<story><title>Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia</title><url>https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02/changes-to-sharing-and-viewing-news-on-facebook-in-australia/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ocdtrekkie</author><text>I also believe any algorithm that isn&amp;#x27;t human-readable should be banned. If it can&amp;#x27;t be understood, nobody can validate that it isn&amp;#x27;t racist, sexist, or slanted towards encouraging violence and harm.&lt;p&gt;The fact that technology companies have been grossly negligent and irresponsible isn&amp;#x27;t a reason to not regulate them: It&amp;#x27;s proof regulation needs to be much, much stronger.</text></item><item><author>Jonanin</author><text>These algorithms are not human readable code. They are massively complex interconnected systems of many black box ML models. I don&amp;#x27;t understand what clarity people think releasing the &amp;quot;algorithms&amp;quot; will bring. In fact, describing ranking as a single algorithm is pretty misleading.</text></item><item><author>ocdtrekkie</author><text>The only problem I have with this requirement is that it requires giving &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; news organizations access to this information. Your concerns can adequately be addressed by ensuring everyone has even access to that information.&lt;p&gt;Google and Facebook&amp;#x27;s algorithms should be required to be publicly disclosed. As a society, we should &lt;i&gt;demand&lt;/i&gt; that we are able to see the algorithms that every web property lives and dies based on, that lives are built and destroyed by.</text></item><item><author>gkmcd</author><text>A key part of this legislation is the requirements for tech companies to provide selected news organisations with advance notice about changes to ranking algorithms. This has been generally overlooked in the reporting and discussion but I believe it is the actually the most important part of the legislation. It will give the selected news organisations an enormous advantage over other companies not included and protect them from new competitors, basically entrenching the current media landscape for the foreseeable future.&lt;p&gt;Given the current Australian government&amp;#x27;s cosy relationship with a particular media company that currently dominates the media landscape here, I don&amp;#x27;t think it is coincidence.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Jonanin</author><text>This is an incredibly naive perspective. I guess you want to ban search engines, self driving cars, automated filtering of lewd and abusive content (why do you think FB isn’t full of porn? It’s not a hand engineered algorithm), automatic speech recognition for the hearing impaired, and a vast swath of important technology I didn’t list. I don’t think you really understand the implications of what you’re asking for. Sorry - black boxes are here to stay. And they are immeasurably useful. I could spend hours listing important and crucial technologies that you want banned because you are scared of racism.</text></comment>
<story><title>Changes to sharing and viewing news on Facebook in Australia</title><url>https://about.fb.com/news/2021/02/changes-to-sharing-and-viewing-news-on-facebook-in-australia/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ocdtrekkie</author><text>I also believe any algorithm that isn&amp;#x27;t human-readable should be banned. If it can&amp;#x27;t be understood, nobody can validate that it isn&amp;#x27;t racist, sexist, or slanted towards encouraging violence and harm.&lt;p&gt;The fact that technology companies have been grossly negligent and irresponsible isn&amp;#x27;t a reason to not regulate them: It&amp;#x27;s proof regulation needs to be much, much stronger.</text></item><item><author>Jonanin</author><text>These algorithms are not human readable code. They are massively complex interconnected systems of many black box ML models. I don&amp;#x27;t understand what clarity people think releasing the &amp;quot;algorithms&amp;quot; will bring. In fact, describing ranking as a single algorithm is pretty misleading.</text></item><item><author>ocdtrekkie</author><text>The only problem I have with this requirement is that it requires giving &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; news organizations access to this information. Your concerns can adequately be addressed by ensuring everyone has even access to that information.&lt;p&gt;Google and Facebook&amp;#x27;s algorithms should be required to be publicly disclosed. As a society, we should &lt;i&gt;demand&lt;/i&gt; that we are able to see the algorithms that every web property lives and dies based on, that lives are built and destroyed by.</text></item><item><author>gkmcd</author><text>A key part of this legislation is the requirements for tech companies to provide selected news organisations with advance notice about changes to ranking algorithms. This has been generally overlooked in the reporting and discussion but I believe it is the actually the most important part of the legislation. It will give the selected news organisations an enormous advantage over other companies not included and protect them from new competitors, basically entrenching the current media landscape for the foreseeable future.&lt;p&gt;Given the current Australian government&amp;#x27;s cosy relationship with a particular media company that currently dominates the media landscape here, I don&amp;#x27;t think it is coincidence.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Jonanin</author><text>If you look at the actual data, you will find that black box models are in fact responsible for &lt;i&gt;preventing&lt;/i&gt; the majority of abusive content including hate speech and porn on social media platforms. Ban these models and you’d find your favorite social media platform is more abusive. Most of the racism and sexism you are concerned about comes from other humans.</text></comment>