A former Facebook engineer on algorithmic ranking for Facebook Trending

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/algorithm-transparency-paying-attention-man-behind-curtain-koren?trk=eml-b2_content_ecosystem_digest-hero-14-null&midToken=AQE5WL03u_Wx3w&fromEmail=fromEmail&ut=28uObBJ6PtfTg1

by smoyer • 10 years ago

57 23 10 years ago

linkedin.com

mkay581• 10 years ago

"if you want have computers do everything, for technical reasons, resource limitations, and product positioning, you may want humans to oversee the algorithms"

whaaa?? That's exactly why you would NOT want humans to interfere.

"...because computers are incredibly stupid"

LOL and humans aren't? Who is this guy?

smoyer3• 10 years ago

But if computers and humans are both incredibly stupid, at least they're stupid in different ways? And I do agree with his point that both can end up with biases.

maxerickson2• 10 years ago

The outputs of the system will reflect the choices that humans made about the inputs and processing. It makes a whole lot of sense to have humans taking a look at the outputs and making sure they are reasonable.

You obviously don't need humans reviewing the outputs of simple mechanisms, but as your mechanisms get more complex and opaque, the pretense that they are objective becomes ridiculous.

elthran• 10 years ago

This. You only have to take a look at what the internet did to Microsoft's learning chatbot to see why humans are a good idea.

TeMPOraL2• 10 years ago

I think you haven't heard of 4chan. What do you think happens when somebody makes an easily gameable system with no supervision and puts in on the Internet?

smoyer3• 10 years ago

A note to the moderators ... The title I included above is what LinkedIn sent in this morning's news feed. Since I think it's more descriptive than the page's title (Algorithm Transparency), I used the feed title.

jasode• 10 years ago

What really made this article blow up was the revelation that humans were in the loop.

To me, this post by Jonathan Koren doesn't really get to the heart of the outrage by some observers. Yes, humans utimately need to be in the loop for content filtering, but the fact that they seemingly curate based on political agendas is the real controversy. Koren addressed the human part but ignored the political.

If we just isolate the "humans must oversee algorithms", I think it's easy to convince people of that. The user generation of stories and determining relevance looks to be a real-world variation of The Halting Problem. Therefore, you can't write a function f(x) where "x" is topics and "f(x)" returns "good story" or "bad story". You can't just let the algorithm run unattended. Hackers could exploit an unknown idiosyncrasy in the content algorithm and all of sudden, everybody's feed has "child pornography is awesome" stories in it. It doesn't matter if you take the latest cutting-edge text analysis algorithms from whitepapers and apply teraflops of Tensorflow on it, humans will still have to be in the loop to keep unexpected behavior from happening.

With that necessity of humans conceded, you then consider if the curators have abused their power into a pattern of bias. The other "guidelines" blog post[1] that he linked to doesn't actually address the real transparency that people would love to see: The list of (conservative) stories that curators sent to the bottom of the heap.

Unfortunately, making the list of "suppressed stories" transparent can also have the opposite effect of making them prominent... aka... The Streisand Effect.

[1]Justin Osofsky, VP Global Operations: "Facebook does not allow or advise our reviewers to discriminate against sources of any political origin, period. Here are the guidelines we use."

Outsiders skeptical analysis would be: Publicizing "internal guidelines" is not the same as publicizing the actual list of suppressed stories so people could judge for themselves if the "no politics" guidelines was followed.

caseysoftware• 10 years ago

Koren addressed the human part but ignored the political.

Yes, but most people who are only sort of paying attention didn't catch the political part. So now when someone says "Facebook has an agenda against X!" the response - vocalized or not - becomes "no, they talked about that already."

From a PR perspective, it's not a bad move.

Towards actually addressing the issue, not so much.. especially since these published guidelines don't include (or at least I can't find), the blacklist numerous insiders have claimed exists, specifically around Twitter and Facebook itself being in Trending.

ProAm• 10 years ago

but the fact that they seemingly curate based on political agendas is the real controversy

Why is this a controversy? Every news media outlet since the birth the United States (and probably world wide) has done this, it's youthful hubris to think otherwise. Especially in 'walled gardens' such as facebook.

TeMPOraL2• 10 years ago

The other "guidelines" blog post[1] that he linked to doesn't actually address the real transparency that people would love to see: The list of (conservative) stories that curators sent to the bottom of the heap.

Some people would like to see the list of "conservative" stories that were sent to the bottom, for the amount of definitions of "conservative" equal to the amount of people who want to see that list. Others would like to see a similar list for "progressive" stories (again, a different list for every person), yet others would like to see a list of "neoreactionary" stories, and then some would want a list of "pro-peace anti-government cisgendered right-handed neuro-diversity-promoting anti-gun stories", or whatever.

This is politics, everyone wants more of what they like and less of what they don't like. Add to this the fact that some people are making money on their stories being shown, and you have a situation which is impossible to address by Facebook - and one they should not attempt to address at all. You can't satisfy everyone, and trying will only make things worse.

People need to suck it up. Political stories in media are one of the least reliable information sources in existence; I'd understand the outrage if it was about something actually valuable.

spoiledtechie• 10 years ago

What a Crappy article.. My outrage does come from the political bias, not the algorithm. I have since ceased using Facebook.

optimuspaul• 10 years ago

If you don't think it's biased then you probably don't have a strong position. I think your outrage is misplaced.

jjuel• 10 years ago

Do you rely on the trending sidebar on Facebook that much? If you were to stop using everything due to a "political bias" you probably will have to move to an off grid cabin deep in the woods.

smoyer3• 10 years ago

Hmm ... http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf

ucaetano2• 10 years ago

To Facebook’s credit, they’ve chosen to be radically transparent about this.

Wait, they chose to be radically transparent AFTER they were denounced?

Kinda like Theranos, who's being really honest about the quality of their tests, AFTER they've been shown to be worthless?

coroutines• 10 years ago

I agree. PR pivot at its finest.

maxerickson2• 10 years ago

I actually don't have trouble believing that they had failed to carefully consider the (broader social) implications of what they were doing.

I think I find that more believable than attempting to build an elaborate system for manipulating user opinions.

If anything, I think they are biasing the feeds in ways that garner clicks, like discussed here:

https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/733397126026297344

ucaetano2• 10 years ago

I agree, I don't see this episode as a systemic, top-down, news manipulation initiative, but more as a deep lack of self-awareness and reflection on the network's impact on what people see. And that hasn't been addressed yet.

badmadrad• 10 years ago

Its nice to get a perspective from inside but the issue isn't human intervention its rampant human bias.

Cacti• 10 years ago

The issue is people get their news from Facebook...

fintler• 10 years ago

What does everyone think about LinkedIn's publishing platform?

shmerl• 10 years ago

I can't access the article:

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A former Facebook engineer on algorithmic ranking for Facebook Trending

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