How smart are Facebook's content selection and engagement-counting algorithms? If you watch them from a technical perspective, you'll marvel at the ability of the engineers in this world to create what they call "personalized" suggestions. Google has been doing it for years. Facebook has stopped it. But how smart are Facebook's algorithms? TechCrunch editor Sarah Perez points out the obvious. That they're not only stupid, they're also dangerous.
Perez, in a well-researched article , reports what she found. That her innate curiosity to "click" on some current affairs articles that concerned murders a short while ago, made the Facebook news feed algorithm believe that she was genuinely interested in such disturbing incidents. The result? Every day, seeing such horrifying and disturbing posts about murders from all over the world in her news feed that she is forced to close her screen and get up from her computer in order to keep her composure and sanity. Lies? No.
We have previously reported on the choices that Facebook makes for its users, removing their right to choose, in the name of making the smartest (and most profitable for the social network itself) choice from the vast amount of content that is published.
The problem is that an algorithm still can't distinguish between interest and curiosity. And this weakness can, at best, lead a person who is vulnerable to such stimuli to a distorted view of what's going on in the world. At worst, it can create very serious complications for their mental health.
Of course, the answer to any such concern as what Facebook chooses for us to see remains personal choice: we don't need to be on Facebook all the time and we don't need to depend on a single medium to form an opinion about the world. There are many ways to claim our information and this choice remains ours. We tend to forget it many times.
Read Sarah Perez's interesting article here. And our opinion on the reduction of options on Facebook, as well as the decision of the undercover agent to close her account on the social network, here.
Source: digitallife.gr
