How do the algorithms of Facebook and Instagram affect what you see in your news feed? To find out, Guardian Australia unleashed them on a completely blank smartphone linked to a new, unused email address.
Three months later, without any input, they were riddled with sexist and misogynistic content.
Initially Facebook served up jokes from The Office and other sitcom-related memes alongside posts from 7 News, Daily Mail and Ladbible. A day later it began showing Star Wars memes and gym or “dudebro”-style content.
By day three, “trad Catholic”-type memes began appearing and the feed veered into more sexist content.
Three months later, The Office, Star Wars, and now The Boys memes continue to punctuate the feed, now interspersed with highly sexist and misogynistic images that have have appeared in the feed without any input from the user.
I took that comment to be summarizing the platform’s perspective, rather than their own. I think it’s common sense that people will watch/engage with things they don’t like, but the algorithms don’t care about how you feel or why you watched something; they see engagement and they give you more of that thing to drive more engagement. As far as the unfeeling numbers go, engagement might as well be liking; they don’t need to distinguish a difference.
Sure, I saw that side of it too as I work in marketing but I took the comment at face value since it wasn’t specific about that intent. I’m happy to retract my comment if that’s what they meant.
That is what I meant - engage to facebook means you like it and want to see more.