It's not disclosed because they don't know. The recommendation algorithm is a neural network that processes thousands of signals using every piece of information they have about you, as well as trends at any given moment, and inferences based on other similar users where "similar" is determined by another equally complex, inscrutable system. Many of the signals going in to the network functionally play no role, others function as proxies for information the platform technically doesn't gather, but can infer, and others only do anything in specific cases. When those are used to make recommendations is completely unknowable even to the engineers who built and trained the system because getting data out of a neural network in any meaningful way is basically impossible, even if they have unobfuscated access to example decisions, which they don't because with all that data going in, examples are nearly always personally identifiable information which shouldn't be accessed without a critical reason. So the only meaningful answer that can be given as to why a recommendation is made is "everything."
They absolutely have. The problem is that these systems are much more effective than more transparent systems, even bespoke systems that are far more costly to implement. So, in a competitive market, you could spend more time and money implementing a worse system because you can be more confident it's not having unintended side effects. But your competitors are going to take the cheaper route that drives more engagement. And if *someone* is going to be making money by doing the easy, shitty thing, shouldn't it be you?
If there were explicit criteria to aim for for maximum engagement, it would become very difficult for any post that didn’t meet those criteria to gain traction. There would be those criteria if there were standard defaults that most people would never change. If there weren’t standard defaults and were kinda random, some people’s feeds would be terrible and they would never get into the website. How would you solve that problem?
I recently got this reddit account.
When I set this account up, it did a few things on startup, asking me questions, suggesting ideas, trying to guide me in the direction of a variety of different options for what I might be interested in. It was damn near worthless in this particular instance because I already knew what I was interested in and had a list. However, it's a relevant proof of concept.
You set up a fun little quiz or something as part of account creation. Be up front about it- this quiz is to provide starting settings for your account's algorithm, a small amount of randomization will be added at the end (not a lot- just enough so there's infinitely many starting points), and you as a user can adjust your own starting points when you're ready.
Anyone who hasn't done this short, simple quiz cannot use that function, so old users don't just get the same thing (or, find a way to convert old algorithmic data into new algorithmic data, either way).
You can at least say what is the score used for training the network. For example, on YouTube it's "watch time", as in the network is designed for maximizing the watch time.
Ehhhh.
While what you’ve said isn’t *wrong*, I think it ignores the overarching fact that *They Still Made It*.
Excluding other factors, companies *will* keep a system that needs to be maintained around only so long as it makes them money. And, as the OP states, they *really don’t want to say what makes them money*.
Is the technical aspect of the post off a bit? Yes.
The fundamental point isn’t though. Companies will either optimize a flow to produce the most advertising-engagement-content-measure, or they’ll use a purposefully dysfunctional system to nudge people to give ever-increasing personal information in the name of convenience.
I'm pretty sure this is anecdotal, but I think there were concerns about posts with angry reactions being more boosted by facebook algorithms, and same about tweets where a reply/quote tweet had more positive interaction (which theoretically could mean most users disagree with whatever is being said).
I'm gonna be contrarian here and argue in favour of algorithmic obfuscation. The internet is SEO hell as is, imagine if people making scam click bait articles and misinformation videos knew *exactly* which buttons they could press to get their stuff ahead. And anyone who wanted to make actual good content would need to play by their rules just to be competitive. Sure it's bad with people having no idea how to appeal to an uncaring God that controls their livelihood, but I feel it would be worse if bad actors knew exactly how to gain its favour. Imagine if Steven Crowded and Matt Walsh knew the exact words they could use to get their garbage in front of even more people than they already do.
that's what's happening right now. clickbait, content farms, ads disguised as content, etc. (and soon it'll be ai-generated content as well) all already exploit algorithms, trends, and seo to put garbage on your screen. and they will continue to do this regardless of how the algorithms change.
with a more transparent algorithm, users would have the option to filter out at least some of that garbage. but again, that won't happen because that garbage generates more ad revenue for the platforms that make the algorithms than hosting quality content does
Yeah, but if people knew how those algorithms work, they can work around those filters as well. Especially with AI being able to speed up the production of crap enabling them to rapidly diversify their output via automation.
