The article I read this week was Algorithmic Harms Beyond Facebook and Google, by Zeynep Tufekci. This article (which I can deem a bit outdated) was about the hidden algorithms in Facebook and other digital platforms. Written in 2015, many of these findings have become well known to the public. Like how algorithms are tracking people. How certain ones can suppress media if they decide it’s not of interest to the user. And how algorithms are trained to keep users addicted. Over the years, information like this has come to the public eye, whether from the latest lawsuits or news reports. So when I began reading about the uproar over Facebook in the beginning, I was more than uninterested.
Did You Know?
But things did start picking up in the article the more I read. Tufekci found that algorithms- defined as instructions for step-by-step procedures and the processes that make decisions unknown to the user- can curate an ‘identity’ based on things they’ve never been told. Latent Trait Interference (LTI) can curate a fleshed-out profile of its users and then use said profile to send ads and other things. These LTIs can not only create a profile but can also pick up undiagnosed psychological traits and the user’s state of mind. LTIs can also induce mood changes. It’s how a father figured out his teenager was pregnant- from the Target ads she kept receiving.
The last interesting part about algorithms I read is how they can manipulate and hide news they deem as not relevant. Tufekci writes about the murder of Darren Wilson in Missouri. Initially, there was no global media relevance. The only people who knew what happened were the people in the town. But as protests and vigils began to occur, so did the media attention. What caught my attention was that the media attention was not on the cause of the protests and vigils, but on the actions of police officers during those times. The arrests, extreme protocols, and outrage are what caused the spike in the internet searches for Ferguson. In that same sphere, people who shared the origin of these events didn’t get attention. The algorithms decided that the origin of the issue wasn’t important; the aftermath was.
In My Opinion…
This article was really interesting for understanding why algorithms are built the way they are. Because they are meant to be specially tailored to one person, all the focus is on what they want and serving their preferences on a silver platter. Everything else is garbage. It gets creepy very fast, though. When code is used to manipulate feelings and curate a psychological deep dive into who you are. And when it’s used to tune out everything it thinks doesn’t matter to you. It’s a personalized little stalker. Weird how it’s our normal.
Leave a Reply