Urrrgh.
Originally shared by Jim Fawcette
How Search/ News Algorithms Favor Extreme Falsehoods
Why do all the tech giants promote this garbage? Because it's profitable, damn the social cost
Remember when the search algorithms that eventually became Google were said to be based on how professional journals ranked papers that were most-often cited? I think they forgot the part about "professionals".
Elmer T. Williams makes $10,000 a month posting garbage on YouTube, garbage that YouTube actively promotes to millions of people {before they take them down in faux-surprise}. After the Texas shooting Williams posted that the shooter was probably “either a Muslim or black", and YouTube stuck that right on the top. Then when the shooter's picture showed he was white, Williams changed his tune. A bit, saying the shooter "was most likely a Bernie Sanders supporter associated with antifa — a left-wing anti-fascist group — who may have converted to Islam."
Mr. Williams has a string of such "successes". "His hit productions have included fact-challenged videos like “Barack and Michelle Obama Both Come Out The Closet,” which garnered 1.6 million views, and “Hillary Clinton Is On Crack Cocaine,” which had 665,000. He was admitted to YouTube’s partner program, which allows popular posters to earn money by displaying ads on certain types of videos, and claims to have made as much as $10,000 a month from his channel. {Remember, earlier reports described the preferential treatment YouTube gave the Kremlin's propaganda channel, RT.}
"The phenomenon is not limited to YouTube. After last month’s mass shooting in Las Vegas, a Facebook safety check page featured a story from a site called “Alt-Right News” that made false statements about the gunman, and Google’s search results displayed a conspiracy theory from 4Chan, the notoriously toxic message board. After last month’s terrorist attack in New York City, a trending topic page on Twitter briefly featured a story from Infowars, a conservative site that is popular among the conspiracy-minded."
Bottom line: All the social-search giants promote this garbage, as part of their business model, because they generate traffic, which produces revenue. This, as the economists would say, "ignores externalities such as the cost to society".
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/business/youtube-rapid-response-partisans.html
Part of the problem was that when people were first building these systems, there was an underlying assumption that people wanted the truth and that misinformation would be self correcting as people would refer to more accurate accounts over less accurate ones.
ReplyDeleteAs a result, now I have to teach my kids sentences like this one: "Not everything you find on Internet is false."
ReplyDeleteChris Greene Not necessarily.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41936791
Well, it is AI. We have as accurate results as Intelligent it is.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking more of old Google and the Page Rank algorithm (and hacker culture in general advocating for free and unrestricted speech on the internet); I don't think anyone should be particularly surprised about Facebook. They've been fairly transparent about what they've been doing; it's only at the last US presdiential election that people have begun to realize that turning the general populace into a culture addicted to outrage and overly simplified memetic arguments may not in fact be a great idea.
ReplyDeleteOh well; it's not like this is that much different than the way things were before. Without Facebook, we already had Fox News, which basically fulfilled the same role. The only interesting question is whether or not Facebook accelerates this or not..