
Algorithms are changing what we read online - pseudolus
https://thewalrus.ca/how-algorithms-are-changing-what-we-read-online/
======
mellosouls
This article rings true to me.

In particular I've noticed a steady stream of woke articles being pushed my
way despite me having little interest in that sort of thing.

These things are supposed to be fed by our preferences, but while I'm happy to
read across the board brow-wise, most of my reading is of the deeper articles
and yet genuinely intellectual essays are rarely offered up.

It's frustrating as a reader, and interesting to hear about it from the view
of the writer.

~~~
AlexandrB
I know what you mean. After all the tracking data collected and ML models
trained the primary metric for suggesting content still seems to be "stuff
other people are reading/watching/playing/listening"

~~~
jacobr1
As someone that used to work on recommendations systems ... the problem is
that the signal is just so robust. Stuff other people like really is one of
the stronger ways to predict what you will like. Most additional data sources
that allow us to customize further and identify what sub-groups you might
belong to and thus prioritize highlighting things of relevance to your
subgroups tend to empirically show lower performance for the overall
population. The only thing I've seen work is focus on the "most popular"
things for the most important demographics (such as those with money to buy
things) which might overfit for that demo, and underperform overall, but still
performs the best on some higher metric like revenue.

I commented a while back on someone asking "Why recommend me a ladder if I
just bought a ladder, couldn't the system understand that people usually only
buy one ladder?" But the fact is, the commenter was wrong about his priors.
Actually someone who buys a ladder is indeed more likely to buy another one
... even if most people that buy ladders only buy a single ladder. The fact
that you bought a ladder, puts you in the cohort of people that buys ladders,
which means you are more likely to buy another one than someone who isn't on
the record buying a ladder.

~~~
wombatmobile
> the problem is that the signal is just so robust.

That's why you aren't seeing the better solution. You're only seeing what you
know, which is the (tired old) signal you know how to detect. But you already
detected it, and monetised it.

A better recommendation signal would be the one that you don't know how to
detect. It's the signal people get unexpectedly from other people, when they
chat about the thing they just bought. Call it the n+1 recommendation signal.

> The fact that you bought a ladder, puts you in the cohort of people that
> buys ladders, which means you are more likely to buy another one than
> someone who isn't on the record buying a ladder.

OK, but that's still the n recommendation signal, which has already been
monetised, and won't be refreshed for quite some time, in the same way a Venus
fly trap takes time before it will open and trigger again.

What can a person do with a ladder that she couldn't do before?

That question is what begets the n+1 recommendation signal. It isn't a
question that even gets asked explicitly. It happens through association.

She says "I got a new ladder, and a paintbrush and some paint." and her friend
says, "Oh great, I just used my ladder to hang a bird feeder from the sycamore
tree!" and then she says "Oh! I've got a sycamore tree too! Where'd you get
your bird feeder?"

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octodog
I quite enjoyed this article and found the author's perspective on the
inherent internationalism of art resonate with me.

However, I'm not sure that the issue he is discussing is mostly caused by
algorithms. It seems to me that the internationalisation of newspapers and
media organisations is the main culprit. As the author says, if you can read
art reviews in the NYT, why bother with 'small time' critics? Personally, I
share the author's view that having a local perspective is still valuable but
it seems clear that a lot of people don't.

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jseliger
I saw this essay in Arts and Letters Daily
([https://www.aldaily.com/](https://www.aldaily.com/)) and added it to my
blog's next links post, with a variation of this comment: I've never heard of
this guy and yet his work sounds like just the sort of thing I'd like to read:
I'm not interested in most of the standard political and pop culture stuff
that's endlessly written and re-written. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to
have a link list of his recent works anywhere, at least that I can find. His
website ([https://russellsmith.ca/](https://russellsmith.ca/)) appears to be
pretty generic, and its RSS feed seems to have last been updated in 2015. How
are we supposed to find his work and follow him, if we are interested in his
work (and I am, after reading this)?

~~~
motohagiography
Can recommend highly, particularly his books, "Confidence" and "How
Insensitive." I read his column in the Globe for years.

