Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation). A week ago, I shared an excerpt titled – ‘Gatekeepers and Our Perception’ from an article titled ‘Algorithmic Gatekeepers’ by Shawn Fuller. In this episode we briefly highlighted as to how we “Make Sense” of the world around us using our natural faculties of perception and what happens when the social media algorithms become the gatekeepers of our information ecosystem?Now, SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation) to the ones paying heed, is where we try to draw your attention to things that matter and the importance of your attention, and that is because, ‘Our life’s experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to’.

Attention: is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. Once our attention is drawn to the mechanism of why and what we give attention to, it is as if a veil has been stripped off and we become freer in our action and choices. And that is our endavour.

This week I bring to your attention an excerpt titled – ‘Knowing the Social media Algorithm’ from an article titled ‘What is a Social media Algorithm?’ by Shawn Fuller.

Knowing the Social media Algorithm

In its simplest form an algorithm is any set of steps that, if followed, will accomplish a goal. For instance, a recipe is an algorithm that a human follows to make a meal.

The traditional computer algorithm should provide the same answer or do the same thing each time it is given the same input. Increasingly tech companies use machine learning algorithms for many of their systems. Algorithms developed by machine learning don’t follow an ordered set of steps.

Hannah Fry summarizes the four major categories of algorithms that are used by some major social media companies in her book, Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms. They are prioritization, association, classification, and filtering.

Prioritization algorithms rank things according to criteria such as popularity, or ratings. When you search YouTube for videos of hurricanes, cats, TV bloopers, or how to repair your dishwasher it uses prioritization algorithms to bring you the most popular videos, ranked according to the number of times a video has been viewed by other people.

Association algorithms find connections between things. They are what Amazon uses to display other books and products that you may be interested in based on what you just searched for.

Classification algorithms attempt to place you in various categories. The massive data harvesting that social media applications and data broker companies engage in is aimed at placing you in demographic and behavioral categories in order to target ads for products that might interest you.

Filtering algorithms remove or exclude information that is considered noise or not of interest. The social media apps use filtering algorithms to include only the stories, memes, and videos that match your known interests.

Excerpt from ‘What is a Social media Algorithm’ by Shawn Fuller.

I am sure that you will enjoy reading this article, to read it you can click on the following link:

https://humanjourney.us/development/our-digital-world/what-is-a-social-media-algorithm

Enjoy reading it with your family, friends and near and dear one’s.

Namaste!