We unleashed Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms on blank accounts. They served up sexism and misogyny
We unleashed Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms on blank accounts. They served up sexism and misogyny
Result of Guardian Australia experiment aligns with research showing social media automatically delivers troubling content to young men, largely without oversight
How do the algorithms of Facebook and Instagram affect what you see in your news feed? To find out, Guardian Australia unleashed them on a completely blank smartphone linked to a new, unused email address.
Three months later, without any input, they were riddled with sexist and misogynistic content.
Initially Facebook served up jokes from The Office and other sitcom-related memes alongside posts from 7 News, Daily Mail and Ladbible. A day later it began showing Star Wars memes and gym or “dudebro”-style content.
By day three, “trad Catholic”-type memes began appearing and the feed veered into more sexist content.
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.
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I mean it‘s the exact same if you visit Youtube without an account or cookies. The Internet has become a swamp of right wing and neoliberal populism that kicks down on minorities and people with lower than average income in general. The insane amount of completely made up rage bait stories that you get recommended is just unfathomable.
I think it‘s gotten to a point where it needs to be regulated how many lies a site can throw at you at the same time and I don‘t say this lightly. I just see no other way to get this mind eating populist machine under control.
Youtube shorts are the worst. I am transgender so my historic is really not right wing
30mins on shorts and I end up in Shapiro's Dreamland. It's a nightmare
Pirate Software has the only shorts on YT worth watching imho
My favourite thing about his shorts is trying to guess if it’s going to be a wholesome one or one where either him or his chat bestow cursed knowledge onto each other
The only political thing I watch is Behind the Bastards and the algorithm keeps trying to get me to watch right wing shit. I installed a third party channel blocker and open suspicious channels in private tabs and it still serves me right wing chuds complaining about being suppressed by "woke google". I would troll the comments section if it wasn't for the fact that that counts as "engagement".
I despite all my lgbt content got served some 1 mil subs catholic lady saying how she loves red pill, pro life or something like this. Such women always have this crazy light in the eyes, it creeps me out.
You can feel that she is in some kind of state of altered reality, like someone on drugs. High on something.
It has either gotten better or just improved its suggestions for me over time. I basically never get right wing content anymore. There's plenty of garbage, but it's stupid garbage rather than dangerous garbage.
Regulation won't work, because regulation moves slowly, and these companies find workarounds fast. And as long as the cost of breaking the rule is less than the benefits of doing so, it'll be "just the cost of doing business."
A simple way to do it is to stop considering them as platform providers but editors and it shou'd be done in my opinion because by their recommandation systems, they are making editing choices.
I have to hard disagree on this outmost pessimistic outlook because it reads like any regulation we already have is pointless so we can just scrap regulations and rules altogether across the board. That's similar to the neoliberalist rethoric I loathe to see pushed into my recommendations and it's simply not true. In reality we do see that regulations sometimes do the trick. It's just that they likely won't regulate them as harsh as I proposed, but that's a different argument. Regulation as an instrument does work.
right wing and neoliberal populism
Or maybe you just live in a swamp of left wing and radical socialism?
That's just the Netherlands.
- wealth taxes ✓
- insanely good infrastructure ✓
- reasonable worker's rights ✓
- an actual swamp ✓
still capitalist ✓
Then how is them live in a swamp of left wing and radical socialism?
He doesn't. He makes false claims.
Fuck off.
Well, that just evidences that the only good way to do capitalism is with a wealth tax and unlimited paid sick leave.
Or maybe capitalism works well, if it runs on top of a good framework?
In which country is capitalism working well? Because I can't think of one that doesn't have a desperately poor underclass. Just ones that have a good non-capitalist government safety net to help them.
Nah, the capitalism parts of the NL are the most often criticised ones. It's a tax haven for corps - did you know IKEA is a Dutch charity? - and the healthcare system is only getting worse because of copying US patterns of private ownership.
That can change.
own goal
Capitalism, like every other form society takes, is inherently flawed. Power pools, and every system eventually falls into oligarchy. The only way to prevent this, is strong social welfare programs enacted with regularity. This is proven mathematically, here.
The only reason capitalism works there is because of their strong social welfare programs.
You're wrong.
I can't take this model seriously - it assumes that economy is a zero sum game. If an economy actually was the zero sum game, then where all the wealth came from???
To be clear, I absolutely agree with the title - inequality is 100% unavoidable, but for completely different reasons.
then where all the wealth came from
are you being serious right now, is this a real question? In the age of cryptocurrency you're asking this question.
is this a real question?
I'm trying to point out the massive hole in the reasoning behind linked paper
In the age of cryptocurrency you're asking this question.
Cryptocurrencies are barely relevant here
Edit: Wait. Are you a university student? What did they tell you about where the wealth is coming from? I'm genuinely curious to know.
you're wrong. I'm not interested in explaining why you're wrong, maybe someone else will.