[saurik]

We need to differentiate the recommendation algorithm parts of these products from the communication parts. If Facebook is recommending something, that's on them, and if they want to not recommend my content to anyone, so be it; but I should be able to post something seen only by the people who opted in to following me without them getting in the way.

[the-pigeon]

I would take this a step further and say that all social media recommendation algorithms should be publicly reviewable.

The claim is that this algorithms are neutral. But we know many contain ways for the owner to artificially boost preferred content. And algorithms tend to have the biases of their creators in them.

Controlling what people see is an important power and one that should be regulated.

[lallysingh]

I don't see how this will help. FB et. al. work by shoehorning complex nuances into intentionally crude metrics like "engagement.". If they show the engagement-focused algorithm, that shows they're "just trying to engage users."

What would the algorithm show that isn't already apparent?

[jrockway]

Most people that want to see the algorithm want that knowledge to use it for their own ends. They are forgetting about the second-order effects where literally everyone will also be doing that, and then they are gaming each other instead of "The Algorithm".

[BurningFrog]

> Controlling what people see is an important power and one that should be regulated.

This will give the power of what people see to the regulators.

[DangitBobby]

Yes. The entire point of government is to delegate important functions that cannot be handled correctly by a "free market" to elected officials, which would include appointing regulators. So that would be the system working as intended.

[throwawayswede]

I don't really think there's enough reason for recommendation algorithms to be publicly reviewable, in many cases the algorithm itself is the most important asset of the product, and in a competitive business environment, you can't really force them to disclose it.

What would be ideal is to think of an incentive for these companies to give users an option to disable the use of their algorithm, aka natural flow. That's unfortunately not the trend things are moving, and even services that still have something like that employ dark-patterns to throw user back into their "controlled" timeline (Twitter for example reverts you back "Home" after a few days with a tiny message that is barely noticeable.)

I'm even willing to pay for a feature that "turns off" the algorithm, unfortunately that would never happen because it'd entail these companies admitting that they design their algos not for the benefit of the user but for stickiness and the dreaded "engagement", which shouldn't be a problem in itself, but then it'd quickly become obvious when they're acting sanctimonious.

[whakim]

I agree that the algorithms should be publicly reviewable. But I'm not sure that solves the central issue which is that there's a tension between what's financially good for social networks (algorithms that increase engagement - which disproportionately favors echo chambers, controversial and shallow content, etc.) and what's good for the general public.

[gunapologist99]

> what's good for the general public.

I personally don't really care what facebook (or anyone else) believes is good for me.

I'll be the judge of that, thank you very much.

And if I want to eat chocolate all day, I'll do that, too.

[whakim]

Social networks aren't in the business of showing you what's "good for you." They're in the business of showing you what's good for them (e.g. things that will increase your engagement).

[gpm]

That's how facebook works, no?

There are two (or more) feeds of information on facebook:

- The main one, which only shows posts sent to the "recommend this to people queue" based on facebooks recommendation algorithms.

- Messenger, which directly sends messages to people in a FIFO fashion, which I assume facebook doesn't censor as heavily (though I can't say I've tested).

The fact that the recommendation based stream is more popular is a reflection that facebooks curation is actually useful, but it doesn't mean messenger doesn't exist.

Nor do I see that messenger must exist, facebook isn't morally obligated to provide a "non recommend feed" to you if that isn't the product they want to sell you. Perfectly good alternatives even exist, in the form of "blogs" (say, substack).

[saurik]

I assert that content I post to my timeline and which you see on your feed as my friend shouldn't be subject to Facebook's commentary or opinions. I take strong issue with the claim that to obtain that I have to use Messenger--which is an entirely different content paradigm--and I think it is outright dishonest to try to claim that people posting to timelines means that "the recommendation based stream is more popular".

Facebook wants to recommend content to me from random people: that's their issue, and they should take responsibility for it--whether legally or simply morally--and thereby should have to be careful with what they show people (maybe to the point where they simply can't scale it to the scale they are at automatically! I will not cry over their loss). Facebook also shows me content from my "friends"... I opted in to the content from my friends: if I don't like my friends, I can and should unfriend them, as they were my responsibility, not Facebook's (in the same sense that if I call someone on the phone I don't whine to AT&T about how much they suck). I should not get labels from Facebook telling me my friends' content--content I explicitly wanted to see--is scary or wrong, and they certainly should not be banned from showing it to me.

I think the most egregious category error you are making here is to equate messaging with communication... the entire mechanism of social media to followers is primarily direct communication! We can see how ridiculous this has become by looking at how, even if you have a private account--one random people aren't even allowed to see!--Facebook, Twitter, and Google currently consider it their business what we post there... an account you post things to and which other people follow is identical to a chat channel that happens to maintain a buffer.

(FWIW, to steel man your argument as best I can, "yes": Facebook also applies recommendation algorithms to friend feeds. Twitter I believe still doesn't. Instagram didn't, but then started... AFAIK people don't like it that much, but it might be more profitable for Facebook? Either way: it is helping me reorder content I already curated, and so I don't feel a need to claim that this is something they published. There is simply still a fundamental difference from platforms surfacing "trending" content or suggesting new people or channels I might want to follow / posts I might want to see, and acting as an intermediary for content from people I was directly linked to from people I am communicating with. The former might as well be illegal as far as I am concerned, while the latter needs to be sacrosanct.)

[gpm]

Point of fact first, twitter does filter tweets via a recommendation algorithm [1]. If you troll through HN you should be able to find threads with people complaining about that too... I assume instagram does too but don't use it and haven't verified [edit: It does https://later.com/blog/how-instagram-algorithm-works/].

> Facebook also shows me content from my "friends"... I opted in to the content from my friends: if I don't like my friends, I can and should unfriend them

This is not the service Facebook offers, nor has it ever been. Facebook has forever been about friending everyone you are actually friends with (and then some), and you (or at least the vast vast majority of people) do not want to swallow the entire firehose of content that their facebook friends post. Facebook doesn't want people unfriending people to avoid seeing their content, that's not how the model works - doing so would break all of other facebooks services like acting as a birthday reminder, event planner, and so on and so forth. Even the language is indicative of this, "unfriend" (I don't like you anymore) not "stop showing me these posts" (I don't like what you post).

> the entire mechanism of social media to followers is primarily direct communication!

On the contrary, the entire mechanism of the majority of successful social media companies is curated communication. As it turns out 99% of everything (e.g. posts) is crap, and people go to the sites where less than 99% of what they see is crap.

Types of curation vary, but the existence of it is very consistence. To create some categories: algorithms (facebook, tiktok, youtube, twitter), community upvotes + community moderation (reddit, HN, slashdot), just straight up heavy moderation (many forums, forum.nasaspaceflight.com comes to mind as one that is still going strong). Also worth pointing out that most of these platforms actually mix it up, e.g. youtube, twitter, and facebook all have forms of upvotes, and facebook has forms of community moderation.

But if you want direct communication, that exists. I.e. the previously mentioned facebook messenger (which admittedly doesn't do followers) and substack (which is a competitor of sorts that does).

Direct communication is not what facebook is offering as their main product (but is what they are offering with messenger), it's never been, and I don't see that you have any right to demand that it becomes what their main product does.

[1] (Turn of js to avoid the paywall, this can be done with ublock origin for just this domain by clicking the "</>" button) https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/08/01/twitters...