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Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do

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Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do

#31

Post by sleepysysadmin »

umvi wrote: post #8

I 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…

>I created my own bubble on Facebook.

Everyone does. There's nothing wrong with it. People at the coffee shops or the pubs were often people with similar interests.

The problem is that we exited the culture wars in around 2009. We went into societal crisis. For the next 10-15 years or so we will be looking for the collapse of the crisis.

The funny thing is that people still think it's the culture wars. Especially the mass media. It's not. It's why culture wars like Gamergate or Greta Thunburg are not winning anything at all for their cause.

The reason people are very concerned about these filter bubbles and the problems of social media is because those were fine during culture wars. They are huge problems now we are in the crisis era.

The problem? The collapse of the crisis is always violent revolution or a world war that does not hold back.

People want to break these bubbles in order to prevent what is rather inevitable.

The funny thing is that nobody can predict who or what is the revolution. Which side has to lose? There's a bit of a problem. The democrats want to ban guns and generally dislike guns as a group.

So if the revolution happens, who loses is pretty clear.

Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do

#32

Post by umvi »

sokoloff wrote: post #24
floatrock wrote: post #9

And "litterbug" was a term invented by the packaging industry in a PR campaign that shifted blame about packaging waste from the manufacturers to the consumers. This is a low-effort content marketing fluff piece that just says this company's recommendation engine has a "serendipity knob." It avoids the pernicious bits like how business models built on eyeball engagement result in a death march towards maximizing enga…

Litterbug is a real thing though, IMO. I don't want Coke to sell me a handful of Coke; I want it in a watertight container. If, when I'm done with that container, I throw it on the ground, how is that Coke's fault? Same question for a fast-food wrapper. Do we think McDonalds should serve its food loose?

It doesn't have to be binary. Consumer is responsible for making sure packaging ends up in the trash/recycling bin, but manufacturer is responsible for making litter-resistant products and packaging. For example, if your product is wrapped in thin plastic that comes apart in multiple pieces when you try to take it off... it's going to be a high litter risk compared to a can of soda which is a single continuous piece of aluminum.

Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do

#33

Post by belval »

umvi wrote: post #8

I 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…

I did the exact same thing but what you are describing is (imo) not the kind of filter bubbles that are problematic.

Unfollowing and tailoring content to your interest is great and makes a lot of sense. The issue arise when dealing with news. If Facebook is your main news source and you decide to unfollow any medias, you can end up in a bubble where the world news you are presented with are really skewed to reinforce your world view which ultimately could lead you to full own fake-news consumption.

That being said, inflammatory political posts by your friends are not news.

Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do

#34

Post by dragontamer »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #26
sokoloff wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Litterbug is a real thing though, IMO. I don't want Coke to sell me a handful of Coke; I want it in a watertight container. If, when I'm done with that container, I throw it on the ground, how is that Coke's fault? Same question for a fast-food wrapper. Do we think McDonalds should serve its food loose?

They could lease the watertight container to you for a deposit, and when you return the watertight container to them, they clean it and re-use it.

What assurances do you have that said containers are washed between uses?

A restaurant will wash their stuff to make sure that you're a return customer. But a big advantage of once-opened / once-disposed containers is that I can suddenly trust random street vendors with no relationship to me.

Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do

#35

Post by cdrini »

I think recommendation algorithms provide a useful service, but I think the main issue is that for a lot of sites there's no way to explore the content _without_ that algorithm which is heavily biased in your favour. Things you dislike are minimised and slowly hidden from you to make it seem like no one likes these things. Things you enjoy are proliferated to make it seem like everyone likes these things. This gives a warped view of the world. Showing a random article 10% of the time isn't going to help with that. An experimental interface I worked on last year (and am working on) is using classification systems to let people explore the books of Open Library, https://openlibrary.org/explore (beta warning :) ). The idea being that you can quickly dive deep into a topic you're interested in, but just because you're interested in "Science", that doesn't mean the "Arts" or the "Religion" bookcases adjacent to it will become any smaller. You're always in the context of the bigger picture of the entirety of human knowledge.

Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do

#36

Post by didibus »

elliekelly wrote: post #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.

Ya, I think recommender systems assume a filter bubble. I'm not an expert so hopefully someone can correct me, but filtering based on ones existing interest seems to be the use case no?

What I'd like to see is something that can select for quality, and not for interest.

I think this is what you often get with human manual curation. For example, I can happily read a well written well researched thought piece even if the content speaks to opinions I don't currently hold. Or news source that at least appear to have done their research and provide ample evidence and facts, no matter what the content is for.

Similarly with entertainment too, friends can recommend some new great war movie even if I'm not generally into war movies, or some new great book even if I rarely read fiction, etc.

I don't really know how to judge quality though. When someone asks me what kind of music I like, I tend to answer I just like good music. What does that mean? I'm not sure. Could machine learning figure out what that means if it trained on my personal liked music tracks? Would it learn the qualities I'm interested in, or would it end up only learning my personal preferences at the time?

Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do

#37

Post by simmerup »

sleepysysadmin wrote: post #31
umvi wrote: post #8

I 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…

>I created my own bubble on Facebook. Everyone does. There's nothing wrong with it. People at the coffee shops or the pubs were often people with similar interests. The problem is that we exited the culture wars in around 2009. We went into societal crisis. For the next 10-15 years or so we will be looking for the collapse of the crisis. The funny thing is that people still think it's the culture wars. Especially the…

This comment is a great example of something produced by an online bubble. I'm sure if you talked like this in real life most people on your street would have no idea what you're talking about, because you're referencing niche ideas from niche internet subcommunities.

It's a problem because it alienates you from your irl community

Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do

#38

Post by scythe »

umvi wrote: post #8

I 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…

It takes two to tango. Or maybe it's just a two-way street.

Sure, I decide who to interact with. But I make that decision based on how they post. They post, in turn, based on how other people react to their posts.

About half of the things on my FB feed never get a single like or comment. I'm not sure why I still post them. Some of my misses:

"Judge permanently dismisses charges against [Breonna Taylor's boyfriend]": https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kenneth-walker-breonna-taylor-j...

"TikTok assures users worried about Myanmar that they're aggressively monetizing the situation": https://www.theonion.com/tiktok-assures-users-worried-about-...

"Here's why Texas is still without power ... and why other states are vulnerable too": https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/02/why-the-power-is-...

Here are some things that got multiple interactions:

this image mocking TX Gov Greg Abbott: https://i.redd.it/wlq9vk0k9ri61.png

this meme about Gamestop: https://i.redd.it/vdfzutt6b4e61.jpg

It's easier for me to post low-info, high-emotion, easily-consumed polit-ideological junk food and get likes than it is to get attention with a link containing some information or argument, or even just inoffensive satire. Explanations are out, newsfeed-optimal screenshots of brief text are in.

It's very misleading to ignore the influence of the environment when considering how people choose whom to interact with.

Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do

#39

Post by guerrilla »

umvi wrote: post #8

I 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 just a bubble, not a filter bubble which is a specific type of bubble automatically generated for you, not one that you manually created.

Re: Algorithms don't cause filter bubbles, people do

#40

Post by simias »

dragontamer wrote: post #34
dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could lease the watertight container to you for a deposit, and when you return the watertight container to them, they clean it and re-use it.

What assurances do you have that said containers are washed between uses? A restaurant will wash their stuff to make sure that you're a return customer. But a big advantage of once-opened / once-disposed containers is that I can suddenly trust random street vendors with no relationship to me.

If you're willing to trust your restaurant you should also probably trust Coca Cola. Not because I think Coca Cola is more honest, but do you imagine the PR nightmare if employee #832453 captures a video on their smartphone of dirty bottles being reused?

This type of fraud/malpractice is much more likely to be seen in small restaurants with little oversight and loose processes that at a multi-million dollar bottling plant.

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