Post by Jaga on Oct 27, 2021 18:14:31 GMT -7
This was one of the main articles in Washington Post today - about civil war in Poland helped by facebook:
www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/10/27/poland-facebook-algorithm/?itid=hp-top-table-main
In Poland’s politics, a ‘social civil war’ brewed as Facebook rewarded online anger
An independent data analysis of major political parties in Poland that was conducted for The Post showed that after 2018, negative messages were more likely to receive a high number of shares.
WARSAW — Most political parties in Poland have complaints about Facebook’s algorithms, the obscure formulas that decide which posts pop up on a user’s news feed and which fade into the ether.
The far-right Confederation party does not.
It’s a “hate algorithm,” said Tomasz Grabarczyk, who heads the party’s social media team. But the Confederation’s content generally does well, including a slew of anti-lockdown, anti-immigration, vaccine-skeptic posts often punctuated with large red exclamation marks. “I think we are good with emotional messages,” he said.
That Facebook might be amplifying outrage — while driving polarization and elevating more-extreme parties around the world — has been ruminated on inside the company for years, according to the internal documents known as the Facebook Papers, which were disclosed by the whistleblower Frances Haugen to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Redacted versions were reviewed by a consortium of news organizations including The Washington Post.
In one April 2019 document detailing a research trip to the European Union, a Facebook team reported feedback from European politicians that an algorithm change the previous year — billed by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg as an effort to foster more “meaningful” interactions on the platform — had changed politics “for the worse.”
The Facebook team reported back specific concerns from Poland, where political parties had described a “social civil war” online. Such worries have prompted reviews by regulators and lawmakers across the continent, including proposals at the European Parliament to force more transparency from Silicon Valley’s tech giants.....
www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/10/27/poland-facebook-algorithm/?itid=hp-top-table-main
In Poland’s politics, a ‘social civil war’ brewed as Facebook rewarded online anger
An independent data analysis of major political parties in Poland that was conducted for The Post showed that after 2018, negative messages were more likely to receive a high number of shares.
WARSAW — Most political parties in Poland have complaints about Facebook’s algorithms, the obscure formulas that decide which posts pop up on a user’s news feed and which fade into the ether.
The far-right Confederation party does not.
It’s a “hate algorithm,” said Tomasz Grabarczyk, who heads the party’s social media team. But the Confederation’s content generally does well, including a slew of anti-lockdown, anti-immigration, vaccine-skeptic posts often punctuated with large red exclamation marks. “I think we are good with emotional messages,” he said.
That Facebook might be amplifying outrage — while driving polarization and elevating more-extreme parties around the world — has been ruminated on inside the company for years, according to the internal documents known as the Facebook Papers, which were disclosed by the whistleblower Frances Haugen to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Redacted versions were reviewed by a consortium of news organizations including The Washington Post.
In one April 2019 document detailing a research trip to the European Union, a Facebook team reported feedback from European politicians that an algorithm change the previous year — billed by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg as an effort to foster more “meaningful” interactions on the platform — had changed politics “for the worse.”
The Facebook team reported back specific concerns from Poland, where political parties had described a “social civil war” online. Such worries have prompted reviews by regulators and lawmakers across the continent, including proposals at the European Parliament to force more transparency from Silicon Valley’s tech giants.....