1d ago

Facebook is constantly experimenting on consumers — and even its creators don’t fully know how it works.

www.sauder.ubc.ca ERROR: The request could not be satisfied

Users of social media platforms like Facebook are part of constant marketing experiments
Because algorithms are driven by AI and machine learning, it’s impossible to know how social media companies are choosing what to show — and not show — different groups of people
Because there is no “random assignment”, marketers can’t fully tell if one ad might work better than another one.
In the process, groups of social media users can be excluded from important messages
Algorithms are so precise, they can target people down to an individual level

Technology @lemmy.zip

Tea @programming.dev

1d ago

Facebook is constantly experimenting on consumers — and even its creators don’t fully know how it works.

www.sauder.ubc.ca /news/insights/facebook-constantly-experimenting-consumers-and-even-its-creators-dont-fully-know-how

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In other news, its been over a decade since Facebook started selling user data to Cambridge Analytica, who used it to massively target and proliferate polarizing political advertising during the 2016, greatly contributing to Trump's win and the proliferation of QAnon insanity and general political diviseness and radicalization in the US.
I'd call that quite an 'experiment', but sure, Facebook is still definitionally doing a massive psy-op campaign, all the time, with new tech too, yep, that's bad.

I hate this interpretation of black box algorithms.
We know how they work. It isn't magic. We intentionally built them to be the way that they are.
What we don't know is precisely which outputs you get from a large combinations of inputs, because it would require memorizing entire databases and simulating results as a weird form of mental math, and how we score things will be impacted by interpersonal biases even if we attempted that.
- I mean, still sounds like a black box.
  
  I think the point is that we designed the black boxes to do X and they do X consistently, just with slight variation.
  If I make a cake making machine and it consistently makes cakes, its not a magic box just because I'm not sure if it will be creme frosted or not.
- It's a little deeper than that, a lot of advertising works on engagement -based heuristics. Today, most people would call it "AI" but it's fundamentally just a reinforcement learning network that trains itself constantly on user interactions. It's difficult-to-impossible to determine why input X is associated with output Y, but we can measure in aggregate how subtle changes propagate across engagement metrics.
  It is absolutely truthful to say we don't know how a modern reinforcement learning network got to the state it's in today, because transactions on the network usually aren't journaled, just periodically snapshot for A/B testing.
  To be clear, that's not an excuse for undesirable heuristic behavior. Somebody somewhere made the choice to do this, and they should be liable for the output of their code.
  
  It's not deeper than "we know how they work" which was the point I was making. I admit I gave am oversimplified layman's explanation but it is not deeper than that.

I had an idea a while ago on how you could lightly regulate social media platforms.
Require them to:
Group users into cohorts of a size greater than X. ie, individual level targeting isn’t allowed. The higher this number the better.
make available to users the cohort they are in
publish openly every single cohort and their size
make it possible to view feeds as if you were in a specific cohort.
Will this stop them funnelling customers into rabbit holes? No, probably not.
But it would make “targeted indoctrination” harder as they would have to try and indoctrinate multiple people at once. And it would make it more transparent just how many people are being fed propaganda or whatever you want to call it.

This is one area where BlueSky is breaking new ground in an incredible way with user-created feeds.
Meta will never give you this because they want to be in constant control of everything you see. Maybe like 20% things you've expressed that you actually want to see.
This not only gives you the power to control what you see but also disincentives creators and marketers from trying to abuse and manipulate the single algorithm. Like, don't bother, because there isn't one.
Fedi could learn a lot from them.
- Fedi could learn a lot from them.
  I left Facebook because the lack of control, so I'd say Fedi learned.
  
  Fedi learned lots of things, but they haven't learned about user-generated or shared feeds.
- I'm not sure what I'm understanding that's markedly different from what we have here in terms of feeds, nor am I sure letting users curate and create their own personal echo chambers is a real "solution."
  If I understand it correctly, only some of the ways of viewing Lemmy content actually have an algorithm behind them (Hot view, for instance) whereas things like Top are... literally just the top posts/comments based on aggregated upvotes/downvotes. New just shows things chronologically from newest to oldest, Old is the opposite of that. Controversial is potentially an algorithm but I'm not deeply sure about that, because it seems like it could be calculated as simply as Top is.
  Manipulating things over here is more like making spam accounts and flooding with upvotes/downvotes, which is a problem but hopefully one that gets addressed as development continues.
  I also thought Mastodon was just a chronological feed as well. Not a lot to manipulate there?
  I'll be real, I don't get the hype for Bluesky when it's venture capital funded (by Blockchain Capital no less) and eventually those VCs are going to want a return on investment. At some point, something will have to be done to produce a profit and won't that be when the screws start being turned on the users?
  
  I'm not sure what I'm understanding that's markedly different from what we have here in terms of feeds
  Well there's only a handful of "algorithms" (if you can call them that) in Lemmy, created by the devs, and all of them are very basic. You cannot go and create your own feed and you cannot share that feed with anyone else.
  I also thought Mastodon was just a chronological feed as well.
  Yes that is the problem. Maybe not for you, but it is for many "normies".
  I don't get the hype for Bluesky when it's venture capital funded and eventually those VCs are going to want a return on investment.
  I agree and was not trying to "hype" BSky. Just pointing out that fedi devs could take a page out of their book.

Precisely why I’ve removed as much of myself as I can from each Meta platform. I hate that it’s such a grip on long-distance communication and I’m actively working with my family to minimize our interactions on there in hopes of them doing the same.

meta should be cut into pieces

I have have made it to the wrong side of 40 without ever owning a Facebook account. Neither do I use watts app or instagram or X.
I have loathed social media from day one and always been of the opinion, anyone I actually care about or want to hear from I’m in touch with.
Don’t get me wrong, work groups / activities I do outside of work that I’m involved with curse me because I won’t join their groups, but alas, I have lasted this long and don’t see me caving in now :)

22 comments