Comment on We unleashed Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms on blank accounts. They served up sexism and misogyny

Ummdustry@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

We scrolled through the feed every couple of weeks to check what was being served up.

This is a critical flaw in the studies methodology. ‘loiter time’ is a metric used by algorithms to serve up new content, if the researchers where checking each post for signs of misogyny, then they were probably skipping by totally innocucus stuff whilst paying attention to misogyny. This (beening the only feedback) will have shown the researchers what they wanted to see.

Three months later, The Office, Star Wars, and now The Boys memes continue to punctuate the feed, now interspersed with highly sexist and misogynistic images that have have appeared in the feed without any input from the user.

It’d be good to know the actual ratios, given this was a guardian study there’s no reason to withhold data, nor a secondary source I can go and find the data. It’s possible that Facebook is simply serving up the entire spectrum of posts proportionately to their activity on the internet, or even favouring anti-sexist posts that are just not noticed/mentioned by the guardian.

Does anyone genuinely believe banning this sorta stuff is going to “end violence against women and children in one generation.”

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