- “I always assumed that I wasn’t really that close to [her]: Reasoning about Invisible Algorithms in News Feeds.”
- “Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook.”
Summary:
The first paper follows a very deep qualitative approach studying the awareness of Facebook users towards the algorithms that curates their news feed. And how people react when they know that their news feed is not random or inclusive. They developed a system – FeedVis – that shows users stories from their families News feed and allows users to control their own news feed. They try to answer three questions:
- How aware are the users about their news feed curation algorithm?
- 5 % were unaware of such algorithm
- 5% were aware due to different reasons (inductive and deductive)
- What is their reaction when they know about it? Do they prefer the old curated algorithm or the output generated by FeedVis?
- How did the participation of this study affect their usage of Facebook?
The second paper studies data from more than 10 million Facebook users to study what factors affect the nature and ideology of news we receive in our news feed on Facebook. They defined three features that would affect our news feed: 1- User interaction (e.g. clicks) with the shown news, 2- friends’ network shared news and its diversity, and 3- algorithmically ranked news by Facebook news curation algorithm.
They found that what shapes our news feed is what we select to choose and interact with. That might trap us into echo-champers.
Reflection:
- It is amazing how such algorithms could alter people’s feeling and ideas. Some participants lack self-confidence just because nobody reacted to their posts. Awareness of such algorithms increased their postings and interaction with Facebook knowing that nobody react to their posts was due to the curation algorithm
- The authors might do further analysis about the similarities and differences, the backgrounds and beliefs of each participant and their friends who got their stories appear in the news feed. This analysis might help answer a few questions about the news feed curation algorithms of Facebook:
- Does Facebook really connects people? Or creates more closed communities of common interests and backgrounds?
- How much those algorithms contribute into increasing polarization? And the possibility to design new tools to alleviate it?
- The second paper answered many of the questions raised from the first one, it highlights the reasons and factors that influence the algorithm in the first paper, which is our own choices and interaction with what is displayed in our news feed. We are the ones who – indirectly – direct our news ranking algorithm, I believe our news feed is just a reflection of our ideology and interests.
- I think the Facebook news feed curation algorithm should be altered in order to alleviate the polarization of its users, creating more diverse interactive healthier environment instead of being trapped in closed-minded separated communities (or echo chambers as the authors call)
