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A comment on It's time to reveal all recommendation algorithms – by law if necessary. Parent comment

Re:It's time to reveal all recommendation algorithms – by la... by nomel on Thursday April 13, 2023 @02:48PM (#35560231)
algorithm: a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer.

Is user data, that's used to train, part of the process? I don't think so. It's an input to the algorithm. In the case of ML, the input is the only thing that matters.

Semantics, but I think it's incredibly important. It's the difference between posturing and actually affecting change.

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Re:It's time to reveal all recommendation algorithms – by la... by BaseballPhysics on Thursday April 13, 2023 @02:49PM (#35560253)
Frankly, at this point you're just playing semantic games.

The goal: To understand why the system is recommending what it's recommending.

"Algorithm" is a short-hand for that goal.

Everything else is just clever wordplay to try and deflect the conversation.

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Re:It's time to reveal all recommendation algorithms – by la... by nomel on Thursday April 13, 2023 @02:55PM (#35560339)
> "Algorithm" is a short-hand for that goal.

I think it's the incorrect word. The "algorithm" requires a few pages of code. "Understanding why it's recommending" requires you get, and sift through, terabytes of user data from Youtube. They're very different.

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Re:It's time to reveal all recommendation algorithms – by la... by BaseballPhysics on Thursday April 13, 2023 @02:57PM (#35560377)
That's an interesting claim that's based on nothing but your own supposition.

How about we get Youtube to show us their algorithm and associated weights (assuming an ML-based approach, which is a huge assumption on your part) and then we can find out if that's true.

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Re:It's time to reveal all recommendation algorithms – by la... by nomel on Thursday April 13, 2023 @07:48PM (#35563740)
> assuming an ML-based approach, which is a huge assumption on your part

What more reasonable alternative do you see, with the existence of my personal recommendation feed? I'm not aware of any personal recommendation systems that don't use ML. Do you have any examples in mind?

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