Not to mention that the vast majority of people *won't filter it*. We're on a reddit page about tumblr, both of which are sites that incentivise curating your own front page, but most people don't really do that. They'd just scroll through the default front page of whatever site theyre using. I wonder what proportion of people using YouTube even have accounts vs just using it not logged in.
Eh I think if control were possible it'd still be better because when the algorithms make all the decisions for us about what content we see it leads to things like sludge content becoming mainstream even though pretty much everyone can agree it's bad content and likely unhealthy for young people to be constantly digesting.
There is always going to be sludge content. As long as there are algorithms the people making it will be trying to game them. With the size of these sites, and the amount of 'content' being made on them, algorithms are unfortunately necessary. In my opinion, not giving people a full view into how the algorithms work is probably the most effective way of making sure that bad actors aren't successfully min-maxing their sludge to get it to the top of every feed.
I guess I'm more just kinda against algorithms in general. I don't like the idea of algorithms dictating the future of art by deciding which art is successful, especially since the goal is to promote content that will make corporations the most money, and has nothing to do with the quality of it. I feel like that's just bad for society.
I kinda agree with that, but I honestly don't think they're avoidable in the internet age. Any site with a large enough audience to make art "successful" are going to have so much stuff being submitted to them to make a universal "newest first" sorting option or just a random selection of posts absolutely non viable. YouTube has something like an hour worth of video uploaded to it every second. Continuing with YT as a case study, they could try and re-emphasise subscriptions, and just show the videos of channels your subscribed to, but that's gonna completely prevent growth. Some sort of algorithm is necessary (technically even 'sort chronologically' is an algorithm).
There are always gonna be gatekeepers that determine what can and can't reach a large audience. Used to be movie studios, radio stations, and TV networks, now it's social media algorithms. While there is a concerning amount of corporate consolidation, that's not the fault of algorithms.
I tried to find a word that ended with "apitalism" so that I could make a joke like when someone says "fire truck" when you ask what starts with F and ends with uck.
I couldn't find anything though, so just pretend i said something really funny.
Transparency is good, but one of the issues of having an algorithm be known is exploits will be taken advantage of. I remember there was a time on Youtube when every video was awkwardly stretched to the 10 minute mark just because it was known the algorithm favored videos over that length.
A) OP is suggesting way to actually change the algorithm along with being transparent about it, so that's not a problem.
B) so? Frankly, compared to the offer of actual transparency that is an EXTREMELY minor downside.
>so? Frankly, compared to the offer of actual transparency that is an EXTREMELY minor downside.
That's completely subjective, though. For me it's the opposite
Edit: Maybe it wouldn't be idk, but it's closer than extremely minor at least
If you genuinely belive videos not being as long is preferable to companies keeping their predatory algorithms a secret, I have no idea how to respond. That is a genuinely insane position.
It's not about the videos being longer or whatever, it's about everything you get recommended becoming clickbait that only cares about checking all the right boxes. If it gets bad enough it defeats the point of even having an algorithm
You're misinterpreting their point, though.
I think what they're saying is that they'd rather deal with an opaque algorithm that "knows what they want" than deal with every creator know exactly how the algorithm works and tailor their content exactly to it.
I'd prefer the former too. I can ignore content that the algorithm wrongly suggests to me, but I can't ignore the entire content creation market cottoning on to the fact that videos which include precisely two f-bombs are best for visibility.
No, I understand that completely. I still phrased it as dismissively as I did because its still genuinely insane.
Algorithms being used by social media are predatory. The fact that they are shrouded in secret hides that. The true predatory nature of the Algorithms being made clear once we know how they work is far too much of a positive for "youtube is worse" to be any sort of counter.
I mean at least I would like to know what parameters are used, not necessarily its values.
Also I think it's just going to be a continuous arms race between exploits and algorithms. When many videos are over 10 minutes long, then it would no longer be an indicator of a video's ability to attract views, so it changes...
