{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","title":"If...Then Algorithmic Power and Politics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2017054909","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","id":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","uuid":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","title":"If...Then Algorithmic Power and Politics","normalized_title":"ifthenalgorithmicpowerandpolitics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2017054909","isbns":["2017054909","9780190493042","9780190493059"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":211,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/If...Then%20Algorithmic%20Power%20and%20Politics","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/search"},"page":{"printed_page":106,"pdf_page":116,"physical_index":116,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"f9cba9d95c76211d2570c660ae7c1b48368ced2b04f69aa40bba8c54ce095606"},"chapter":"IF...THEN","content":"The same 5-6 stories were showing up at the top of my feed across a 4-hour period. I have a fairly large social graph on Facebook (1,000+ “friends”), so to see absolutely no new content show up agitated me, so I tweeted about my feelings on the algorithm.30\n\nLucas thinks that “Facebook’s filtering consistently degrades what he prefer in his online social experience.” Like Lena, who seems to be caught in a Republican loop on Facebook, Lucas feels that the platform is holding back important information. The problem for the participants lies not necessarily with filtering in and of itself but with the feeling of not knowing what they could have known. This is not simply the fear of missing out but of having “your own content” and relationships controlled or even censored by a platform, as some participants suggest.\n\nGoing back to Michael and Rachel’s stories, their frustration with Facebook stems in part from the feeling of having someone else decide on their behalf the conditions under which their contributions are either made visible or silenced. Indeed as Amber, another participant tells me, “I am feeling annoyed that the algorithm decides for me [. . .] it is so unpredictable and strange.”31 Nora, a 21-year-old Canadian public policy student, thinks there is “definitely something strange going on with the Facebook algorithm.”32 In a series of tweets, Nora speculates about the underlying mechanisms of Facebook, noting that some of her posts seem to get far more “likes” and comments than others without any apparent reason. The number of “likes,” “shares,” and “comments” fuel the popularity game supported by social media platforms in which algorithms feed of on the social disposition towards interaction. Nora worries that the popularity bias of social media algorithms potentially diminishes what people get to see. Specifically, she worries that the algorithmic bias toward “likes” and “shares” makes viral videos such as the “ice bucket challenge” much more prominent, hiding more important but less “liked” current events such as the racial conflicts in Ferguson. As Nora says, “I don’t like having an algorithm or editor or curator or whatever controlling too much of what I say—if they’re trying to go for more ‘trending topics,’ will my posts on ‘non-trending topics’ get shutered away?”33\n\nThe notion that algorithms contribute to making the popular even more popular is not just apparent in the participants’ understanding of algorithms. It is very much evident in the public discourses surrounding algorithms as well. Let us for a moment return to the #RIPTwiter incident mentioned at the beginning of this chapter and consider some of tweets that contained this hashtag: “Algorithms are a form of censorship. I look to Twiter for unfiltered news in real time.”34 “One of the great rewards of being an adult is deciding ON YOUR OWN who (and what) you should be interested in.”35 “Think about it, with an algorithm you might never see a tweet from specific people ever again. RIP Twiter.”36 “Replacing the chronological time line with an algorithm based feed. Turning Twiter into a popularity contest. No thanks.”37 In my interview with Ryan, he brings up similar issues and worries. He thinks it would be “a big mistake” if Twiter started using algorithms on a large scale, as “it will obviously favor media and links and videos and photos and stuf like that, and it will not favor text posts, which is a majority of what the average user is posting on that platform.” Hayden voiced a similar concern about the possibility that Instagram would change into an algorithmically filtered feed. For Hayden, the “Instagram algorithm” would merely make the “Instagram famous” even more famous since they would “automatically pop up on the top, and you won’t see your friends who might have fewer followers.”38 Like Hayden, the users who gathered around the hashtag #InstagramAlgorithm only two months after Twiter announced its algorithmically curated feed voiced their worries about the platform turning into a popularity contest—for example: “Meh about the Instagram algorithm change. Popularity contests were never my thing.”39 “Why is everything a popularity contest on social media? Why @snapchat is the healthiest platform for your self esteem. #InstagramAlgorithm.”40 “Why does @instagram think that this is a good idea? It’s ‘insta’gram not ‘popular’gram #RIPInstagram.”41 “The new @instagram algorithm is the end for small timers like me. I’m not winning any popularity contests against big names.”42 These tweets are worth quoting at length not because they are necessarily representative of the general sentiments of the hashtag publics that form around these specific events but because of the ways in which they show how algorithms are variously imagined and the expectations people have of them. What these sentiments show is how algorithms are imagined as control mechanisms and gatekeepers that work to enforce existing power structures.\n\n106\n\nI F . . . T H E N","previous_page":105,"next_page":107}