iamchairs

iamchairs t1_isd4u7y wrote

Because they thought it was the best way to address it most likely. Schrep says in that article that they should have used a different method to conduct the same research, not that the research itself was wrong.

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iamchairs t1_isd2855 wrote

Yeah so this is called an AB test. These are happening all the time. Even here on Reddit did you know your version of Reddit may be slightly different than everyone else's? It's to test to see what a tweak to the system (UI or Feed) has on your behavior. In the article you linked, the article says Facebook was tweaking the percentage of positive/negative sentiment items it let through to your feed.

Yes through the Facebook platform Trump was able to get elected when maybe he wouldn't have otherwise. But the world is too complicated to say "everything happened because of X and only X". What about the following 4 years when the republicans blocked 2 impeachments? What about all of the existing levers used by those in power? Facebook was the shiny new lever. A big one- I'm not downplaying the significance- but one of many.

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iamchairs t1_iscztjx wrote

I'm just telling you how these algorithms work and what is public knowledge about Facebook and privacy policy. It's honestly pretty boring stuff. But if that's pro-Meta I don't know what is neutral. Their logo is blue... Is it like.. an evil blue?

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iamchairs t1_isczj4y wrote

Secret psychological experiments... You mean AB tests?

> one of the greatest crimes of my lifetime

I was going to say you must be young then but even then that doesn't make sense given everything that has happened since then... You sure you got the right scandal?

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iamchairs t1_iscxhye wrote

I've hardly gone out of my way to be pro Meta. I've been fairly neutral the whole time on Meta but I've tried to be objective.

Whenever Meta is in the news we get dozens of these threads that are all the same thing.

Whenever another platform gets caught doing something evil those threads become what-about-facebook threads and, crucially, the thing platform X was doing never actually stops but we all got a good laugh at the old zuck so it's fine.

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iamchairs t1_iscvjbk wrote

Yeah pretty good. So as a response to that, Meta changed a lot of policies internally, and created a strong culture around privacy/security, has active 3rd party oversight, and strict guidelines from the FTC on how it can interact with 3rd parties on user data.

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iamchairs t1_iscuvss wrote

Pretty lazy response. But not surprising based on what I've seen so far.

When you focus all of your attention on Facebook like it's the final boss then you fail to address the systemic problems all of these platforms have.

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iamchairs t1_isc5tvn wrote

Yes it's how you bury content. But it's just you and me here and whoever is going to come after us to see where this thread leads to. At this point we are so far down and replying to each other so quickly we are essentially texting each orher. So by downvoting each of my texts as soon as you get them it seems like you are having a very emotional experience right now

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iamchairs t1_isc5aeg wrote

Nah it's not misdirection. So as I explained there is a natural virality to content. The baseline for most of these algorithms is to notice when something is breaking out, and boost it further. That process is indifferent about the actual content

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