This story is appalling on many levels. It began with a BBC investigation in 2016, which found that paedophiles were using secret groups on Facebook to post and swap sexually suggestive images of children. Facebook promised improvements to its moderation policy, and said it was employing “thousands” of moderators to check the content 24/7. Having…
In The Big Sort, Bill Bishop shows how, over the last 30 years, Americans have sorted themselves into like-minded neighborhoods. The same appears to be happening on the web. All the empirical research to date suggests that the reason is not the use of personalization algorithms per se. Algorithms can easily expose us to…
At first the posts are relatively harmless. Many Facebook users don’t see the issue with liking or sharing a post. After thousands of people catch on to the post, Facebook algorithms automatically identify the content as valuable and popular. The algorithm then floats the scam to the top of millions of newsfeeds around the world….
Caught up with the most recent Freakonomics podcast episode yesterday and found the whole thing fascinating. The episode starts out with a pretty basic question that many of us who have a deep interest in internet technology and culture have been talking about for awhile now. It’s a remarkable ecosystem that allows each of us…
“It recommends that Page owners also add targeting – a paid campaign — to their posts to boost reach. It recommends other paid for options such as boosting posts and using Facebook ads to publicise discounts and promotions. This algorithm change will impact businesses with small marketing budgets who can not afford to pay for…
“Content creators can and do evolve to make articles, videos, photos and podcasts more distracting and attention-grabbing. But your family and friends on Facebook aren’t getting any better at making their status updates more attention-grabbing. And so social networking is being outrun by a universe of professional attention-grabbers. The attention economy is a Darwinian, survival-of-the-fittest…