I’m not suggesting malice in the algorithm, but rather that it’s trying to guess what you might want to read and, in doing so, inadvertently manipulate/amplify your viewpoints without you realizing this is happening
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 15, 2022
May 15, 2022
Elon Musk tells us how to "fix" our Twitter feed.
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32 comments:
Musk seems to be the anti-Zuckerberg.
This is new information to Twitter users?
Uh, yeah. I haven't had any personalized anything for many years. I have a subscription to the WSJ and I don't let it personalize. I read by section what I want to read. It's what everyone gets.
I don't have time to follow crap on Twitter. I use it for road conditions.
Duh, Elon.
That’s impressive.
Advice on leaving the echochamber.
Never attribute to algorithmic malice that which can be explained by algorithmic stupidity.
I have never understood why people allow themselves to be captured by social media. Why aren’t responsible people advocating the practice of reading current events from multiple websites that you find reliable in providing basic facts along with their spin and opinions? I’ve done it my whole adult life and it doesn’t take long each day if you know how to recognize news from filler. The last place I’d rely on for news (except for first hand videos and reporting of riots, natural disasters, war, etc.) is social media.
This is just weird. The same guy who is making an offer to buy the business at a fixed per-share price (and a big premium over market) is talking to the users of the business’s services about ways to modify, possibly reduce or reject, those services; thus calling into question the value of the business he is trying to buy?
He's disturbingly semi-literate:
"I’m not suggesting malice in the algorithm, but rather that it’s trying to guess what you might want to read and, in doing so, inadvertently manipulate/amplify your viewpoints without you realizing this is happening"
It should be "manipulating/amplifying." The subject is "it," not "you"!
I assume Twitter hasn't changed since I gave it up. Randomly Twitter will reset preferences. I would think I was looking at a running timeline, but Twitter was giving me their version of the latest tweets.
Twitter is the best place for emergent news. If any of my utilities go down, Twitter is a direct communication feed for updates. I miss that. It has its uses.
Maybe Musk can bring back that breezy Twitter from the early years. I doubt it. Twitter used to have a joie de vivre that's been replaced by scolding.
He's disturbingly semi-literate:
I must admit I missed that. Probably too occupied with the lack of a gerund: without your realizing.
'He's disturbingly semi-literate:'
We should all be so semi-literate.
We'd all have flying cars by now (finally)...
Eh, I'm not finding his lack of subject+partial verb form/verb agreement to be at all disturbing; it's so easy to lose track on a tiny screen.
What I am finding disturbing it's that I don't have Twitter on my phone, but now I'm tempted to get it so I can see what he's talking about. It's not just algorithms that I have to look out for, apparently!
Ann Althouse said...
He's disturbingly semi-literate:
Hey! LADY! That's an African-American you're accusing of being semi-literate!!
Why don't you take your RACISM! elsewhere!!!
Your viewpoints? Search... steering engine. You are the product.
Elon Musk said, "Very important to fix your Twitter feed:..."
Mark said, "This is new information to Twitter users?"
Worse than being "disturbingly semi-literate", Mush assumes Twitter users are "disturbingly unaware" of their sheepdom. It disturbs me that Savior Musk is so condescending.
Ann Althouse said...
It should be "manipulating/amplifying." The subject is "it," not "you"!
If the subject is "it", then shouldn't it be "manipulates/amplifies"?
As in '...it inadvertently manipulates your viewpoints... '?
How to turn Skynet off.
He's disturbingly semi-literate
As Trump taught us, effective and technically correct speech are two very different things.
In Musk’s sentence there’s merely an omitted but implied verb:
"I’m not suggesting malice in the algorithm, but rather that it’s trying to guess what you might want to read and, in doing so, [will] inadvertently manipulate/amplify your viewpoints without you realizing this is happening"
Much as I hate the manipulation of “the algorithm,” I tried turning it off a few weeks ago and my feed got more boring. After a couple days, I switched back.
Prof A: regarding "disturbingly semi-literate," I dunno if the subject ("it" or the "algorithm") requires "manipulatING/amplifyING." Why not: "I'm not suggesting malice in the algorithm, but rather that it's trying [(1)] to guess...and, in doing so, [(2) to] manipulateamplify your viewpoints." The parallel construction would be "trying to do X and [trying to do] Y]".
Yes, it's a mess but my version requires only a slight buff job, not a full gerundive make-over.
Owen, that depends on who Twitter management (potentially Musk) sees as their customer. He's not telling users to stop looking at Twitter, he's talking about how to control their engagement. Pushing the Current Thing aka what's trending or going viral is not a service to Twitter users but it is a service to the advertisers on Twitter.
The minimal correction would be to add “to” after “so,”. Elon is a non-native English speaker, being African, so he may have some understandable gaps in his accent.
"If the subject is "it", then shouldn't it be "manipulates/amplifies"?"
Well, if we were starting the writing anew, perhaps, but what *he* wrote is: "it’s trying... and... manipulate/amplify...."
There's an "is" in there, so without more extensive rewriting, it needs to be "it's trying... and... manipulating/amplifying...."
There's another phrase with the subject "you" and having the verb agree with "you" is confusing: "... what you might want to read and... manipulate/amplify your viewpoints...." The wrong verb tense is a bad misdirection."
The ungrammatical "without you realizing" isn't so bad. It's more just colloquial. It might be a matter of choice to avoid "your" in that situation. It would seem a bit fussy. But the error I'm pointing to obscures meaning.
I read somewhere that the purpose of Twitter is to identify those in society who others listen to (by simply counting followers), and then to get those who influence to say what you want them to say to those who follow them.
And I think that's amplified every time the White House invites "influencers" in to discuss "the current thing" knowing those people will then go and tell their influencees how to think about the current thing.
The entire purpose of "the algorithm" is to manipulate you and your opinion about the world - largely by making certain opinions completely off-limits - global warming skepticism, for example, or questioning the political party in power as when Twitter turned off all discussions of Hunter Biden's laptop to attempt to manipulate the US presidential election.
Elon isn't semi-literate. He's just not admitting what Twitter really is.
Earnest Prole @ 11:02: FWIW I like your version. Also your observation about effective/correct speech. Trump was given to loose riffs, sentence fragments, loose collations of nouns and verbs and whatever else might be handy: a transcriber's nightmare. But damned good at making his points and conveying his energy and point of view to his listeners.
Nay- I read it as (will)manipulate/amplify… but-
I’m no designer diagrammer, myself…
Thanks for the gynosplaining. Most gearheads are semi-literate. Your bigotry justifies almost everything rhhardin says.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
He's disturbingly semi-literate:
Owen said...
This is just weird. The same guy who is making an offer to buy the business at a fixed per-share price (and a big premium over market) is talking to the users of the business’s services about ways to modify, possibly reduce or reject, those services; thus calling into question the value of the business he is trying to buy?
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since Elon is in battle with Twitter about bots : will this uncloak the bots/?
Ann Althouse: “He's disturbingly semi-literate….”
Or it could be a reflection of how the sentence came together, and originally wasn’t intended to be quite so charitable to Twitter. If that’s the case, perhaps he just failed to proofread again after adding that first clause and the “inadvertently”.
(Just a mental exercise, nothing serious.)
I can understand Narciso perfectly even though his semi-literacy may be an overstatement!
I like Twitter fir the new sources of information I have found. Before twitter I never knew there was a publication called “The Long War Journal”. I am more aware of substack articles I want to read. My long formreading has been broadened because of who I follow. AND, as a bonus, I have become more disdainful of the NYT and the WaPo because their employees are mostly condescending assholes!
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