In last week's episode, we talked
about the Facebook trending news controversy and the inherently
biased nature of algorithms.
Let's see what you had to say. mode9800 points out something
that I noticed a lot in the comments, which
is people confusing the presence of bias
with kind of a judgment call, people
thinking that when you say something contains bias
is the same as saying that thing is bad.
And I had hoped that we would be able to work
our way around this, especially with the sort of preamble
talking about how a world and especially media free of bias
is an unfair expectation, in that it is one that is perhaps
unreasonable to have and to expect of people.
And so I just want to put sort of another bullet
point next to this and to say that bias has got
a bad reputation-- understated.
It's not a bad thing.
It's not a good thing.
It is a thing.
And it finds its way into all corners of the world
and all corners of media and entertainment and culture
and our day-to-day lives.
And I think that there is this sentiment that's
really important to have and one that mode9800 sort of gets at,
which is that the best thing we can do is understand it,
because we're never going to get away from it.
And if we think of everything that contains bias
as being bad, there won't be that many good things left,
period.
[INAUDIBLE] on the subreddit gets a really, really great
conversation going by at first talking
about the kind of, like, dilemma that media companies
and production companies are faced with.
Essentially, if you don't know how to become popular
on Facebook, it is the same as not knowing
how to become popular.
And that those two things are-- essentially,
there's a one-to-one relationship
and inspires a really good conversation
about a lot of the bits and pieces that
go into that process.
So this is a great thread, recommended reading,
if you have the time.
On the subject of Facebook's reputation
and how that might factor into our expectations of bias
or not when it comes to their news and editorial processes,
Hudu Operator points towards a really great "Atlantic" article
about the fact that Facebook, which is essentially
a media company and a publisher at this point,
is considered a technology company,
while GE, which makes you know jet
engines and medical devices, is not considered a technology
company.
And I think this is-- we sort of touched-- we sort of got
to the tip of the iceberg on this point in the episode,
but there is this public perception of Facebook
that I think is largely rooted in what it was 10 years ago.
And it's a really weird, like, almost ship of Theseus problem.
It's like we're rebuilding Facebook sort of mandate
by mandate.
You take out one mandate and replace it with another,
and at the end you don't have the same ship
made of different parts.
You have a completely different ship at this point.
But for whatever reason, that memory of what Facebook is
looms large, even though it now has
new responsibilities, new goals, new ways of interacting
with its audience.
And so that, I think, factors really
heavily into how it is appraised as a news source, which
is to say that it is not appraised as on.
Atario makes a really good point that there
is two different kinds of trending.
And this is something I think it could have been
a little bit more clear about.
So trending is something that is just simply something
that a lot of people are talking about.
And so that's where you get stuff
like the weather and lunch.
But then, trending is also something
that has a relatively sharp increase in popularity
over a short amount of time.
And so its overall saturation might be low,
but if it goes from basically nothing to medium-high
in a very short amount of time, that
is also something that's trending, even though it might
not be as numerically popular as, say, lunch,
or, like, the Olympics.
So yeah, that could have been a little bit more clear
of a distinction.
Jumpline, on the subreddit, makes a really, really great
point about the ubiquity of Facebook
and sort of puts into words something that
was a subtext of the episode that we never really got around
to saying, which is that there's this point at which
the quantity of people using Facebook and interactions
on Facebook and stories that are posted or shared on Facebook
becomes quality, that it is simply because
of the size of Facebook's audience
that it and that audience become something different than what
we're used to, and their relationship
becomes something different than we have the capability
to think about reasonably, sort of build an editorial idea
around, or regulate.
And I think that this is a kind of an unsung
part of this problem, that maybe we just, at this point,
don't know how to deal with it and Jumpline
goes one step further and says that-- goes one step further
and says that the quality that emerges from Facebook's
quantity is that it is reality, essentially, that there are
enough people using Facebook, and you probably
interact with enough of them every day,
that, to a certain degree, Facebook comprises
some connective tissue of our perception of the world, which,
I mean, hey, how's that for responsibility for a media
organization?
Yeesh.
[INAUDIBLE], the doctor, and a lot of other people
pointed out that it is maybe not so lamentable
that Facebook wasn't unbiased, but that it did not
appear as though they were trying to be unbiased
and that what news and media organizations
and publishers should be doing is attempting to be objective,
as opposed to succeeding.
And that goes a long way.
And I think that on the one hand, I think this is true.
And I think that it probably feels right.
It feels nice.
It's good to know that the PR department of a company
can be like, hey, now here are the steps that we take.
These are the things that we got wrong.
And so there is a real mechanical
and real and human response when something like this happens.
But on the other hand, I wonder if, like,
do you guys look at places like Fox News and CNN and MSNBC
and "The Wall Street Journal" and the "Washington Examiner"
and insert newspaper here, and do you see them
as attempting to be objective?
Because I don't, and I wonder if maybe that's just me
being really, really cynical.
But I mean, man, like, I watched cable news last night just
to sort of like check in on the state of things,
and, oh god, I was just shocked at how unabashedly
scaremonger-y it was.
And that, to me, is the most extreme and dangerous form
of bias.
But maybe my experience is different from yours.
I would love to know what your experience.
[INAUDIBLE]
This is very related to what we were just talking about,
and I think also a great question that has,
like, three or four almost mutually exclusive answers.
Since you talked about news media having
the capability of giving certain things more exposure,
that's the thing that I'm going to sort of focus on.
I think, from my perspective, you watch a publisher operate
and make the decisions that they have,
make the decisions that they feel they have to make.
A lot of times those decisions are
inspired by wanting to continue paying the people who
work for them money, so that those people can eat and live,
needing to be needing to be profitable,
and needing to be able to capture
a certain number of eyeballs, so that they can continue doing
the things that they are doing.
And I think in one sense, you can
say that the existence of editorial systems
within a capitalist structure-- yeah, that's right.
We're going there-- sort of make what
might seem otherwise, like, untoward editorial
decisions immoral moral, because it requires
the-- it requires editors to make decisions
that sustain the business.
On its face, I think that there is really
a certain amount of public trust and even public interest--
like, we were just talking about scaremongering and public
safety-- that also is involved here
and that there are things that the news media does that really
are not in the public's best interest
but are in their best interest in gaining eyeballs.
And that is where it gets very, very complicated to decide what
is and is not morally wrong, because I
think also a lot of people would look at things that I would say
aren't dangerous or irresponsible,
and they would say, no, that's the information
that we need the most.
This is, I think, where you start
to get into the importance of clear editorial
guidelines for publishers, because you get to then judge
them on their own terms, and you get
to decide whether or not those terms are ones that you
find generally acceptable.
And if you don't, you get to say, like, well,
they are not a group of people who
treat media or the world the way I think it should be treated.
And so, you know, I can write them off unilaterally,
if you are interested in that kind of process.
But I think this is a great question, and one
that has a lot of answers.
[INAUDIBLE]-- whose name-- I'm sure I'm butchering it,
so I apologize-- points to a really great article about
the bias of algorithms-- a beauty contest where a robotic
judge chooses only white winners, which I mean,
you know, if you need any further proof, there it is.