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Tuesday 25 October 2016

Who Controls Your Newsfeed?

Recently I downloaded the Amazon Kindle app onto my Android phone. For this post I will be reviewing the app and a social media article from the Slate site.

The article was accessed via the web and transferred to the Kindle via the chrome extension software.  This is useful as it allows it to be read on the go and without Wi-Fi.

Kindle tries to emulate a book by making you swipe right to flick between different pages.  It took me a while to get used to this, as on a portrait phone I am used to scrolling down.

The actual article was an interesting read ,as it explores how Facebook developed their newsfeed. A series of algorithms are used to display important items that are relevant to that person. Facebook are essentially using people’s data to work out what news they want to see.

However, Facebook have encountered a few problems with their formulaic approach.  Five percent of users choose to hide all the items on their feed even though they like what they see.  The developers have had to manually input a safeguard for this phenomenon.

Overall it’s interesting to see how computers can predict a person’s behavior yet sometimes the human element can catch them out and they have to evolve their systems to adapt.



1 comment:

  1. Hi Conner, a very interesting post that explains well how you can transfer articles onto your kindle app via the Chrome extension. A good mention of the article too and how Facebook use algorithms to control our news feed and different problems that they have encountered.

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