Is “pretty privilege” real on social media? There are strong hints that it is a real issue. Some of it may come from how users select videos, which trains the “algorithm” in your likes, but others have said that the algorithms are intentionally designed to minimize views of videos with “non pretty” people.
A simple research study demonstrated how FB’s algorithm readily amplify extremist political viewpoints on the left and right. The root cause is that FB optimizes for time spent engaged with FB – and does not optimize for what you may wish to see. The result is FB optimizes to keep you perpetually outraged.
When you post photos on Instagram, you probably think your followers see your photos and hopefully click Like. But that is not how Instagram works – at all.
Instagram uses an algorithm to determine when your photos are shown, and to whom. Similarly, the algorithm selects what photos you see from your friends.
When you make an initial post, IG “market tests” your post to a subset of your followers. If they interact with the photo, then IG will show it to more people. If interaction is minimal, then your post’s visibility will be drastically cut to the point it is no longer being seen.
Combined with aspects of the secret IG algorithm, your posts may no longer appear on hashtag searches either, rendering your account invisible.
Once the IG algorithm has flagged your account as being, effectively, “low engagement/boring”, the visibility of your posts and your account itself may largely vanish from view.
Facebook continues to claim they oppose discrimination in all forms, in spite of mountains of evidence showing they continue to discriminate based on age, gender and other attributes in their ad platform.
This is from 2016, but illustrates yet another way in which Facebook sold its data to be used to discriminate against its own users. Facebook has blocked a U.K. insurance company’s plan to use information from customers’ posts in order to assign premiums. Source: Facebook says insurance company can’t set premiums based on users’ posts. We now know that Facebook’s data collection was used to discriminate against insurance buyers, home buyers, apartment and job seekers by de-selecting people based on…