606
submitted 3 months ago by girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to c/world@lemmy.world

How do the algorithms of Facebook and Instagram affect what you see in your news feed? To find out, Guardian Australia unleashed them on a completely blank smartphone linked to a new, unused email address.

Three months later, without any input, they were riddled with sexist and misogynistic content.

Initially Facebook served up jokes from The Office and other sitcom-related memes alongside posts from 7 News, Daily Mail and Ladbible. A day later it began showing Star Wars memes and gym or “dudebro”-style content.

By day three, “trad Catholic”-type memes began appearing and the feed veered into more sexist content.

Three months later, The Office, Star Wars, and now The Boys memes continue to punctuate the feed, now interspersed with highly sexist and misogynistic images that have have appeared in the feed without any input from the user.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Badeendje@lemmy.world 32 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Well it also looks at stuff like the other devices connected from the same IP, other devices near where you connect from and then based on this also hones the served content.

So if the author/some colleague or even the neighbors are red pilled/MGTOW/Chriso-Fachists etc this also makes sense. Possibly even their research into these subjects slanted the results. Let alone what happens if they spun up a VM at a cloud farm and used it from there.

I'm in no way surprised that "social" media corps serve up vile shit for profit ik just not convinced by some random let's see what happens.

Edit: I'd be for a law that required targeted ads to have a small "why you see this" and if you click it the company is required to show you the selection criteria that caused this ad to be served to you in an easy to understand format. (Leaving out all the irrelevant criteria).. ie.

You where selected by the following criteria:

  • region: europe
  • gender: male
  • interests: Games, Lemmy, politics
[-] Carrolade@lemmy.world 22 points 3 months ago

It's also probably looking at scroll speed. So if the people conducting the experiment tended to linger longer examining content they disliked, that could result in getting more of it.

Would need to see a more detailed explanation of the methodology. Ideally the scrolling was done in an automated way, at a consistent speed.

[-] localme@lemm.ee 10 points 3 months ago

Yep, it’s called dwell time and it is 100% one of the metrics used by the algorithms that decide what content to serve up.

this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2024
606 points (97.9% liked)

World News

39021 readers
1274 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS