Facebook's Current Problems

• Facebook receives negative media attention for multiple issues
• Collected and passed on user information without consent
• Provided platform for organized spread of political misinformation/fake news
• Creates information monopoly harmful to democracy
  • Similar to why freedom of press written into Constitution
  • Prevents information monopolies

Historical Context of Algorithm Filtering

• Scientists have written about internet information filtering problems for 2+ decades
• Original concerns focused on search engines as news providers
• Role now taken over by social media platforms
• Core problem: company algorithms select what information users see prominently
• Information selection dramatically affects user opinions

2003 Research on "Googlearchy"

• Key paper by three political scientists coined term "Googlearchy"
• Found web not as egalitarian as expected compared to traditional media
• Empirical results showed enormous disparities in links to political sites
• Small number of heavily linked sites receive more links than rest combined
• Sites effectively dominate their political communities
• Introduced "Googlearchy" - rule of most heavily linked
• Web structure funnels users to few heavily linked sites per political category
• Now evolved to "rule of most heavily liked"

Current Exploitation of Algorithms

• People now deliberately exploit algorithms to misinform others
• Situation much worse than 2003 predictions
• Deliberate misinformation campaigns targeting algorithmic weaknesses

Parallel with Scientific Publishing

• Scientific publishing has similar filtering problems
• Uses citations as primary filtering technique
• Number of citations may be disconnected from real-world research impact
• Citations only demonstrate popularity, not scientific relevance
• Citations as disconnected from scientific relevance as likes are from truth value

Key Differences Between Platforms

• Social media has little tradition of quoting sources
• News outlets copy from each other, making accuracy verification difficult
• Social media has much faster turnover rate than scientific publications
• Less time for users to think before passing on information
• Both suffer from near-monopoly of single algorithm

Proposed Solutions

• Problem stems from users unable to customize filtering algorithms
• For scientific publishing: make alternative evaluation methods more accessible
• References website "a metered org" as solution example
• Scientists currently use citations/journal impact factors because easily accessible
• Other evaluation metrics not easily accessible
• Journal impact factor calculation methods unknown to most users

Facebook Algorithm Transparency Issues

• No one knows how Facebook's algorithm works
• Algorithm cannot be customized by users
• If users could customize information filtering, gaming would be less problematic
• User customization settings should remain private information

User Customization Implementation

• Most users wouldn't want to deal with technical details
• Sufficient if small group creates templates for user selection
• Personal example: uses Facebook for science news and close friends
• Doesn't want political news, unknown people's social lives, or entertainment
• Other users have different needs: groups, events, distraction, cooking recipes

Current Facebook Limitations

• Very little customization options for newsfeed
• Best current option: sort people onto lists (cumbersome, limited solution)
• Only solves some aspects of sorting problem

Proposed Facebook Solution

• Allow third-party plugins to sort newsfeeds
• Would give users more control
• Would relieve Facebook of some responsibilities
• References Zuckerberg's motto: "move fast and break things"
• "Unless you are breaking stuff you are not moving fast enough"
• Time to break Facebook's dominance over information filtering