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Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

algorithmwatch.org

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Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#51

Post by iagovar »

peer2pay wrote: post #31

> While our results show that male and female content creators are forced to show skin in similar ways if they want to reach their audience, the effect could be larger for females, and be considered a discrimination of female entrepreneurs. Overall this article strikes me as a large collection of pseudo-science but this sentence baffles me the most. Is the author arguing against their own conclusions?

I guess the authors didn't like what conclusions their data leads to so they just came up with this weird paragraph.

It's like they wanted to throw in some discrimination out there but they weren't sure how to do it.

Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#52

Post by globular-toast »

zxcmx wrote: post #2

It seems like the possibility that photos-of-undress are promoted by organic engagement is not discussed? (aka people seem to be clicking on this). Confession: this is the first thing that sprang to mind for me. Not that algorithms suck or companies suck (though both of those are true) but that people suck.

People suck? For being sexually attracted to members of the opposite sex? That mechanism is the very reason you are here. Your parents were attracted to each other and mated to produce you. Don't demonise sexual attraction.

What's actually happening here is some people are exploiting this natural quality for their own personal gain. Giving men access to countless pictures of naked women is like giving an alcoholic access to a brewery. It destroys people and it destroys relationships.

Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#53

Post by Tepix »

viburnum wrote: post #47

Instagram’s explore tab has learned that I like pictures of English gardens. It works amazingly well. But if I refresh too often, it seems to run out of new garden photos and just shows hot young women and luxury cars instead (I’m not interested in either). I don’t know if it’s the algorithm or a deliberate choice but it’s gross either way.

It's the same with Pinterest for me by the way.

It shows the pictures I'm interested in and when it runs out of them it starts showing bikini models and cars.

Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#54

Post by jodrellblank »

zxcmx wrote: post #2

It seems like the possibility that photos-of-undress are promoted by organic engagement is not discussed? (aka people seem to be clicking on this). Confession: this is the first thing that sprang to mind for me. Not that algorithms suck or companies suck (though both of those are true) but that people suck.

> "but that people suck."

It's in the definition of "attractive", things which attract attention and interest. Do people suck for wanting to eat food instead of mud? For wanting to listen to pleasant music instead of screeching noises? It seems like the least sucky creature in the world implied by your words would be Buridan's Ass[1].

Hyper-stimuli are one of the big problems of our time; hyper-palatable food, hyper-comfortable indoors sedentary pursuits, hyper-engaging gambling and gaming environments, hyper-engaging edited pictures and videos (and adverts and films and TV shows). The highlights reel, on steroids.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buridan's_ass

Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#55

Post by manigandham »

peer2pay wrote: post #31

> While our results show that male and female content creators are forced to show skin in similar ways if they want to reach their audience, the effect could be larger for females, and be considered a discrimination of female entrepreneurs. Overall this article strikes me as a large collection of pseudo-science but this sentence baffles me the most. Is the author arguing against their own conclusions?

This test is not scientific, the conclusion is highly suspect and the discrimination angle is a giant reach.

Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#56

Post by iamben »

zxcmx wrote: post #2

It seems like the possibility that photos-of-undress are promoted by organic engagement is not discussed? (aka people seem to be clicking on this). Confession: this is the first thing that sprang to mind for me. Not that algorithms suck or companies suck (though both of those are true) but that people suck.

I'm sure this is exactly the case. I bet far more people interact (regardless of whether they 'like' it) with the swimwear/sexy pose shots than they do the photo of last night's dinner.

I like a lot of photos, but in my own 'explore' timeline I've noticed categories of photos that appear from time to time, despite me never liking them. Until I did the whole "I do not want to see content like this" thing and made them disappear, I was seeing a lot of fishing videos, or bizarrely, people slipping their feet into shoes filled with foam (?). I'm fairly certain that as you scroll down the explore timeline just paying over a playing video - or particularly opening something (even if it's really odd or gross) just because you're like "what the hell is that" seems to register it as interest. I think if that topic is pretty "niche" you start seeing it a lot more pretty quickly.

I guess a bit like reading a single story on Quora about going to prison, or surviving an aircrash - you can pretty much expect your daily digest to be full of those for the next 3 weeks.

Point being, I assume few people will admit to it, but I bet their eye is drawn to the scantily clad photo every time. They open it/pause on it - and it's probably registered as 'most interesting'.

Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#57

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

n_kb wrote: post #49
toyg wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is the prioritization based on a machine analysis of the photo, or on the response of earlier users to the photo? I would bet the latter. Why go to the trouble of analysing difficult stuff about body structure, when you can just let users "decide". I think we should formulate a law, something like "every internet imageboard, if left to user-moderation, will eventually turn into pr0n".

It's likely that FB uses user response to posts to decide how to prioritize them. However, several patents describe systems where they analyze (using CV) and make decision on the importance of pictures before they are published.

Remember kids, just because a Megacorp has a patent on something, doesn't imply that they are using an approach like this anywhere in production.

Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#58

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

manigandham wrote: post #32
n_kb wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless your don't want to, but you are obliged to use IG because your business focuses on a demographic on which IG has a monopoly (the 15-25 demographics in the EU).

Nobody is "obliged" to use it. You can also buy ads if you want to show your posts to people, like any other business does.

To be fair, the linked article does suggest that this effect occurs for ads as well as organic posts.

Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#59

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

Tepix wrote: post #53
viburnum wrote: post #47

Instagram’s explore tab has learned that I like pictures of English gardens. It works amazingly well. But if I refresh too often, it seems to run out of new garden photos and just shows hot young women and luxury cars instead (I’m not interested in either). I don’t know if it’s the algorithm or a deliberate choice but it’s gross either way.

It's the same with Pinterest for me by the way. It shows the pictures I'm interested in and when it runs out of them it starts showing bikini models and cars.

To be fair, that's probably the two largest centroids of any reduced dimension space they've estimated to rank photos.

Re: Instagram prioritizes photos of scantily-clad men and women

#60

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

manigandham wrote: post #35
n_kb wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We didn't have enough data to test these hypotheses. If more people contribute their data, we'll be able to test that: https://algorithmwatch.org/en/instagram-algorithm/

That's a major missing hypothesis that seriously undermines your conclusion. Why do you need me to share data at all? Just create brand new accounts and test what they see in a more controlled manner. Then you'll be able to test what's recommended from the same accounts over time while building any specific profiles yourself.

That's against FB's and IG's terms of service, so as an investigative outlet, they can't really do that and then promote the results.
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