Many current social problems—not all, but many—can be traced back to our collective decision to prioritize #engagement in the systems we use to communicate with each other.
Facebook’s newsfeed is the most prominent example of this. Here you see not the most recent posts from your friends but the posts Facebook’s mysterious algorithm deems most important to you based on things like how many likes and comments it got. In theory this means you’ll always see the most important posts, but most of us know that in reality the most controversial stuff bubbles up and drowns out the more low-key posts that might prove more important.
It turns out Facebook, the company, also sees things slip through the cracks because of this system. Casey Newton, writing for the The Verge about Facebook’s US-based team of contracted moderators, pointed out that company leadership sends out directives using something similar to the News Feed. The results are, sadly, predictable:
While official policy changes typically arrive every other Wednesday, incremental guidance about developing issues is distributed on a near-daily basis. Often, this guidance is posted to Workplace, the enterprise version of Facebook that the company introduced in 2016. Like Facebook itself, Workplace has an algorithmic News Feed that displays posts based on engagement. During a breaking news event, such as a mass shooting, managers will often post conflicting information about how to moderate individual pieces of content, which then appear out of chronological order on Workplace. Six current and former employees told me that they had made moderation mistakes based on seeing an outdated post at the top of their feed. At times, it feels as if Facebook’s own product is working against them. The irony is not lost on the moderators.
The entire article is heartbreaking, and you should read it, but this entry sticks in my head. Who thought it was a good idea for company mandates to flow through an algorithm that prioritizes engagement? Why would such directives not simply be sent to the people who need to see them? I can’t imagine a less productive way to communicate during a crisis.
