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.
When I first joined Internet communities as a preteen, I just followed forums that interested me and got exposed to whatever people happened to be talking about on those forums.
Why, oh why, has the world decided that we need recommendation algorithms at all?
to make money
and it’s not like it was difficult to find said communities back in the day. I first got online in like '96 and '97 and I was able to randomly find communities of people with similar interests. I was a 14 year old kid, I liked star wars. I found a huge star wars forum and then a more niche one, and then one about star wars video games, and then that lead to a huge x-wing vs tie fighter clan which lead to me downloading and learnnig how to use mIRC which then opened up to more communities of different games I enjoyed.
I made friends that I have to this day via finding these forums and IRC rooms.
I don’t know why today people need recommendation algorithms other than for said companies to make money off of it.