Now, hours of testimony and thousands of pages of documents from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen have renewed scrutiny of the impact Facebook and its algorithms have on teens, democracy and society at large. The fallout has raised the question of just how much Facebook, and perhaps platforms like it, can or should rethink using a bevy of algorithms to determine which pictures, videos and news users see.
Haugen, a former Facebook product manager with a background in “algorithmic product management,” has in her critiques mainly focused on the company’s algorithm designed to show users content they’re most likely to engage with. She has said this is responsible for many of Facebook’s problems, including fueling polarization, misinformation and other toxic content. Facebook, she said on a “60 Minutes” appearance, understands that if it makes the algorithm safer, “people will spend less time on the site, they’ll click on less ads, they’ll make less money.” (Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has pushed back at the idea that the company prioritizes profit over users’ safety and well being.)
Facebook’s head of global policy management, Monika Bickert, said in an interview with CNN after Haugen’s Senate hearing on Tuesday, that it’s “not true” that the company’s algorithms are designed to promote inflammatory content, and that Facebook actually does “the opposite” by demoting so-called click-bait.
At times in her testimony, Haugen appeared to suggest a radical rethinking of how the news feed should operate to address the issues she presented via extensive documentation from within the company. “I’m a strong proponent of chronological ranking, ordering by time,” she said in her testimony before a Senate subcommittee last week. “Because I think we don’t want computers deciding what we focus on.”
But algorithms that pick and choose what we see are central not just to Facebook but to numerous social media platforms that followed in Facebook’s footsteps. TikTok, for example,…
Source : cnn
