tom willerer . com

Algorithms aren’t objective

Everything has a bias, even a computer based algorithm.  The recent Techmeme announcement regarding hiring a human editor and Techcrunch’s response got me thinking about this.  Here’s part of what Techcrunch said:

He’s hired someone to start vetting stories that the algorithm says are headlines, to either push them up or get them off the site entirely.

I believe this is a slippery slope for TechMeme. Certainly a human editor can make the results better. But it also completely destroys the objective nature of TechMeme and turns it into something different. It’s now subjective, and in many ways just another news site.

I would argue that Techmeme has always been “just another news site” and “subjective”.  It’s just that instead of the subjectivity being overt and noticeable (i.e. a human), it has been hidden behind a seemingly objective mathematical algorithm.

But, someone decided how the algorithm should be structured, which is essentially a subjective exercise, just not one that is overly apparent.

I’m not saying there is anything wrong with using an algorithm, in fact I think they are great at efficiently doing what no human editor could do: sifting through millions of news articles to discern patterns.  But they are still subjective and biased, just not in the same way as humans.

• TechMeme Gives Up On Fully Automated News
• Techmeme Adds a Human Touch to Tech News
• When an algorithm is just not enough
• Techmeme’s algorithm now ‘officially’ includes an elf

Notes