Meta faces a $2.4bn (£1.8bn) lawsuit accusing the Facebook owner of inflaming violence in Ethiopia after the Kenyan high court said a legal case against the US tech group could go ahead.
The case brought by two Ethiopian nationals calls on Facebook to alter its algorithm to stop promoting hateful material and incitement to violence, as well as hiring more content moderators in Africa. It is also seeking a $2.4bn “restitution fund” for victims of hate and violence incited on Facebook.
I hope this pressure leads to just getting rid of algorithms altogether. It’s like intentionally giving everyone their own personal echo chamber. How are people ever going to be open to different ideas if they’re constantly being pigeonholed by their browsing behaviour? How will they ever have opportunities for practicing critical thinking if everything is spoonfed to them? How many real human beings have we unintentionally ignored online because an algorithm decided they weren’t interesting enough to us? These are all things that have the potential to prevent a tragedy. Humans are capable of being more than the sum of their clicks if we let them.
The world is bigger than our own interests and I think it deserves even just a crumb of our attention too. Then maybe the world can become a little less devastating.
And other things spoken by someone who never learned what an algorithm is.
It’s pretty obvious from context that they’re talking about content personalization algorithms. They ain’t talking about binary search
You don’t need algorithms to have an echo chamber.
Just look at the mod abuse that goes on on some of these forums.