"Algorithmically censored"... So... There's no magical black-box algorithm, it's easily viewable and adjustable, making Facebook not a platform but a publisher?
I did a job interview with them for a data science role and one of the questions was about a leader wanting to derank sharing articles because they felt it lowered engagement. (Versus posting original content) The question was how would you verify that claim, and after implementation test that the change was effective at increasing engagement. They definitely do this shit routinely. My response was to ask if engagement was inherently good and to question the premise of the original request. Needless to say I did not get the job!
There are pathological organizations, just as there are pathological people. In general, the purpose of a business is to generate a return on investment for its stakeholders.
Facebook, et. al. (Google, Twitter) aren't playing just for money. You're right, they have some ideological axe to grind and are playing a political power game.
I have said this before to smoothbrains who like to parrot, "its a private company they can do what they want". Google, or Facebook, censoring on behalf of the CCP isn't effectively any different than direct censorship by the CCP. Its just censorship by proxy from the CCP. The same goes if its private company censorship at the behest of the US government.
You're absolutely correct, I couldn't have worked there anyway, I hate their business model. I was just interviewing for practice or a possible counter offer from my then-employer. They headhunted me so might as well try it out. They've since come back to me a couple more times for other roles but I just tell them not interested in Meta now.
That "the algorithm" does anything has always been a red herring. Humans design the algorithm. Humans code the algorithm into something that computes what it's been asked to compute.
"Algorithmically censored"... So... There's no magical black-box algorithm, it's easily viewable and adjustable, making Facebook not a platform but a publisher?
I did a job interview with them for a data science role and one of the questions was about a leader wanting to derank sharing articles because they felt it lowered engagement. (Versus posting original content) The question was how would you verify that claim, and after implementation test that the change was effective at increasing engagement. They definitely do this shit routinely. My response was to ask if engagement was inherently good and to question the premise of the original request. Needless to say I did not get the job!
Engagement for their platform means more eyeballs on ads. Eyeballs on ads means more money. The goal of every business is to make money.
The answer they were probably looking for was something like: "I would publish under a feature flag so that I could test on A/B populations."
I no longer accept this premise as a given.
We are dealing with religious zealots.
There are pathological organizations, just as there are pathological people. In general, the purpose of a business is to generate a return on investment for its stakeholders.
Facebook, et. al. (Google, Twitter) aren't playing just for money. You're right, they have some ideological axe to grind and are playing a political power game.
I have said this before to smoothbrains who like to parrot, "its a private company they can do what they want". Google, or Facebook, censoring on behalf of the CCP isn't effectively any different than direct censorship by the CCP. Its just censorship by proxy from the CCP. The same goes if its private company censorship at the behest of the US government.
You're absolutely correct, I couldn't have worked there anyway, I hate their business model. I was just interviewing for practice or a possible counter offer from my then-employer. They headhunted me so might as well try it out. They've since come back to me a couple more times for other roles but I just tell them not interested in Meta now.
That "the algorithm" does anything has always been a red herring. Humans design the algorithm. Humans code the algorithm into something that computes what it's been asked to compute.