{"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":77,"pdf_page":87,"physical_index":87,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"3d31d56dd82d3d881cb523e30c7874e249c021a9489a725a6f79e52460942915"},"chapter":"IF...THEN","content":"Indeed, we are only at the beginning of figuring out what it means to live in a society increasingly mediated and governed by algorithms. While it has been “known” for some time that Facebook uses algorithms to select the stories shown at top of the news feed, it is important not to forget how recent this time span really is. Moreover, what exactly this knowledge amounts to varies greatly. While we might never know for sure how the technology—the software and algorithms—of Facebook work in detail, there are enough ways in which we might know its operational principles and logics. As I argued in the previous chapter, algorithms are never so black or so boxed that they do not allow for critical scrutiny of their functions, assumptions, and embedded values. The cybernetic lead does not ask us to reveal the exact content of the box but to experiment with its inputs and outputs. In the following, I will walk you through some of the most important criteria the Facebook algorithm uses to serve people the “most interesting” content on their news feeds. The materials used to present some of the operational logic of Facebook’s algorithmic workings I draw from the technical specifications of specific inventions that pertain to the news feed as disclosed and discussed in white papers, computer science conference papers, Facebook patent applications, and recorded talks given by a Facebook engineer. Moreover, I draw on various news reports and blog posts from the technology press, most notably from publications such as Wired, The Atlantic, Techcrunch, Mashable, the New York Times, and the Guardian. These documents have been read and coded for the technological mechanisms entailed by the news feed. Technical specifications entailed in patent applications, in particular, contain much important information about how these systems work and are imagined by their inventors. Like any piece of discourse, patent applications also have to be read carefully and within the realms of what they are produced to achieve as rhetorical devices in a particular commercial context. To test some of the operational logics described in these documents, I also report on a technography of my own news feed. What, then, are the principles and logics of Facebook’s algorithmic form of editing the news feed?\n\nThe News Feed Ranking Algorithm\n\nAt Facebook’s third f8 developers’ conference in April 2010, Facebook for the first time “spilled the beans of some of the magic that is the news feed” as engineer Ruchi Sanghvi put it, introducing developers (and the public) to what was then referred to as the EdgeRank algorithm.11 Today, the notion of EdgeRank has largely been replaced by the much more generic notion of the Facebook algorithm(s) or the news feed ranking algorithm, respectively. Here, I use these terms somewhat interchangeably, sometimes referring to EdgeRank but, most of the time, simply referring to the ranking algorithm governing the news feed as Facebook algorithm.12 Let us take it from the start. When introducing the concept of EdgeRank in 2010, engineer Ari\n\nLife at the Top\n\n77","previous_page":76,"next_page":78}