| When these algorithms get it wrong, it completely sucks. And since no tech company has any semblance of customer support, you're completely hosed. With respect to Facebook: I posted a shop vac last April for $50. I got a message that I was banned from using marketplace for "violating community guidelines." However, if you believe this happened in error, you could request a review. So I did! And was denied. I did this process a few more times and each time was denied. Once I requested a review for the third (or fourth?) time, I received a message that said "Unfortunately, your account cannot be reinstated due to violating community guidelines. The review is final." I have no idea what happened. So now, I can't use Facebook Marketplace because of some stupid error in their algorithm that can't be ever appealed. Which is a bummer, because I've legitimately found some good electronic finds on there (and have been able to offload things I don't have use for). Meanwhile, their algorithms for advertising and marketing useless stuff to us are just perfect. A passage from Yuval Noah Harari's book, "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow" highlights this: > A recent study commissioned by Google’s nemesis – Facebook – has indicated that already today the Facebook algorithm is a better judge of human personalities and dispositions than even people’s friends, parents and spouses. The study was conducted on 86,220 volunteers who have a Facebook account and who completed a hundred-item personality questionnaire. > The Facebook algorithm predicted the volunteers’ answers based on monitoring their Facebook Likes – which webpages, images and clips they tagged with the Like button. The more Likes, the more accurate the predictions. The algorithm’s predictions were compared with those of work colleagues, friends, family members and spouses. > Amazingly, the algorithm needed a set of only ten Likes in order to outperform the predictions of work colleagues. It needed seventy Likes to outperform friends, 150 Likes to outperform family members and 300 Likes to outperform spouses. In other words, if you happen to have clicked 300 Likes on your Facebook account, the Facebook algorithm can predict your opinions and desires better than your husband or wife! |
Additionally, I think there should be a right to download your data after being banned, whether or not the ban was fair.