I can't think of a way that you can provide equal amplification to everyone. Physically there is only so much space "above the fold" on a website or on the first page of search results. Something has to be put front and center, thus receiving more amplification than other things.

How would you determine what can fit on your mobile screen? What sorting algorithm would you choose?

If you sort based off of what the most recent submissions, you might not ever see things that interest you and you might leave the platform.

If you sort based off of most recent or the most comments, then the most controversial posts would be amplified above more moderate and well thought out posts.

You can think of any type of sorting algorithm you want, you can even provide options/combinations. However it is impossible to give all content the same access to free amplification.

"I can't think of a way that you can provide equal amplification to everyone."

Yes we can. You could make a transparent algorithm in which eg. 15 out of 15 posts in my FB feed are from my friends in chronological order, at most two per friend. Likes etc. are just graphics and a reply from a friend bumps the post.

And something similar for Twitter.

It is not rocked science if you don't want to make the site so bad you possibly can to make visitors stay longer and see more ads when they wade through the irrelevant crap to see the post they want to see.

This is de facto no recommendations and no amplification. Which I agree with; IMO even algorithmic recommendation is an implicit endorsement of "we want you to see this content you didn't specifically ask to see", at which point that's an editorial decision that people should be held liable for.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you have only 15 posts that can be viewed at a time, doesn't that mean those 15 posts are getting amplified over the others? Maybe not since all posts theoretically would be temporarily visible in those 15 posts at some point?

Won't posts that encourage quick responses (clickbait, memes, controversial posts, etc) be bumped up much more frequently, thus making sure they are amplified more than other postings (while burying other posts)? Sure this might not be much of a problem on a site where you only are following a small number of people, but I find it hard to imagine it could translate to a larger site that inherently isn't just you following a few friends (i.e. Reddit).

It is not a full and perfect proposition.

Ye well one friend could spam alot and almost always show up in his two slots in the feed. But aslong as you have a finit number of annoying friends you could deal with that by maybe muting them from the feed or just live with it. It might be a problem since many Facebook users have 100s of "friends", but I see that as an user error. You could have a "favorite" bar with friends you easily could click on and see what they have posted. Ie. actively looking instead of a feed if the feed gets too spammy by 100s of friends.

Having absolutely equal and fair exposure would need some kind of normalized random selection of posts since last login but that would probably just get messy and confusing.

"Won't posts that encourage quick responses (clickbait, memes, controversial posts, etc) be bumped up much more frequently, thus making sure they are amplified more than other postings (while burying other posts)?"

Ye but atleast its deterministic, your friends find it interesting enough to talk about and the conversation can continue till it is done instead of disapearing in the feed. There could be a big cross to click to mute it.

I have no hope of having an algorithm decide what I want to see. That is my main point.

I like the way Twitter is now, if you configure your settings correctly. You see all the top-level Tweets made by the users you follow. In chronological order. And nothing else. Of course, this includes retweets. If you don't want to see retweets from one of the users you follow, you can specifically disable retweets from that user.

Whenever I see a comment like this, I have to point out that they are already deciding what you want to see and hear. On most of the platforms in question you're being suggested content by a bunch of algorithms that you can't inspect, understand, or control. And while it's not censorship, drowning signal in a flood of noise is not that different.

Suppressing in direct messages is pretty different.

A lot of people I know use twitter DMs as a primary communication method for people in their own families, even inside the same household. Twitter filtering communication between family members in your home is ... well ... a perfect excuse for me to strongly encourage them to stop using twitter.

I think "amplification" is simplifying the effect that these social networks have.

Not only do the social networks allow you to amplify your opinion, they also nudge users further and further into bubbles where voices amplify even more.

Before social networks, if you got a pro-environment newspaper, the bias of that paper still had a bound on it. But imagine if the paper was constantly changing based on what you read. Were you interested in the article yesterday? Here is an even more biased article. Read it again? Try this article even more biased. Soon, the original paper would be so moderate that it would almost appear anti-environment.

The number of conspiracy theories floating around right now is alarming. And I blame a lot of it on the algorithms that these social networks are using to promote content people seem interested in. You get into rabbit holes and eventually land up reading extremist/fringe theories.

Exactly. Amplification is like a printing press.

The infinite scrolling, sound-biteized, dopamine hit farming, engagement (and outrage) maximized social media is more like this: https://www3.pictures.zimbio.com/mp/7aRQwqq77srl.jpg

Key to this is that the objective isn't interest, it's "engagement", addictive behaviour and advertising consumption. It may be content that you hate, or-- better-- content that depresses you: Sapped of initiative you just keep scrolling and clicking, and some studies have show that depressed people are easier to influence and more vulnerable to advertising.

It's impossible because amplification is a zero-sum game. There's a limited amount of attention per human being. Thus everyone vying for attention is competing in this game, and any criteria for choose one amplified voice over the other necessarily results in bias.

It is a completely unavoidable artifact of our attention span and mortality, with no possible workaround. Hence why curation and bias becomes the value propositions.

That’s a good point. In many ways it is a free market for attention span. Except that people can now pick not from a short list of established editors, but from a massive list of interesting people to follow.

I think people should be the judge for who they trust and/or want to listen to.

I don’t see the “but now we can’t control what they see” objection kindly.

make this service. "tune your own algorithm" social network. not sure how broad the appeal of that will be, but you can do an MVP to find out