facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen It detailed how the social media platform could become a better environment, saying it could introduce transparency measures and small frictions, and move away from a “dangerous” engagement-based ranking system.
It told senators on Tuesday that it would reintroduce amplification methods and would not focus on “picking winners or losers in a market of ideas.”
“On Twitter, you have to click on a link before you can share it again. Small actions like that friction don’t necessarily take good ideas and bad ideas, they just make the platform less twitchy, less responsive. Reduces misinformation, hate speech and content that incites violence on the platform,” Hogan said.
Instead it advocated for chronologically ordered material.
“I’m a strong proponent of chronological rankings, by time, with a bit of spammy sentiment. Because I think we don’t want computers to decide what we focus on, we need to have software that Be it human-scale, or humans, as Hogen put it, “talk together, not computers that let us listen.”
In addition, he encouraged a privacy-conscious regulatory body working with academics, researchers and government agencies to “synthesize requests for data” because currently, the social media giant is obligated to disclose any data. Is. not there.
“Even data as simple as what integrity systems exist today and how well do they perform?” she suggested. “Basic actions like transparency will make a big difference.”
What is meant by an engagement-based ranking system?
Facebook, like other platforms, uses algorithms to increase or promote content that receives engagement in the form of likes or shares or comments. In Facebook’s view, it helps a user “enjoy” their feed, Haugen explained.
“The dangers of engagement-based rankings are that Facebook knows that content that gets you an overwhelming response is more likely to get a click, a comment, or a re-share,” he said. No, she said. Because they know other people will produce more content if they get likes and comments and share again. They prioritize the content in your feed so that you give your friends fewer hits of dopamine so they can create more content.
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