Algorithms in the Mist: How researchers try to decode Facebo
Source: Alex Dalenberg
The UpTake: Algorithms are a fact of digital life, but the inner-workings of the likes of Facebook's newsfeed and Google Search are famously opaque. These researchers are working to change that.
T he algorithms that power applications like Facebook's newsfeed and Google Search shape the contours of our digital lives, but only a handful of engineers know how they actually work.
That was the upshot at a luncheon forum this week at Harvard's Berkman Center Internet and Society in which three researchers described their efforts to decipher Facebook's newsfeed from the outside.
Even the most technically savvy can only make educated guesses at how these tools function. Silicon Valley companies zealously guard their algorithms as proprietary secrets. They're also constantly changing (here's an interactive showing how Google Search worked in 2007).
For most Web users they remain out of sight, out of mind. A recent study of Facebook users suggests that a lot of us aren't even aware of their existence.
When Karrie Karahalios, an associate professor in computer science at the University of Illinois, and her colleagues went to test how Facebook chooses what to display on its newsfeed, the majority of their 40 study participants (about 62 percent) had no idea that Facebook was even making choices about what they saw or didn't see in their newsfeed.
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