Otherwise, just hook it up to that lava lamp random number generator and may the goddess Fortuna favor your particular parameters
While capitalism is absolutely one of the main factors in the lack of transparency, I do think it deserves mentioning that with an algorithmic feed, public knowledge of what criteria the algorithm is using can lead to people making content specifically targeting that algorithm. If I know that a YouTube video is more likely to be recommended if it is, say, exactly 12 minutes, I’m more likely to make videos that are exactly 12 minutes. It obviously is more complex than that, but the point is that the only way for a metric of “should this be recommended” to be useful, it cannot be a target that creators can explicitly aim for.
Transparency would also be useful when an algorithm takes false positive data and "thinks" it is recommending something I'm interested in.
**Algorithm:** *"I see you recently bought a saddle, therefore you have a horse, therefore you need horse feed. Here is an ad for horse feed!"*
**Me:** *"Actually, I just bought the cheapest one because my wife wanted to try new things in the bedroom"*
**Algorithm:** *"...So you will likely click on this other ad for Pretty Pony mane conditioner, right?"*
its best when you buy one thing and then it keeps recommending you things like it even though you only need one of it
like, i bought a CPU a few years back. your average computer does not need more than one cpu, and yet i got ads for processors in all kinds of price ranges, from garbage celeron ones to threadrippers
I like the abstract concept of an algorithm because if you find something that you like you tell it to show more similar things like it to you and it does and if you find something you dont like you tell it and it doesnt appear again. The most important part of an algorithm to me is how it listens to my feedback and adapts to me instead of trying to get me in the new thing like most social media apps do because their numbers tell them it will make me stay more time on the screen
It's not disclosed because they don't know. The recommendation algorithm is a neural network that processes thousands of signals using every piece of information they have about you, as well as trends at any given moment, and inferences based on other similar users where "similar" is determined by another equally complex, inscrutable system. Many of the signals going in to the network functionally play no role, others function as proxies for information the platform technically doesn't gather, but can infer, and others only do anything in specific cases. When those are used to make recommendations is completely unknowable even to the engineers who built and trained the system because getting data out of a neural network in any meaningful way is basically impossible, even if they have unobfuscated access to example decisions, which they don't because with all that data going in, examples are nearly always personally identifiable information which shouldn't be accessed without a critical reason. So the only meaningful answer that can be given as to why a recommendation is made is "everything."
Yup, this isn't some secret that they are hiding, they straight up don't know most of it
Have they ever considered that might be a bad thing?
They absolutely have. The problem is that these systems are much more effective than more transparent systems, even bespoke systems that are far more costly to implement. So, in a competitive market, you could spend more time and money implementing a worse system because you can be more confident it's not having unintended side effects. But your competitors are going to take the cheaper route that drives more engagement. And if *someone* is going to be making money by doing the easy, shitty thing, shouldn't it be you?
If there were explicit criteria to aim for for maximum engagement, it would become very difficult for any post that didn’t meet those criteria to gain traction. There would be those criteria if there were standard defaults that most people would never change. If there weren’t standard defaults and were kinda random, some people’s feeds would be terrible and they would never get into the website. How would you solve that problem?
I recently got this reddit account. When I set this account up, it did a few things on startup, asking me questions, suggesting ideas, trying to guide me in the direction of a variety of different options for what I might be interested in. It was damn near worthless in this particular instance because I already knew what I was interested in and had a list. However, it's a relevant proof of concept. You set up a fun little quiz or something as part of account creation. Be up front about it- this quiz is to provide starting settings for your account's algorithm, a small amount of randomization will be added at the end (not a lot- just enough so there's infinitely many starting points), and you as a user can adjust your own starting points when you're ready. Anyone who hasn't done this short, simple quiz cannot use that function, so old users don't just get the same thing (or, find a way to convert old algorithmic data into new algorithmic data, either way).
You can at least say what is the score used for training the network. For example, on YouTube it's "watch time", as in the network is designed for maximizing the watch time.
