I am willing to hear differing opinions on this.
I sometimes see people on Fediverse speak as if there is something inherently wrong about the idea of content sorting and filtering algorithms.
There is a massive amount of content today and limited time. Content algorithms could provide the benefit of helping us sort content based on what we want. The most he urgent news, the most informative articles, the closest friends, etc. This might have some similarities with how Facebook and others do it, but it is not the same. Big social media algorithms have one goal: maximizing their profit. One metric for that is maximizing screen on-time and scrolling.
Personally, I’ve been developing an algorithm to help me sift through the content I get on my RSS reader, as there’s a lot of content I’m uninterested in. This algorithm would save me time, whereas those of Twitter and Facebook maximize my wasted time.
In my opinion, algorithms should be:
- opt-in: off my default, and the user is given a clear choice to change it
- transparent: the algorithm should be transparent about its goals and inner workings
Only with this, can algorithms be good.
What are your thoughts?
I think, a big reason why techy people don’t value these algorithms as much, is because we can achieve a lot of the same (sometimes better, sometimes it just feels better) by manually setting up filter rules.
And a big reason for that, is that many of these algorithms are just hot garbage. Even Google’s supposedly unmatched algorithm knowledge and intimate knowledge of their users regularly fails to deliver anything of value.
I guess, they do have those corporate interests, and in particular don’t want to be transparent to avoid people gaming their algorithms, but then even the bloody algorithm in my IDE trying to guess what I want auto-completed feels disappointingly much like a broken clock being right twice a day.
These are all anecdotes. I’m not aware of a non-commercial social media content algorithm, so maybe this is the one field where they’re amazing.