Meta conducted an experiment where thousands of users were shown chronological feeds on Facebook and Instagram for three months. Users of the chronological feeds engaged less with the platforms and were more likely to use competitors like YouTube and TikTok. This suggests that users prefer algorithmically ranked feeds that show them more relevant content, even though some argue chronological feeds provide more transparency. While the experiment found that chronological feeds exposed users to more political and untrustworthy content, it did not significantly impact their political views or behaviors. The researchers note that a permanent switch to chronological feeds could produce different results, but this study provides only a glimpse into the issue.
I think this is bullshit. I exclusively scroll Lemmy in new mode. I scroll I see a post I already have seen. Then I leave. That doesn’t mean I hate it, I’m just done!
Is it possible to design a content recommendation algorithm that isn’t game-able? As it stands right now I don’t think that algorithms are fundamentally bad, just that capitalism ruins everything.
Goodhart’s Law: Any statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed on it for control purposes.
Or, to paraphrase, any metric that becomes a target ceases to be a good metric. Ranking algorithms, by their nature, use some sort of quantifiable metric as a heuristic for quality.
If you weighted things by clicks vs time viewing maybe? The true issue is lack of moderation.
Non genuine accounts boost the post for whatever reason. This creates engagement. This is good for the marketer and the platform because they make their money through advertising. They don’t care if marketing firms are using thousands of zombie accounts to boost posts.
I don’t think the idea should be to make the algorithm’s ungameable because I feel like that is literally impossible with humans. The first rule of web dev or game dev is that the users are going to find ways to use your site, app, software, or api in ways you never intended regardless of how long you, or even a team of people, think about it.
I’d rather see something where the algorithm is open and pieces of it are voted on by the users and other interested parties. Perhaps let people create and curate their own algorithm’s, something like playlist curation on spotify or youtube but make it as transparent as possible, let people share them and such. Kind of like how playlists are shared.
Isn’t that already how it works, sans the transparency part?
You press “like” on something you like, and the algorithm shows you more that are related to that thing you just liked. Indirectly, you’re curating your feed/algorithm. Or maybe you can look at this from another angle, maybe the “like” button isn’t just for the things you like, but also the things that you don’t particularity like, but would like to see more.
Then there’s other people around you, your Facebook friends, their likes also affect your feed, as you can see the algorithm suggests things that “people that are interested in things you’re interested in, are also interested in”.