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Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

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Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

#141
post #78

Oh no, not that, anything but that. In all seriousness I hope this drives the less informed in Australia to seek out actual news sources and break out of the echo chamber that is Facebook. And I hope it forces Facebook to actually support journalism instead of leeching off of it. You can't have a robust democracy without a robust fourth estate.

Are these less informed people numerous enough to cause a problem to others, perhaps by voting badly? How would you know?

Are you one of them? How would you know? If you are, then aren't any opinions you share on the internet just making things worse?

I ask these questions because I keep seeing the news exaggerating some bogeyman and people believing that it's more significant than it really is. For example, you expressed concern for democracy in your post here, which seems like a pretty big danger! Is that really at risk for Australia or are you misinformed about the significance of this particular bogeyman?

I also see people complaining about misinformation while never identifying themselves as victims of it. Why aren't the victims complaining? Because part of being a victim of misinformation includes not knowing that you are. So maybe it's yourself, in which case, better to address that problem before trying to "correct" others. Also, this idea of there being a huge underclass of misinformed people damaging democracy is divisive. It classifies people into good (always ourselves) and bad (always someone else), giving moral justification to the self-declared "good" people to correct the "bad" people.

Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also believe any algorithm that isn't human-readable should be banned. If it can't be understood, nobody can validate that it isn't racist, sexist, or slanted towards encouraging violence and harm. The fact that technology companies have been grossly negligent and irresponsible isn't a reason to not regulate them: It's proof regulation needs to be much, much stronger.

> I also believe any algorithm that isn't human-readable should be banned. If it can't be understood, nobody can validate that it isn't racist, sexist, or slanted towards encouraging violence and harm. I'm not sure a human-readable algorithm exists for ranking all the web pages in the world based on natural language input. In fact, I'm pretty sure such an algorithm does not, and potentially cannot, exist given the ab…

> Are you willing to make Google 10% as effective to achieve your goal of a human-readable algorithm?

Absolutely. If it can't be done responsibly and ethically, perhaps it should not be done.

Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how this advance update thing is supposed to work. What does disclosing those details look like, actually? The reason I'm asking is that as these things grow in complexity, it's quite possible that even if you join the team that works on these systems it will probably take you a pretty long time to understand how they really work. Their actual behaviour is likely to still be mysterious a lot of the time b…

Any human-initiated change to search algorithms is presumably human-understandable. Someone writes a rule to downrank some terms or traits of a website, they presumably document it somewhere. That documentation will need to be shared, and the implementation of the rule change will need to be delayed until the disclosure window has passed.

Human understandable, yes, but the details of particular changes might only make sense to humans familiar with the system.

But yeah, the product manager view / documentation of intent sounds generally reasonable.

I do wonder how useful that would be to the news orgs in practice.

Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

#145
Australia is a backward nanny state and this is just another manifestation of this fact. The rules and regulations in this country are just over the top. They advertise themselves as "laid back" but there is nothing laid back about how this country runs. Still waiting for NSW to allow electric scooters.

I do admit though, with all the progressivism going around being conservative in some aspects can be very beneficial. For example closing the country to flights from China and in general when corona started was a pretty good idea unlike in the US where everybody called Trump racist for trying to do just that.

Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any human-initiated change to search algorithms is presumably human-understandable. Someone writes a rule to downrank some terms or traits of a website, they presumably document it somewhere. That documentation will need to be shared, and the implementation of the rule change will need to be delayed until the disclosure window has passed.

Human understandable, yes, but the details of particular changes might only make sense to humans familiar with the system. But yeah, the product manager view / documentation of intent sounds generally reasonable. I do wonder how useful that would be to the news orgs in practice.

Honestly, first and foremost, I expect a firehose of documentation, if Google isn't lying about making dozens of changes to it's algorithms every day. News companies might need a full-time guy (or team) just to sit there and read through them all.

But on the other hand, a bunch of journalists will have a ton of never-before-seen information about how the world's most powerful companies affect every other company on the planet. That alone is going to be worth some major exclusives.

Also, by the mere nature of being forced to share it, Google and Facebook will have to clean up their acts, they'll have to assume any change they make that could open them up to legal scrutiny will be found.

Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

#148
post #2

Text of the relevant Australian law: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....

That's a summary of the bill, along with some commentary on the arguments that were heard about. This seems to be the actual text: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi...

Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also believe any algorithm that isn't human-readable should be banned. If it can't be understood, nobody can validate that it isn't racist, sexist, or slanted towards encouraging violence and harm. I'm not sure a human-readable algorithm exists for ranking all the web pages in the world based on natural language input. In fact, I'm pretty sure such an algorithm does not, and potentially cannot, exist given the ab…

> Are you willing to make Google 10% as effective to achieve your goal of a human-readable algorithm? Absolutely. If it can't be done responsibly and ethically, perhaps it should not be done.

what % of people do you think would be willing to stop using search engines because they are unethical?

Re: Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia

#150
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is at odds with the grand idea of a beautiful open network and free flow of information^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W US-centric media machine governed by US law and exclusively celebrating US culture and western propaganda You are likely to find all kinds of explanations on this thread, but ultimately I believe the root cause is the above.

Please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic or ideological flamewar. It makes discussion less curious, more tedious, and nastier. Instead, please make your substantive points thoughtfully and without that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Substantively, this is a battle between a US media powerhouse and a sovereign nation over control of its local media. This isn't "ideological flamewar", it is an inescapable reality underpinning the case.
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