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Algorithms like Facebook’s news feed algorithm are incredibly powerful, but
the danger is that they’re still easy for crafty hackers to game. With no human
oversight, the algorithms could be turned against us. A famous example is the
fake news epidemic that swept Facebook during the 2016 American
presidential election. Notice that the news feed algorithm we mentioned
above doesn’t consider how true or reputable a post is; it only cares about
maximizing engagement. Fake news-mongers took advantage of this to attack
politicians they didn’t like, posting outrageous and demonstrably false news
articles around Facebook. These articles naturally drew many clicks and
comments, so Facebook’s news feed algorithm propelled them to the top of
many people’s news feeds. [163]
How do you fix weaknesses like this in the news feed algorithm? You might
need to bring back a human touch to the algorithm — which is a bit ironic
because algorithms are designed to reduce the amount of work humans have
to do in the first place. For instance, Facebook and Google have introduced
features that let people flag fake news posts, which their updated algorithms
can then hide. [164]
Even outside the battle against fake news, Facebook has been bringing in
humans to improve the news feed algorithm, because counting likes can only
tell you so much about how people feel about posts. In 2015, Facebook
started hiring focus groups that scroll through their news feeds and give
feedback to the people behind Facebook’s news feed algorithm. [165] (Yes,
that’s right, you can be a professional Facebook tester, but we recommend
staying in school regardless.)
Algorithms aren’t magic spells that run the world. They’re just sets of rules
(although complex ones) that other people wrote to make computers do a
particular task. And, as Facebook shows, sometimes machines and people
need to work together.