The Twitter Algorithm and It's Harm
The Twitter Algorithm and It's Harm
On February 24th, 2022, the Russian Federation escalated the long Russo-Ukrainian war by invading Ukrainian territory to occupy it. This horrendous act was broadcast across news networks around the globe and was discussed on social media sites for months, and still is. However, if you've felt that information on the war has been lacking on social media, there's a reason.
On March 31st, Elon Musk and Twitter company released their recommendation algorithm to the public in an attempt to increase transparency on user interaction. This was a move welcomed by many users as they might be able to discover how to boost the popularity of their tweets, and Twitter user Aakash Gupta (@aakashg0) alongside a group of other users started to work on picking apart the code.
What they found was so profoundly shocking that Aakash needed to write up a whole paper on the subject. The Twitter algorithm was down-trending the whole topic of the Ukrainian Crisis. This meant that any user tweeting about the subject would be marked as a "lower rank" on the Twitter user scale, leading to their tweets showing up far less than users of higher rank on the for you page. This leaves news and tweets about the Ukrainian war on the same level as the 12 other specified down-trending topics, with topics including child pornography, hate speech, and misinformation.
It's important to note that Elon Musk also has a partial history of being opposed to the conflict in Ukraine as a whole. He still to this day provides free access to his Starlink satellite network, however, on many occasions has tweeted that he wishes for a quick and peaceful resolution to the conflict. These tweets show either clear reluctance to aid or overall just wishing for the war to come to an end before potentially further escalation occurs.
With no response yet from Twitter executives or the man himself Elon Musk, there's been no clarification or reasoning for the issue yet. This leaves Twitter users to try to make sense of it themselves, however, there is no doubt that information on the war is being censored by the Twitter algorithm.
Sources:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk
https://aakashgupta.substack.com/p/the-real-twitter-files-the-algorithm
https://news.yahoo.com/analysis-twitter-algorithm-code-reveals-072800540.html
This seems so unethical too me, how could could they effectively sensor what is going on in the world? Any current real world news that people should and need to know should be at the top of a feed ranking. Being un-informed about current world news is not a good thing. This is another reason why I think so many people are hesitant about social media because in many cases, like this, it can control what you see or take in.
ReplyDeleteSeems so odd to me that Elon Musk would do things like offer starlink to the people of the Ukraine and say he wants a quick resolution, but then put in an algorithm that keeps tweets about the war from showing up in peoples twitter feeds. It seems completely wrong that they would control what shows up in peoples feeds like that. I would think it would be based on peoples interests or who they follow, and twitter should control what is or isn't important.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with both Graham and Stephanie that Twitter’s censoring of this situation as if it isn’t a big issue going on in the world is completely unethical. It leaves to question the idea- what else can these social media platforms hide from us which is pretty scary seeing that many people rely on social media to inform them about certain things.
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