When you compare what he writes to the content that gets pushed to us like in
that Social Dilemma documentary in another thread
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24468533](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24468533)),
smart people are writing, they're just getting drowned out. Content algorithms
are like rating food on how efficiently it can deliver sugar and caffeine with
no other criteria for "good."

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dangus
Ultimately I think what this author is describing is actually more of a tale
of one employer‘s crummy management style.

Interesting niche content like the author writes is exploding. In contrast, it
sounds to me like this particular outlet is missing out on the opportunity to
provide niche and offbeat content by bean counting.

In other words, I’d hesitate to assume that all digital media outlets are
blindly chasing “engagement” without making any other considerations. I would
think that big legacy media companies are easily led off a cliff by “doing
what everyone else is doing.”

We are in the infancy of digital media, as much as it seems like it’s been
around for a long time at this point. Many outlets, especially traditional
ones, are ultimately still doing “the wrong things” that digital media firms
in 2050 will look back on as being primitive and crude.

One last point: while the “flip through the pages of the paper and discover
odd topics on art and culture” is dead, that doesn’t mean the interest and
readership is dead. What’s dead is the idea that institutions like The Times
or The Globe have any relevance in acting as aggregators of that content.

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rtx
As a consumer, I enjoy and pay for human curated content. Maybe publishers
just need to ride out the analytic craze.

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swiley
_Reading curated feeds WILL expose you to mass manipulation engines._ The
power they steal from you and others can then be rented out in bulk for a
premium.

That’s why most companies don’t let you turn them off (or make it difficult to
opt out.)

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MichaelMoser123
Most of the newspapers in Germany have half of their articles as 'premium
content', and these cost some money. I wonder if they focus on the same
metrics with this model. (I mean if the newspaper has a revenue model that is
not primarily based on ads then its metrics might be of a different kind)

~~~
mjburgess
In the case where an article causes you to subscribe, the topic area can be
sustained by a smaller audience.

Eg., this is how netflix maintains a large library of niche films. It is
enough just that they profit on them, not that they are popular.

The issue in OP appears to be that his articles were always included with the
printed newspaper, and some people were curious enough to read it. However
those people would never think to seek out that content.

So it's a question of "how do you serve the intellectual curiosity" in an era
where mere popularity is the main recommendation system?

I don't think it's as big of a problem as he seems to think, only, that
newspapers now have no answer to it. Many institutions for the intellectually
curious (newspapers, universities, etc.) don't serve that function anymore.

~~~
MichaelMoser123
For discovery there are specialized reddits and there is still
[https://www.aldaily.com/](https://www.aldaily.com/) also twitter is good for
that

~~~
dorchadas
Any good recommendations on some of those specialized reddits?

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WalterBright
One thing a news recommender app could do is randomly insert a reference to an
article that is not based on popularity. Sort of "giving it a chance" like a
radio DJ used to do to introduce new music from an unknown artist.

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clircle
Nope. been using Google Reader and NewsBlur for 15 years to avoid this
foolery.

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carabiner
The algorithms are motivated by ad impressions. Solution: seek out newspapers
that are funded by subscriptions, not ads, the ones with stiffest paywalls.
These would be Financial Times and WSJ. Chomsky called the FT "the only
newspaper that tells the truth" because the readership and authors are aligned
in their goal to make money from the news.

~~~
zepearl
I personally never read articles of FT nor WSJ - I don't even try to "click"
on those links/references as I know that I won't be able to read them => I'll
never have any chance to "understand" if I would like to subscribe to those
newspapers :(

~~~
searchableguy
There are some free ones. Try their wirecard reporting. I find it pretty
interesting.

Wirecard and me: Dan McCrum on exposing a criminal enterprise:
[https://www.ft.com/content/745e34a1-0ca7-432c-b062-950c20e41...](https://www.ft.com/content/745e34a1-0ca7-432c-b062-950c20e41f03)

~~~
zepearl
Thank you - but the ones that a freely available aren't marked in the
headlines (e.g. "free"), or am I overlooking something?

