There’s something I’ve noticed on the various social networks recently – I imagine some of you might have noticed it too – a crafty trick to do with the algorithmic timelines.
People are using programming to create posts that use AI to regurgitate news stories, which then get pulled into the algorithmic timeline based on you having read a post on a related subject published by a reputable source.
The “shell” posts almost always sensationalise the story, and lead to a link in the first comment – which takes you to websites carrying the same re-written story, but covered in adverts.
Don’t get me wrong – it’s a clever idea – exploiting the “edge rank” type algorithms to funnel people to adverts that the social networks can’t control – but it has unintended consequences.
Say you have a particular view about something (that you might not realise is objectionable in some way) – having read an article you agree with, your feed then gets swamped with posts about the same thing – and if you’re not aware, you start to think that everybody must agree with your views – because look at all these posts…
Add to that the problem that people only tend to read what they agree with, and you can see how easily fear, uncertainty, doubt, hate, prejudice and misinformation can proliferate.
Just as a fairly mundane example, at the moment there is a story about the head of the Red Bull F1 team being reported on. Since last night I have blocked over 50 accounts (that all look like media or sport interest sites) being “suggested” into my front page feed on Facebook – all pulling the same trick – sensationalising the story, and leading in the first comment to shell sites filled with adverts – sometimes even copying the design of reputable media outlets. It’s almost certain that a human hand was not involved in the authoring – but was absolutely involved in building the machinery that’s doing it.
Just thinking a bit more about it – this is typical of the new “trend” to scrape money from the edges of other services, isn’t it. Rather than create anything original, the people doing this are re-purposing existing content on an industrial scale, and building honey-pot posts (aided for free by the algorithmic timelines) on social networks to draw people to the advert laden posts outside of those networks. I will admit it’s clever, but it’s still hugely depressing.