![]() If the curators’ job was really just about cleaning up the data, Facebook seems to have forgotten to tell that to the curators themselves, who described their mandate very differently to Gizmodo. This is in keeping with the company’s broader push for what it calls quality content, another term that entails value judgments without copping to them.įacebook’s instinct to hire journalists was well-placed: As I’ve explained, no algorithm yet devised can fully substitute for a good human writer or editor.īut Facebook instead opted to hire cheap contractors and went on to claim that their role is simply to “confirm that the topics are in fact trending news in the real world and not, for example, similar-sounding topics or misnomers.” That’s a dubious claim, even if you think the allegations of liberal bias are trumped up. That’s why Facebook felt the need to hire humans to oversee it. ![]() The most popular stories at any given time might well be misleading, or sensationalist, or even full of lies. The problem with an algorithm that simply harnesses the wisdom of the crowd is that the crowd isn’t always wise. It’s built to execute goals that range from maximizing user engagement to making users feel good about the time they spend on Facebook. I wrote in depth earlier this year about the human values and decisions that shape Facebook’s news feed algorithm. Most importantly, they’re built to serve human ambitions, which are inherently subjective. They’re built by humans, they’re maintained and updated and overseen by humans, and they’re flawed like humans. And it’s in Facebook’s interest to shift responsibility for controversial decisions from humans, whom we know to be biased, to algorithms, which we tend to lionize.īut algorithms aren’t magic. It’s very much in Facebook’s interest to remain a social network in the public’s eyes, even in the face of mounting evidence that it’s something much bigger than that. As the New York Times’ John Herrman and Mike Isaac point out, 65 percent of Americans surveyed by Pew view the news media as a “negative influence on the country.” For technology companies, that number is just 17 percent. For that matter, you don’t get that big by admitting that you’re a media company.
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