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by falcolas 1611 days ago
If this were being done by a person, I might agree with you.

But it's not. It's being done by an algorithm which was carefully crafted to improve someone's chance for getting a promotion. It won't be maintained long term, yet it will continue to punish articles based on wholly arbitrary, biased, and opaque logic.
2 comments
reaperducer 1611 days ago
If this were being done by a person, I might agree with you. But it's not. It's being done by an algorithm which was carefully crafted [by a person] to improve someone's chance for getting a promotion.

I made a little change there. Algorithms don't just magically appear like leprechauns and unicorns.

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greiskul 1611 days ago
Google search is one area of Google in which this big company problem actually doesn't happen that much. Changes in the algorithm are never implemented by fiat, Google employs raters, and performs blind experiments to test if a change to search actually improves user satisfaction before rolling it out to everyone. So at least they must have some data that it increases user satisfaction, both with the metrics of the signal they measure, and with subjective raters satisfaction.
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