When I worked at Facebook Integrity, a lot of people cared about us being politically neutral. That is a good goal - because a Facebook that intentionally steered people towards supporting its political allies is deeply creepy.
But to some extent this was impossible. Pretty much any ranking change we made shifted the ideological mix in some way. Maybe conservatives use reshare more than liberals. Maybe libertarians use Android more than Authoritarians. Maybe some races use swear words or video more than others. Maybe some ideological groups are more likely to respond to “go out and vote” messages in their feed than others. Maybe Christians are more likely to use group features than Atheists. Maybe reducing the ranking impact of over-active users reduces the ranking of the ideologies those people hold.
One could argue that the right thing to do is to keep the ideological mix the same as it was before we made the change, but that rules out almost all changes, and who is to say that that mix was the right one.
There is no such thing as neutral. Life would be much simpler if there was, but there isn’t. This doesn’t mean that we should give up on goals of neutrality and just boost whatever ideology aligns with our self interest. But it does mean that we should maybe look for solutions other than neutrality.
When I worked at Facebook Integrity, a lot of people cared about us being politically neutral. That is a good goal - because a Facebook that intentionally steered people towards supporting its political allies is deeply creepy.
But to some extent this was impossible. Pretty much any ranking change we made shifted the ideological mix in some way. Maybe conservatives use reshare more than liberals. Maybe libertarians use Android more than Authoritarians. Maybe some races use swear words or video more than others. Maybe some ideological groups are more likely to respond to “go out and vote” messages in their feed than others. Maybe Christians are more likely to use group features than Atheists. Maybe reducing the ranking impact of over-active users reduces the ranking of the ideologies those people hold.
One could argue that the right thing to do is to keep the ideological mix the same as it was before we made the change, but that rules out almost all changes, and who is to say that that mix was the right one.
There is no such thing as neutral. Life would be much simpler if there was, but there isn’t. This doesn’t mean that we should give up on goals of neutrality and just boost whatever ideology aligns with our self interest. But it does mean that we should maybe look for solutions other than neutrality.