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How Facebook, Google algorithms are manipulating our lives

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Javed Anwer
Javed AnwerDec 04, 2016 | 12:47

How Facebook, Google algorithms are manipulating our lives

In the good old days of just internet, it used to be simpler. There was information stored somewhere that you could access at your convenience. All you needed was an internet connection. There was no middleman, no algorithms.

The world is different today. Now, there is a middleman and our lives are ruled by algorithms, the secret ones controlled wholly by companies like Facebook and Google.

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Nothing, not even something as basic as friendship, is untouched and untainted by these algorithms. For example, when you open your Facebook feed in the morning, you don’t see what you ought to see or what you may choose to see.

You see what Facebook’s algorithm determines you must see. Maybe an old friend, whose posts you haven’t liked for a long time, posted something important while you were sleeping. When you wake up, you may not see that post because Facebook’s algorithm may think that nothing from that person is important for you.

The secret algorithms determine everything. They determine what you see on Google. They determine what notifications your AI helper in your phone sends, what photos you see on Facebook, what news you read on Twitter, what advertisements you see on YouTube, what songs are suggested to you in Apple Music, what route you take for morning office commute, which Uber driver will pick you up, how much you pay for the commute, which tweet is sent to 1,000 people and which reaches 50, which messages go into spam and which are important. Everything.

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We saw this with Donald Trump’s win in the US. (Photo: Reuters)

Technology companies will tell you that you have control over all of it. That’s not true. You have no control, although, for now, you can nudge algorithms in a certain direction. In theory.

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You can up-vote or down-vote stuff to send a message to an algorithm. But whether that algorithm accepts your preference or chooses to ignore it is something that is not in your hand. And you can’t do anything about it.

Algorithms are private properties of companies like Facebook, even when they are important enough - and we saw this with Donald Trump’s win in the US - to be a key factor in national polls. Hence, they are beyond scrutiny.

The algorithms that companies like Google, Uber and Facebook employ affect billions of people every day. Yet, no one outside these companies neither has any control over what these algorithms do nor any insight on how they do what they do. And that is scary.

Last updated: December 04, 2016 | 12:47
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