Twitter says its algorithm amplifies right wing political content By Binayak Dasgupta, New Delhi https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/twitter-says-its-algorithm-amplifies-right-wing-political-content-101634926182240.html
In 6 out of 7 countries studied, the mainstream political right enjoys higher algorithmic amplification than the mainstream political left. Consistent with this overall trend, our second set of findings studying the US media landscape revealed that algorithmic amplification favours right-leaning news sources
In a series of tweets detailing the findings, Rumman Chowdhury, Twitter’s director of software engineering, added that “...establishing *why* these observed patterns occur is a significantly more difficult question”.
“Twitter is a sociotechnical system -- our algos are responsive to what’s happening. What’s next is a root cause analysis — is this unintended model bias? Or is this a function of what & how people tweet, and things that are happening in the world? Or both?” the Twitter staffer added in another tweet.
Experts have recently called on companies such as Twitter and Facebook to share access with academic researchers to get to the bottom of harms their technologies may be causing.
Experts have recently called on companies such as Twitter and Facebook to share access with academic researchers to get to the bottom of harms their technologies may be causing.
Twitter’s ML Ethics, Transparency and Accountability (META) team will now carry out a root-cause analysis and determine “what, if any, changes are required to reduce adverse impacts by our Home timeline algorithm,” the two staffers said in the blog post.