However, if the bubble is big enough, it won't be boring for the person living within it right? The topics for far left/right can be pretty diverse...
Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do
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Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do
#12I’ve never understood this logic - algorithms are written by people. It’s not like they descend down from heaven.
It's more of an idiom than a prepositional formula.
It means that people would create their own filter bubbles, even in the absence of an algorithm, so blaming algorithms or trying to do away with them if your goal is to eliminate filter bubbles is moot.
Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do
#13In fact, preventing filter bubbles (so to speak) is an explicit design goal of recommender systems.
This is one of those annoying articles where someone talks about their specific interest as if it's a universal truth for an entire domain of problems. For an Amazon product listing or a Buzzfeed news page that thrives on users seeing new and exciting stuff to click on and buy, sure, the recommender system needs to avoid getting stuck on one specific type of content. For your Facebook newsfeed or YouTube video sidebar where divisive politics rules the day it is not absolutely not goal because that would stray in to challenging user's beliefs, and that would push people away.
Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do
#14> Just say no to filter bubbles.
But then...
> newsletter, selected based on your interests
Maybe I misunderstand what a "filter bubble" is? Because this seems like a type of filter bubble to me. Perhaps a little looser (and less rage-inducing) than Facebook but it still seems designed to keep people reading content only within their bubble-of-interest while filtering out the rest.
Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do
#15preventing filter bubbles (so to speak) is an explicit design goal of recommender systems.
Of course it's a goal. They're just not very good at achieving that goal. I wouldn't expect someone who makes their living building these things to be unbiased on the question of whether or not they're currently a bad thing.
If I search incognito youtube for "Trump Speech" and select the first video, 3 of the next 4 "up next" are also Trump speeches, and the other one is "McCarthy SHREDS Pelosi". If I click on of those 4, the next "up next" videos are different, but also 3 of the first 4 are Trump speeches. The other one is a Trump-Biden debate. This is a filter bubble.
Sure, human psychology plays a part, that's why algorithms like this work in the first place. But compare this to the opposite extreme pre 24-hour news networks and there was simply much less opportunity for playing into this. That's what algorithms provide: The ability to "instantiate" filter bubbles much more readily than content that is passively delivered without consideration for past choices, and the consumer has to make all of their choices without that outside influence.
Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do
#16I created my own bubble on Facebook. People would write or share these inflammatory political posts I disagreed with, but I just knew if I commented it would cause contention (which I wanted to avoid since these are my friends), so instead I "unfollowed". A few dozen unfollows later, and I'm now magically in a bubble where my feed is devoid of inflammatory political posts! I did the same thing with reddit. Unsubscrib…
Likewise. What's dismaying is that there's no practical way on Facebook to have civil discussions about politics, it just doesn't work.
I don't think it'd even be all that hard. What you'd want to do is have a mode for contentious topics whereby personal identities are hidden, so there's no personal investment and only ideas are presented.
And you'd want to be able to cite problems with a claim, i.e. you select some text to flag "this is confusing / inflammatory / unsupported," so that people don't go in circles because they don't understand each other or can deal with something that's insulting by having the person tone it down.
Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do
#17I’ve never understood this logic - algorithms are written by people. It’s not like they descend down from heaven.
Are you using the term 'algorithm' in the mathematical and computer-science sense of "a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations", or are you using it in the SV-marketing-hype sense of "an ML trained to produce the answer we want to see"? It can be very confusing switching back and forth.
Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do
#18I’ve never understood this logic - algorithms are written by people. It’s not like they descend down from heaven.
Except Paxos, no man understands that.
Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do
#19I’ve never understood this logic - algorithms are written by people. It’s not like they descend down from heaven.
It's more of an idiom than a prepositional formula. It means that people would create their own filter bubbles, even in the absence of an algorithm, so blaming algorithms or trying to do away with them if your goal is to eliminate filter bubbles is moot.
That's a strawman argument. Seeing filter bubbles as bad doesn't mean the only approach is to remove all filter bubbles in all of existence. You can lessen the number of and ease of making filter bubbles and still have a positive impact on society.
Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do
#20I created my own bubble on Facebook. People would write or share these inflammatory political posts I disagreed with, but I just knew if I commented it would cause contention (which I wanted to avoid since these are my friends), so instead I "unfollowed". A few dozen unfollows later, and I'm now magically in a bubble where my feed is devoid of inflammatory political posts! I did the same thing with reddit. Unsubscrib…
That's the ticket. I did the same. Still friends, because staying connected on FB does matter to me on some level, but I don't see the political thoughts that annoy me. For what it's worth, disagreement != annoying. I still read the stuff published by people I disagree with but find challenging in some way, and unfollowed people I agree with but who present their views in frustrating or obnoxious ways.
This is purely my own experience, but I find that I need to be in the right mindset to read something that's going to challenge me. If I'm scrolling for a few hits of updates from people I care about, I'm not going to be in the right state of mind to read something that's going to get me riled up. The bubble may or may not be inevitable, but it's a necessity. Being aware of feedback loops and managing your own media intake is probably more important than finding ways to prevent those loops entirely, IMO.