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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

#421

Post by xg15 »

not2b wrote: post #323
zmmmmm wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you say, explaining the intracicies of the algorithm is a fools errand. I guess it is more reasonable if you turn it around: these changes have drastic impact on businesses, so there is a duty to behave responsibly in administering them. If Google really has no idea what the impact of a change will be then it is fairly irresponsible to make that change given the real world harm it can cause. But I suspect in gener…

In many cases they (Google) don't know the impact of changes until they try deploying the changes, and there's ML in the picture, not just algorithms. As I understand it, they often run tests that expose the change to a limited subset of users first.

Yes, but they don't just do random stuff. They make changes with the intention to adjust the experience in certain ways, so making those intentions public is important.

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

#422

Post by xg15 »

Jonanin wrote: post #168
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #102

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.

This is an incredibly naive perspective. I guess you want to ban search engines, self driving cars, automated filtering of lewd and abusive content (why do you think FB isn’t full of porn? It’s not a hand engineered algorithm), automatic speech recognition for the hearing impaired, and a vast swath of important technology I didn’t list. I don’t think you really understand the implications of what you’re asking for. S…

Search engines already worked before ML, neither automated filtering nor self-driving cars actually work in reality.

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

#423

Post by xg15 »

silexia wrote: post #394
xg15 wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if not tied to particular news organisations, this could actually be a sensible requirement.

No, I've lived in the SEO world my entire life and I guarantee you that if the ranking changes were published spam would be so bad is to make search engines or social media totally unusable.

Then publish the broad criteria behind the ranking and have the technical details be audited by the government behind closed doors.

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

#424

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

lethologica wrote: post #390
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How Labor haven't turned that into a win is beyond me. The Libs are lying sacks of burning, corrupt garbage, and Labor are, seemingly, totally politically inept. Australia's two choices.

Vote Greens.

The Greens are politically inept, lying sacks of burning, corrupt garbage.

There are no good politicians.

The only thing any of them have going is that some of them accidentally make reasonable policy choices occasionally.

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

#425

Post by roytries »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #263
d3ntb3ev1l wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you but I am still scared of racism.

> I agree with you but I am still scared of racism. My suspicion is that the concern with machine learning over racism is rooted in two things. The first is just the general modern trend of accusing anything you don't like of being racist, because everybody hates racism and wants to fight it. And the second is the fear on the part of people who make a living fighting racism that machine learning might actually put th…

> My suspicion is that the concern with machine learning over racism is rooted in two things. The first is just the general modern trend of accusing anything you don't like of being racist, because everybody hates racism and wants to fight it. And the second is the fear on the part of people who make a living fighting racism that machine learning might actually put them out of a job.

I don't get to how you go from this statement, to then again explaining exactly how racism is embedded in algorithms. By using the biased data we have in the real world...

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

#426

Post by g42gregory »

bobnamob wrote: post #253
jjcm wrote: post #232

I live in Australia and while I'm excited to see less Facebook use, I see a lot of comments saying things like, "good, Facebook monetized an addiction model and this curbs that". While true, the proposed law that has pushed them to do this is incredibly dangerous. The law doesn't just apply to Facebook, it applies to whoever the Treasurer of Australia[0] says it applies to - it isn't metrics/rules based: https://i.im…

Fb may have overshot. They've not only blocked news pages but gov pages as well. Most people I know in aus have been getting covid updates purely through government body social media posts. These are now blocked.

>> They've not only blocked news pages but gov pages as well.

Couldn't this be a viewed as a criminal act by the Australian government? Could they arrest FB employees in Australia for FB HQ blocking their pages, especially with the vital COVID-19 information?

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

#427

Post by forgingahead »

This is hilarious, because the impression to regular folks will simply be that "Facebook has implemented a news blackout on Australians, which is authoritarian and dangerous."

That is certainly a true sentiment, but in general as many other commenters have noted, it's better not to have "news" articles being force-fed to social media users via blackbox algorithms, emotional trigger-sharing, and over-enthusiastic ad buyers. This is a great first-step to help break the spell that accidental over-consumption of news media has on people's mental health.

Enjoy Australia, the rest of the world envies the peace and quiet in your news feed!

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

#428

Post by Khaine »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #369
not2b wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the racism is a real issue, though a lot of it is caused by limited training data. Having an image recognition algorithm identify Africans and South Asians as gorillas doesn't happen because the designers intended it, but because their training data had only light-skinned human faces and dark-skinned primates. But the effect is racist even though this wasn't the intent. Likewise, if the system is trained to dupli…

> Having an image recognition algorithm identify Africans and South Asians as gorillas doesn't happen because the designers intended it, but because their training data had only light-skinned human faces and dark-skinned primates. But the effect is racist even though this wasn't the intent. This isn't racism at all. It's just bad PR because humans take the implication that calling black people monkeys is calling them…

I’m not an expert in this, but I think racists call black people apes, not just because they think they are stupid, but because they think they are sub-human.

Blacks don’t reach the intelligence and blah to be human. I think that’s what racists drive at when they call someone a monkey, and that’s why it’s so offensive.

It would also make your theoretical AI racist, as it identified blacks as not human.

Honestly, at the end of the day that is what is so difficult about much of this. It’s mostly subjective

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

#429

Post by oska »

abiogenesis wrote: post #357
hilbert42 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I live in Australia and while I'm excited to see less Facebook use, I see a lot of comments saying things like, "good, Facebook monetized an addiction model and this curbs that". While true, the proposed law that has pushed them to do this is incredibly dangerous." You're absolutely right and I'm also horrified by the implications, and I would be even more so if the circumstances were more normal. The trouble is tha…

Blackmail is an exaggeration. The government is asking them to pay for news articles (that have been voluntarily shared) and what Facebook simply says is "we liked the articles when they were free, but thanks, we don't want to buy them".

We liked the articles when they were free and we could push ads alongside them and we don't want to share the profits we make from this ad-pushing, sorry.

That's a much more true summary of their position I think. Facebook, exactly like Google, is an ad-pushing company. I don't have any sympathy for ad-pushing companies in the first instance and then even less for those who want to push ads against work they haven't commissioned themselves.

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

#430

Post by oska »

zmmmmm wrote: post #205
teruakohatu wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In Facebook's case it is even worse because they are not the ones creating the links - their users are. It is much worse than that. The publishers themselves often share the links on Facebook themselves.

Yes, it is particularly egregious that someone can go to Facebook, create a link to their own content, and then claim monetary compensation for use of their content from Facebook.

I actually don't see a problem with this in the context of an ad-pushing platform. Facebook gets all its engagement from 1) users' feeds and 2) imported 3rd party content. Why should they receive all the profits from pushing ads against content others have created? I think it's a grossly unfair "business model" and am happy to see it challenged.
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