say what can actually be done about it. Realistically I expect that these new media outlets will eventually start curating their content more stringently, and will eventually adapt into something resembling traditional media :P

[Ghaleon]

Didn't MGS2 go into detail about this same thing happening? Like 16 years ago Kojima knew this kind of stuff would happen.

[Chinese Bootlickers]

Didn't MGS2 go into detail about this same thing happening? Like 16 years ago Kojima knew this kind of stuff would happen.

It's fuckin' crazy man.

[GreenJesus]

I hope facebook bans alt-left sites like "Nowthis" and "occupydemocrats"or "thehill" along with other shitty fake alt-right sites like "infowars" and "breitbart". Infowars and breitbart make conservatives look bad.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Can't force people to educate themselves. You can tell people all day that facebook should not be their main source for current world events...but it's up to them to source things for themselves.

[Ghaleon]

It's fuckin' crazy man.

Yes that video is the one thanks.

And yea it is pretty crazy kojima was able to predict this, somehow he did though.

[Deleted]

Can't force people to educate themselves. You can tell people all day that facebook should not be their main source for current world events...but it's up to them to source things for themselves.

you can't expect people to suddenly wisen up regarding algorithm manipulation, especially when it is essentially happening in the background

france has introduced initiation to media and politics in school
that's a good start but we should still impose limits on corporations behavior

[zenkai]

I am speaking in general terms, with that being said.

I think this problem isn't limited to social media. People prefer to get news from biased sources, they don't want to be informed they want to believe the world is a certain way.

This is why democrats tend refuse to read fox news and republicans refuse to read most other news sources. Anything that that is against their opinion or makes them face reality makes them angry and call it fake.

[Lady Dragonheart]

I don't really do much on social media outside of WoW, several gaming forums (including this one and the WoW forums), Japanese forums, and adult-themed forums. Facebook has always bothered me with how simple it was for others to spam you with negligent, often heavy bias, information. So, I never really got into it myself. I have a Facebook account solely for family and friends to contact me, and that's about it. I go on facebook enough times a year that I can count them on my hands.

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

you can't expect people to suddenly wisen up regarding algorithm manipulation, especially when it is essentially happening in the background

france has introduced initiation to media and politics in school
that's a good start but we should still impose limits on corporations behavior

Actually, you can. We all know it's happening. It's up to us to figure out how we handle it.

[Deleted]

Actually, you can. We all know it's happening. It's up to us to figure out how we handle it.

maybe you and i do, but i really doubt the majority of facebook users realize it

its just like advertisement, some people can barely see 3 seconds of it without analyzing tropes and bias and oppose conscious mental resistance to the message delivered but these are the minority, that has been familiarized with ads techniques

the simple mention of algorithms gets you weird looks and jaws dropping nowadays