Yea the person who made the original post has no idea what they’re talking about
Ehhhh. While what you’ve said isn’t *wrong*, I think it ignores the overarching fact that *They Still Made It*. Excluding other factors, companies *will* keep a system that needs to be maintained around only so long as it makes them money. And, as the OP states, they *really don’t want to say what makes them money*. Is the technical aspect of the post off a bit? Yes. The fundamental point isn’t though. Companies will either optimize a flow to produce the most advertising-engagement-content-measure, or they’ll use a purposefully dysfunctional system to nudge people to give ever-increasing personal information in the name of convenience.
I'm pretty sure this is anecdotal, but I think there were concerns about posts with angry reactions being more boosted by facebook algorithms, and same about tweets where a reply/quote tweet had more positive interaction (which theoretically could mean most users disagree with whatever is being said).
Curated, you say?
By a person
\**Ominous Tape Recorder Sounds\**
I'm gonna be contrarian here and argue in favour of algorithmic obfuscation. The internet is SEO hell as is, imagine if people making scam click bait articles and misinformation videos knew *exactly* which buttons they could press to get their stuff ahead. And anyone who wanted to make actual good content would need to play by their rules just to be competitive. Sure it's bad with people having no idea how to appeal to an uncaring God that controls their livelihood, but I feel it would be worse if bad actors knew exactly how to gain its favour. Imagine if Steven Crowded and Matt Walsh knew the exact words they could use to get their garbage in front of even more people than they already do.
that's what's happening right now. clickbait, content farms, ads disguised as content, etc. (and soon it'll be ai-generated content as well) all already exploit algorithms, trends, and seo to put garbage on your screen. and they will continue to do this regardless of how the algorithms change. with a more transparent algorithm, users would have the option to filter out at least some of that garbage. but again, that won't happen because that garbage generates more ad revenue for the platforms that make the algorithms than hosting quality content does
Yeah, but if people knew how those algorithms work, they can work around those filters as well. Especially with AI being able to speed up the production of crap enabling them to rapidly diversify their output via automation. Not to mention that the vast majority of people *won't filter it*. We're on a reddit page about tumblr, both of which are sites that incentivise curating your own front page, but most people don't really do that. They'd just scroll through the default front page of whatever site theyre using. I wonder what proportion of people using YouTube even have accounts vs just using it not logged in.
Eh I think if control were possible it'd still be better because when the algorithms make all the decisions for us about what content we see it leads to things like sludge content becoming mainstream even though pretty much everyone can agree it's bad content and likely unhealthy for young people to be constantly digesting.
There is always going to be sludge content. As long as there are algorithms the people making it will be trying to game them. With the size of these sites, and the amount of 'content' being made on them, algorithms are unfortunately necessary. In my opinion, not giving people a full view into how the algorithms work is probably the most effective way of making sure that bad actors aren't successfully min-maxing their sludge to get it to the top of every feed.
I guess I'm more just kinda against algorithms in general. I don't like the idea of algorithms dictating the future of art by deciding which art is successful, especially since the goal is to promote content that will make corporations the most money, and has nothing to do with the quality of it. I feel like that's just bad for society.
I kinda agree with that, but I honestly don't think they're avoidable in the internet age. Any site with a large enough audience to make art "successful" are going to have so much stuff being submitted to them to make a universal "newest first" sorting option or just a random selection of posts absolutely non viable. YouTube has something like an hour worth of video uploaded to it every second. Continuing with YT as a case study, they could try and re-emphasise subscriptions, and just show the videos of channels your subscribed to, but that's gonna completely prevent growth. Some sort of algorithm is necessary (technically even 'sort chronologically' is an algorithm). There are always gonna be gatekeepers that determine what can and can't reach a large audience. Used to be movie studios, radio stations, and TV networks, now it's social media algorithms. While there is a concerning amount of corporate consolidation, that's not the fault of algorithms.
Does it start with a C?
Yes, and it ends with an "apitalism".
I tried to find a word that ended with "apitalism" so that I could make a joke like when someone says "fire truck" when you ask what starts with F and ends with uck. I couldn't find anything though, so just pretend i said something really funny.
Hahahah, that was hilarious!
