When an Algorithm Decides What I Consume

The Facebook whistleblower and her files, while considered bombshell news, really took no one by surprise. Sure, it’s the first time a Facebook employee has substantiated claims of internal malfeasance with leaked internal documents. But come on; everyone knew this was happening all along. What Francis Haugen made public simply proved what many of us had intuitively deduced.

Anecdotally, everyone has either had or heard of multiple instances where you or someone speaks about something and it finds its way onto your Instagram feed. Facebook claims that it has never used microphone functionality to actively listen to user conversations. I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are telling the truth. What the aforementioned pattern speaks to is the reality that the machine learning algorithms on which Facebooks content curation software is built are really good. It’s able to determine your preferences and push content that it knows you will engage with. Sure, you may have been talking about a trip to Hawaii, but Facebook’s algorithms knew you were thinking about it. They argue that this is to optimize user experience. But the unfortunate side effect is that an ‘optimized user experience’ creates echo chambers that influence increased levels of depression and self-harm, to name a few.

The tendency to share only the best moments, a pressure to look perfect and an addictive product can send teens spiraling toward eating disorders, an unhealthy sense of their own bodies and depression, March 2020 internal research states. It warns that the Explore page, which serves users photos and videos curated by an algorithm, can send users deep into content that can be harmful.

All users on Instagram post by exercising their right to free speech. To differentiate online free speech from when it’s exercised in person, when communicating face to face you intuitively know your audience as the people you are speaking with. One of the problems Facebook has created is that its algorithm determines the audience, not the user. Take the eating disorder example. The person creating a video on interval dieting may have intended to have their video seen by adults, but Facebook may very well have pushed it to teen girls. The context in which something is said is critical to understanding the message. How can we have free speech if there is no transparency as to how our audience is determined? I find this to be a critical problem stemming from us knowing very little about how the content curation algorithms actually works. I hope that the pressure put on by Ms. Haugen leads to either more transparency or a complete overhaul of the Facebook algorithm. While it may be great for user engagement and recommending you great deals for your next vacation, it clearly has devastating consequences.

How can we be expected to think freely if we don’t understand how out information is being fed to us? I think that the studies released on teen girls is only the tip of the iceberg. As people consume a large portion of their information on social media, these algorithms have the potential to influence the way people think and the ideas and belief systems they align with. Therefore, by jeopardizing free speech, many of these platforms of putting individual free thought at risk.

Looking back at what I wrote, it does seem pretty dramatic. I mean at the end of the day, as long as we are cognoscente that there is no randomness to the content we consume, we should be fine. I am speaking more to people who don’t question the ways in which they access content. I hope Facebook is held accountable and forced to protect those who are vulnerable to the system they created.