Recommender algorithms optimised for engagement -- it's complicated (links: 1)
Polarisation on Twitter, depression via Facebook, Capitalism is not the (only) problem and more.
From this week on, instead of regularly posting links on Twitter as I have done in the last decade, I will post the most interesting ones on Substack once a week. So without further ado…
What’s wrong with optimising for engagement?
The pursuit of engagement by online services has been blamed for many social ills, including addiction, polarization, radicalization, eating disorders, and misinformation. Engagement can be many things, including time a user spends on a piece of content, a like, a share, a click.
This comprehensive essay by researchers Luke Thorburn, Jonathan Stray, Priyanjana Bengani discusses “engagement” in relation to recommender systems, which are algorithms that personalize content in products such as social media, news, streaming services, and online shopping.
The issue is made even more pertinent as Twitter this week defaulted all of its users to its algorithmic timeline, "For You." If you want to see the more basic reverse chronological timeline, you must now keep selecting it.
In 2016, Twitter and Instagram switched to algorithmic feeds from chronological feeds. But because of user feedback, both re-introduced the chronological timeline as an option.
What’s Right and What’s Wrong with Optimizing for Engagement refutes some easy and lazy assumptions many have that we can simply do without recommender systems optimised for engagement. For example, it's not just commercial imperatives that are a driver of the use of recommender systems for engagement. Even non-profits like the BBC, use them.
Though chronological feeds are often touted as a panacea, a feed of all new items would be near unusable on Spotify, or Amazon - and only make sense on systems designed for following a small set of sources. On social media, reverse chronological feeds also benefit content producers that post a lot without regard to quality. So it may encourage spammy behaviour.
Proof of Polarisation
At least two papers have been published recently that cast doubt on whether social media indeed causes large-scale polarisation. Now there is a new paper by Italian researchers that have found firm proof that it does.
But not on all social media. Personalised recommender systems like the Facebook and Twitter feeds show that the human propensity for homophily drives groups of similar users towards similar news that supports their bias.
BUT not on Reddit where the system is not personalised.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.09603
Proof that Facebook makes us sad
Right at the start, when Facebook launched, a time when its feed was still rather dumb and reverse chronological, it was already having a measurable and significant detrimental impact on the mental health of students.
So says a new study that appears to draw the first causal connection between the use of Facebook and poor mental health. We have had a strong sense that this may the case. There has been a significant increase in metal health issues for more than a decade in several countries.
Two of the authors Luca Braghieri, an Assistant Professor in the department of Decision Sciences at Bocconi University in Italy; and Alexey Makarin, an Assistant Professor in the Applied Economics group at the MIT Sloan School of Management spoke about their groundbreaking study in this Tech Policy Press podcast. Recommended.
Podcast: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/d0b394fc-d3db-4741-b3e2-24183a9e1e3a/
Paper: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20211218
Russian troll impact overstated
According to a study conducted at New York University, Russian troll Twitter accounts had a minimal direct impact on 2016 US election voters; 70% of the exposure was attributed to only 1% of users.
The problem is who does what kind of work
A book review of historian Michael Sonenscher's, ‘Capitalism: The Story behind the Word’, by Angus Brown, sets out how the book makes an intriguing argument: that many of the problems we associate with capitalism are actually because of the inequalities generated by the differentiation of labour, and not about who owns capital.
The result of this division of labour, either between the skilled and unskilled, between town and country, or even simply between different occupations, includes the problems of social atomisation we think capitalism produces, as well as the destruction of traditional communities, ways of life, and professions. And I guess — though it's not stated by Brown — differences in levels of status?
These consequences are not (only) made possible by the private ownership of capital in our societies but have been with us since before capitalism — since what Adam Smith dubbed “commercial society” came into being.
Smith never mentions Capitalism in The Wealth of Nations, although he and Hegel identified these problems. In fact, capital, if used right, like through a welfare state, might be one way to lessen the negative impact of the division of labour. Lots of food for thought here as the AI revolution dawns.
https://tocqueville21.com/books/michael-sonenscher-capitalism/
Why are men so ridiculous?
A provocative question was posed and answered in a Twitter thread by sociology professor Alice Evans. Is it true that men are funnier than women? If so, why is that?
Short, nasty, and brutish
Hobbes, who this newsletter has to thank for its name, was right. Yet another study shows that in the pre-state period, human societies were far more violent.
“Of the skeletal remains of more than 2300 early farmers from 180 sites dating from around 8000 – 4000 years ago to, more than one in ten displayed weapon injuries, bioarchaeologists found.”
https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2023/violence-was-widespread-in-early-farming-society
Ungovernable Republicans
And here is an informative podcast on how the disruptive freedom caucus is causing dysfunction in the newly Republican Party-controlled House of Representatives and what that might mean for Ukraine, debt ceilings, and squabbling with Europe over Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.