#SocialMedia#Algorithms#Democracy#ContentModeration: "For all their efforts to moderate content and reduce online toxicity, social media companies still fundamentally care about one thing: retaining users in the long run, a goal they’ve perceived as best achieved by keeping them engaged with content as long as possible. But the goal of keeping individuals engaged doesn’t necessarily serve society at large and can even be harmful to values we hold dear, such as living in a healthy democracy.
To address that problem, a team of Stanford researchers advised by Michael Bernstein, associate professor of computer science in the School of Engineering, and Jeffrey Hancock, professor of communication in the School of Humanities and Sciences, wondered if designers of social media platforms might, in a more principled way, build societal values into their feed-ranking algorithms. Could these algorithms, for example, promote social values such as political participation, mental health, or social connection? The team tested the idea empirically in a new paper that will be published in Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction in April 2024. Bernstein, Hancock, and a group of Stanford HAI faculty also explored that idea in a recent think piece.
For their experiment, the researchers aimed to decrease partisan animosity by building democratic values into a feed-ranking algorithm. “If we can make a dent in this very important value, maybe we can learn how to use social media rankings to affect other values we care about,” says Michelle Lam, a fourth-year graduate student in computer science at Stanford University and co-lead author of the study." https://hai.stanford.edu/news/building-social-media-algorithm-actually-promotes-societal-values
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