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We unleashed Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms on blank accounts. They served up sexism and misogyny (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/world

80 comments fedilink hide all child comments

How do the algorithms of Facebook and Instagram affect what you see in your news feed? To find out, Guardian Australia unleashed them on a completely blank smartphone linked to a new, unused email address.

Three months later, without any input, they were riddled with sexist and misogynistic content.

Initially Facebook served up jokes from The Office and other sitcom-related memes alongside posts from 7 News, Daily Mail and Ladbible. A day later it began showing Star Wars memes and gym or “dudebro”-style content.

By day three, “trad Catholic”-type memes began appearing and the feed veered into more sexist content.

Three months later, The Office, Star Wars, and now The Boys memes continue to punctuate the feed, now interspersed with highly sexist and misogynistic images that have have appeared in the feed without any input from the user.

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[+] [email protected] -15 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Holy shit, were you born yesterday?

Social media was not a stew of shit a decade ago.

Source: was a man on social media a decade ago and was not constantly bombarded with toxic shit.

Lol imagine being on social media for 10 years and still complaining about the algorithm.

Here's a post from 11 years ago explaining how you were being targeted and how engagement was measured back then:

Facebook has a hierarchy of post types, since some types garner more engagement than others. Photos and videos take top priority. Links are second, and plain text status updates are at the bottom end. Weight doesn’t end there, though.

Interaction from other users can also affect this. For instance, comments are more weighty than likes, but both affect the overall weight of the post. So a text-based status update with 50 likes and 10 comments will be more likely to show up in the Newsfeed than a photo with no engagement at all.

Source (actual fucking source, as in an article written Aug 13, 2013, instead of your personal experience from the last decade): https://buffer.com/resources/understanding-facebook-news-feed-algorithm/

So, in those 10 years you've been on social media (congrats on the milestone btw, maybe you'll get a clue about the fucking world soon) what they've been doing has not changed, it's merely been perfected. But yeah, sit there and tell me all about how your rose-tinted glasses are ackshually great and don't distort your view, and you're not just a mindless cunt that's been zucking the zuck's dick for the last 10 years, scrolling through shitty posts meant to make you click them. "things were better back in the day" lol gtfo dumbass it's always been the same, it just took you 10 years to notice.

What an actual waste of my time.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Fine, I'm a middle aged fuck who thinks the late 2000s is 10 years ago. So sue me for moving the goalposts to 15-17 years ago, around the time Obama was getting elected. Yes engagement was a thing but fuck no it was not a constant deluge of far right propaganda.

[–] Carrolade 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Uh ... sorting posts into video, pic and text only and then by votes and comments is not what we're talking about when we say algorithm. Though yes, I guess that technically is a very simple algorithm.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

It's the same algorithm. It has the same purpose and the same result. It has simply been updated and improved. And it most likely still relies on certain markers that can measure how much a post will be engaged with and who will do it, except those markers are now less primitive and harder for us to define.

We're arguing semantics. This has always been the purpose of a social network: to keep you addicted to it. To keep you interacting with it. They don't make money if you're not there to click their ads, to look at their sponsored videos, to be marketed towards. Did they do it as well 10 years ago as they do it today? No, of course not. But you were still being targeted with posts that would "do well" with your gender, your age group, your location etc. They haven't changed one little bit of their business model.

So what are we talking about here? Some guy discovered 10 years down the road that a company wants you to keep using their website/service/app/whatever, but he thinks 10 years ago that company was - what? More scrupulous? More genuine?

Nah, man. It was always the same. They just got better at their jobs. And - fuck me, it sounds like they were pretty good at their jobs even 10 years ago: they managed to keep Joe Slow scrolling for an entire decade.

[–] Carrolade 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If the algorithm was "updated and improved" then it is not the same algorithm.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

My bad, I didn't know we were building our own 'ship of Theseus' argument. I'm out, smarter people than me can discuss that one.

[–] Carrolade 5 points 4 months ago

If it doesn't work in the same way anymore, using the same variables, then it's not the same ship. Your argument is like saying a submarine and an aircraft carrier are the same because they're both intended to fight ocean battles. Pretty much nonsense.