607
We unleashed Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms on blank accounts. They served up sexism and misogyny
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2024
607 points (97.9% liked)
World News
38705 readers
8 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News [email protected]
Politics [email protected]
World Politics [email protected]
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Holy shit, so you mean you made accounts posing as men and got content targeted mostly at men, presumably based on what other men have interacted with in the past? Say it ain't so. Why would the algorithm do this?
Holy shit, were you born yesterday?
Social media was not a stew of shit a decade ago. The algorithm recommending this crap is not a natural phenomenon, it's a practice that the companies running things have come to adopt. They could adopt a different practice. Source: was a man on social media a decade ago and was not constantly bombarded with toxic shit.
I quit Facebook a decade ago because it was toxic shit but I get your point. There was a moment in the past where it was good and connected you to distant people in your life and little else.
I'm able to keep facebook okay, but only by constant blocking all from. I wish I could turn off all shared content. The good stuff on facebook is people I personally know but see rarely - but that only takes a few minutes to catch up on and they need me to doomscroll for hours to make money.
Lol imagine being on social media for 10 years and still complaining about the algorithm.
Here's a post from 11 years ago explaining how you were being targeted and how engagement was measured back then:
Source (actual fucking source, as in an article written Aug 13, 2013, instead of your personal experience from the last decade): https://buffer.com/resources/understanding-facebook-news-feed-algorithm/
So, in those 10 years you've been on social media (congrats on the milestone btw, maybe you'll get a clue about the fucking world soon) what they've been doing has not changed, it's merely been perfected. But yeah, sit there and tell me all about how your rose-tinted glasses are ackshually great and don't distort your view, and you're not just a mindless cunt that's been zucking the zuck's dick for the last 10 years, scrolling through shitty posts meant to make you click them. "things were better back in the day" lol gtfo dumbass it's always been the same, it just took you 10 years to notice.
What an actual waste of my time.
Fine, I'm a middle aged fuck who thinks the late 2000s is 10 years ago. So sue me for moving the goalposts to 15-17 years ago, around the time Obama was getting elected. Yes engagement was a thing but fuck no it was not a constant deluge of far right propaganda.
Uh ... sorting posts into video, pic and text only and then by votes and comments is not what we're talking about when we say algorithm. Though yes, I guess that technically is a very simple algorithm.
It's the same algorithm. It has the same purpose and the same result. It has simply been updated and improved. And it most likely still relies on certain markers that can measure how much a post will be engaged with and who will do it, except those markers are now less primitive and harder for us to define.
We're arguing semantics. This has always been the purpose of a social network: to keep you addicted to it. To keep you interacting with it. They don't make money if you're not there to click their ads, to look at their sponsored videos, to be marketed towards. Did they do it as well 10 years ago as they do it today? No, of course not. But you were still being targeted with posts that would "do well" with your gender, your age group, your location etc. They haven't changed one little bit of their business model.
So what are we talking about here? Some guy discovered 10 years down the road that a company wants you to keep using their website/service/app/whatever, but he thinks 10 years ago that company was - what? More scrupulous? More genuine?
Nah, man. It was always the same. They just got better at their jobs. And - fuck me, it sounds like they were pretty good at their jobs even 10 years ago: they managed to keep Joe Slow scrolling for an entire decade.
If the algorithm was "updated and improved" then it is not the same algorithm.
My bad, I didn't know we were building our own 'ship of Theseus' argument. I'm out, smarter people than me can discuss that one.
If it doesn't work in the same way anymore, using the same variables, then it's not the same ship. Your argument is like saying a submarine and an aircraft carrier are the same because they're both intended to fight ocean battles. Pretty much nonsense.