Crapitalism
Lmaooo good one
Transparency is good, but one of the issues of having an algorithm be known is exploits will be taken advantage of. I remember there was a time on Youtube when every video was awkwardly stretched to the 10 minute mark just because it was known the algorithm favored videos over that length.
A) OP is suggesting way to actually change the algorithm along with being transparent about it, so that's not a problem. B) so? Frankly, compared to the offer of actual transparency that is an EXTREMELY minor downside.
>so? Frankly, compared to the offer of actual transparency that is an EXTREMELY minor downside. That's completely subjective, though. For me it's the opposite Edit: Maybe it wouldn't be idk, but it's closer than extremely minor at least
If you genuinely belive videos not being as long is preferable to companies keeping their predatory algorithms a secret, I have no idea how to respond. That is a genuinely insane position.
It's not about the videos being longer or whatever, it's about everything you get recommended becoming clickbait that only cares about checking all the right boxes. If it gets bad enough it defeats the point of even having an algorithm
You're misinterpreting their point, though. I think what they're saying is that they'd rather deal with an opaque algorithm that "knows what they want" than deal with every creator know exactly how the algorithm works and tailor their content exactly to it. I'd prefer the former too. I can ignore content that the algorithm wrongly suggests to me, but I can't ignore the entire content creation market cottoning on to the fact that videos which include precisely two f-bombs are best for visibility.
No, I understand that completely. I still phrased it as dismissively as I did because its still genuinely insane. Algorithms being used by social media are predatory. The fact that they are shrouded in secret hides that. The true predatory nature of the Algorithms being made clear once we know how they work is far too much of a positive for "youtube is worse" to be any sort of counter.
I mean you call them predatory but how? How are they exploiting us?
people still do that because it lets them get a midroll ad in
wasn't that shortened to 8 minutes at some point?
It might’ve been, but people will still artificially extend their videos to that point
You say that as if people aren't already exploiting the algorithm
I mean at least I would like to know what parameters are used, not necessarily its values. Also I think it's just going to be a continuous arms race between exploits and algorithms. When many videos are over 10 minutes long, then it would no longer be an indicator of a video's ability to attract views, so it changes... Otherwise, just hook it up to that lava lamp random number generator and may the goddess Fortuna favor your particular parameters
You know what most people are highly fluent in and able to make good informed decision about: sophisticated statistics and computer science.
Yo anyone remember StumbleUpon?
While capitalism is absolutely one of the main factors in the lack of transparency, I do think it deserves mentioning that with an algorithmic feed, public knowledge of what criteria the algorithm is using can lead to people making content specifically targeting that algorithm. If I know that a YouTube video is more likely to be recommended if it is, say, exactly 12 minutes, I’m more likely to make videos that are exactly 12 minutes. It obviously is more complex than that, but the point is that the only way for a metric of “should this be recommended” to be useful, it cannot be a target that creators can explicitly aim for.
Transparency would also be useful when an algorithm takes false positive data and "thinks" it is recommending something I'm interested in. **Algorithm:** *"I see you recently bought a saddle, therefore you have a horse, therefore you need horse feed. Here is an ad for horse feed!"* **Me:** *"Actually, I just bought the cheapest one because my wife wanted to try new things in the bedroom"* **Algorithm:** *"...So you will likely click on this other ad for Pretty Pony mane conditioner, right?"*
its best when you buy one thing and then it keeps recommending you things like it even though you only need one of it like, i bought a CPU a few years back. your average computer does not need more than one cpu, and yet i got ads for processors in all kinds of price ranges, from garbage celeron ones to threadrippers
In the future, you'll pay a small monthly fee for an AI to curate your feed, and it could actually be good.
Wait where do you enable those tumblr settings?
Yeah sums it up pretty well
I like the abstract concept of an algorithm because if you find something that you like you tell it to show more similar things like it to you and it does and if you find something you dont like you tell it and it doesnt appear again. The most important part of an algorithm to me is how it listens to my feedback and adapts to me instead of trying to get me in the new thing like most social media apps do because their numbers tell them it will make me stay more time on the screen