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US criticises Australia's proposed algorithm opt-out laws as 'censorship'

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Buttons840 · 1790132383 · focus · HN ↗
What is an "algorithm"? Showing the 20 most recent posts is an algorithm, but I doubt that's what they're targeting with the law.
I'm not just trying to find a technical gotcha here. I think it's worth identifying what exactly about an "algorithm" causes it to cross the line and become harmful.
When does an algorithm become harmful?
When it is designed and optimized to maximize the amount of time it engages the user?
What about an algorithm that was optimized the present the user with content they would find interesting? That doesn't sound so bad on the surface.
What about an algorithm that maximizes the amount of ads people see? Or the amount of money that the company makes?
1. Nursie · 1790134426 · focus · HN ↗
  > What is an "algorithm"?
  To you and me it's a very wide category, and there may be hundreds or thousands or even millions involved in me simply typing this, it being saved somewhere and then served back to you.
  For lay-people though, it's become a term which means "The thing which measures your preferences and usage patterns then decides what to show you". So for lay-people to want to turn off the algorithm, they tend to mean going back to "just what your friends posted, in order"
  > When does an algorithm become harmful?
  I think this is a research subject. AFAICT it's pretty certain now that social media 'algorithms' have been optimised for addictiveness, which is likely to overlap somewhat with what users find interesting, but also cover things they find mildly titillating and/or outrageous.
  The harms come in a bunch of forms. The never-ending scrolling of bite-sized videos seems massively destructive to attention span, and people seem to get addicted to it and may neglect other parts of their life. The platforms also seem really keen to send men and boys off to pretty hateful 'manosphere' content which is apparently making life hell for women (including teachers of teenage boys). Then we have all the body-image and anxiety issues caused in teenagers constantly exposed to influencers showing off their (faked) wealth, beauty etc.
  Switching off the "shoving this all in your face" part of social media seems to me to be a win. When it was actually a way to keep in touch with friends and family it was a different game.
  1. drdaeman · 1790137517 · focus · HN ↗
    > The thing which measures your preferences and usage patterns then decides what to show you
    That (plus a clause that exempts algorithms with user controls with full informedness and ability to confidently and reliably predict the outcome = old good filters and such) is the thing that should be in the legislation’s definitions section.
    But then in the actual law it’s worse than “algorithm”, they’re actually banning broad over generalizations and design patterns instead, stuff like this:
    >> recommender features – content selected and displayed based on information associated with the user’s account;
    (Obvious legit use cases are regional content and user preferences.)
    >> endless-feed features – continuous feeds of end-user content;
    (Pure design pattern, pagination can be addictive at any span size.)
    ImPostingOnHN · 1790138847 · focus · HN ↗
    Your claims that these specific features provide no harm are belied by our knowledge that they do.
    If "recommender" algorithms were the same as "just show me what my friends posted in chronological order", then there would not be such resistance to implementing the latter.
    If endless scrolling were the same as pagination, then apps optimized for addictiveness would show a roughly equal distribution of both. But they do not.
    drdaeman · 1790139945 · focus · HN ↗
    Recommender algorithms as defined aren’t just the recommender algorithms you’re thinking about. It’s merely this idea that precise definition matter, nothing more. I’m not arguing that it was a bad idea to restrict some crappy patterns, or anything like that. Just that lawmakers defined that poorly.
    And endless scrolling is pagination with a page size of one and a gesture (scroll down or swipe) for the next page. And trust me, “next page” can be helluva addictive. Endless pagination is an aesthetic preference. It may make it more slicker, frictionless, more visually appealing to get addicted, sure, but it doesn’t change a thing about the core element of the addiction. Same endless feed can be easily made counter-adductive by degrading relevance past some threshold, which clearly tells me the issue is elsewhere.
    ImPostingOnHN · 1790167096 · focus · HN ↗
    You just repeated your claims that they are the same without actually addressing anythink I said pointing out that they are not
    drdaeman · 1790206107 · focus · HN ↗
    About the infinite scroll: I just found not just a hypothetical counterexample, but an actual experiment that suggests that infinite scroll is not addictive on its own. Not the ideal experiment, but it proves the key part of my point. So now I have not just logical inference, but also a real-world empirical confirmation.
    <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49823933">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49823933

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