It’s an interesting idea, but I worry that it would only make these platforms more polarizing. I’m imagining a social justice recommender algorithm, which promotes the most extreme and censorious social justice positions, and maybe flags people taking not-so-woke positions (say against affirmative action) for unfriending/unfollowing. One could imagine something similar coming from the political right. And then these platforms become even more polarizing.
allow people to do what they want to do, and as a result many of them will do wrong things;
have endless debates about what is the right thing; or
decide from the position of power what is the right thing.
...or some combination of them. For example, from the position of power we could declare the set of permissible choices, and then allow people to choose freely within this set.
Bubbles or not bubbles, that’s the same, but more meta. We could allow people to set up their bubble coefficient individually, but what if some stupid people will set it to 100% and will never be confronted with our wisdom? Or we leave the choice to the YouTube’s algorithm.
That is indeed a potential problem, and another person i told this idea to was skeptical that people would choose the “healthy” algorithms instead of algorithms similar to the current ones that are more amusing.
I think it’s hard to know what the outcome of this will be, I’m optimistic, but the pessimistic side definitely has merit too. this is in a way similar to the internet, where people were very optimistic for what it can do, but failed to see the potential problems it would create, and when social media finally came it showed a much sadder image.
But also similar to the internet, i think people should have the choice, i wouldn’t want anyone to restrict the algorithms i can use because some people may choose algorithms that someone thinks are harmful.
At the end of the day, if someone is really motivated to be in an echo chamber, nothing’s gonna stop them. this idea might help those that find themselves in echo chambers because of the current algorithm, but would rather be out.
It’s an interesting idea, but I worry that it would only make these platforms more polarizing. I’m imagining a social justice recommender algorithm, which promotes the most extreme and censorious social justice positions, and maybe flags people taking not-so-woke positions (say against affirmative action) for unfriending/unfollowing. One could imagine something similar coming from the political right. And then these platforms become even more polarizing.
We have the following options:
allow people to do what they want to do, and as a result many of them will do wrong things;
have endless debates about what is the right thing; or
decide from the position of power what is the right thing.
...or some combination of them. For example, from the position of power we could declare the set of permissible choices, and then allow people to choose freely within this set.
Bubbles or not bubbles, that’s the same, but more meta. We could allow people to set up their bubble coefficient individually, but what if some stupid people will set it to 100% and will never be confronted with our wisdom? Or we leave the choice to the YouTube’s algorithm.
That is indeed a potential problem, and another person i told this idea to was skeptical that people would choose the “healthy” algorithms instead of algorithms similar to the current ones that are more amusing.
I think it’s hard to know what the outcome of this will be, I’m optimistic, but the pessimistic side definitely has merit too. this is in a way similar to the internet, where people were very optimistic for what it can do, but failed to see the potential problems it would create, and when social media finally came it showed a much sadder image.
But also similar to the internet, i think people should have the choice, i wouldn’t want anyone to restrict the algorithms i can use because some people may choose algorithms that someone thinks are harmful.
At the end of the day, if someone is really motivated to be in an echo chamber, nothing’s gonna stop them. this idea might help those that find themselves in echo chambers because of the current algorithm, but would rather be out.