quote:Facebook is broken, says whistleblower Frances Haugen, who worked on the company’s civic integrity team. In testimony before Congress and in the media, Haugen has argued that the social giant’s algorithms contribute to maladies that range from teen mental health issues to ethnic violence in Ethiopia. There’s no one solution that will fix all that’s wrong with Facebook—no, not even a new name—but one of Haugen’s suggestions stood out.
“I’m a strong proponent of chronological ranking, ordering by time with a little bit of spam demotion,” she told the Senate earlier this month. “We should have software that is human-scaled, where humans have conversations together, not computers facilitating who we get to hear from.”
Imagine that! Humans … having conversations … together. Haugen essentially recommends a Facebook News Feed where items appear as people post them, rather than in an order divined by the company’s algorithmic wizardry. In this world, likes and comments wouldn’t dictate what you see. It’s all a matter of timing—which would also prevent the algorithm from tossing logs onto the platform’s most inflammatory posts.
It’s not that radical a notion. Instagram only handed the algorithm the reins to your feed in 2016. Twitter took away chronology altogether that same year, only to reintroduce it as an option in 2018. And you can also ditch the algorithm in the Facebook News Feed right now, today. I know, because I’ve been doing it for the past two weeks.
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When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier
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Another day in Paradise.