{"id":3612,"date":"2013-10-04T08:57:52","date_gmt":"2013-10-04T13:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/?p=3612"},"modified":"2021-11-27T22:10:10","modified_gmt":"2021-11-28T03:10:10","slug":"rage-against-the-algorithms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/2013\/10\/04\/rage-against-the-algorithms\/","title":{"rendered":"Rage Against the Algorithms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2013\/10\/rage-against-the-algorithms\/280255\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/shutterstock_125392883_650.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When was the last time you read an online review about a local business or service on a platform like Yelp? Of course you want to make sure the local plumber you hire is honest, or that even if the date is dud, at least the restaurant isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lousy. A <a href=\"http:\/\/https:\/\/biz.yelp.com\/blog\/survey-85-of-consumers-use-the-internet-to-find-local-businesses\">recent survey\u00c2\u00a0found that<\/a>\u00c2\u00a076 percent\u00c2\u00a0of consumers check online reviews before buying, so a lot can hinge on a good or bad review. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2012\/09\/slight-changes-in-yelp-ratings-can-mean-huge-losses-for-small-businesses\/261943\/\">Such sites have become so important to local businesses<\/a> that <a href=\"http:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2293164\">it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not uncommon<\/a> for scheming owners to hire <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2013\/09\/23\/internet-reviews-idINL4N0HJ39820130923?irpc=932\">shills<\/a> to boost themselves or put down their rivals.<\/p>\n<p>To protect users from getting duped by fake reviews <a href=\"http:\/\/officialblog.yelp.com\/2013\/05\/how-yelp-protects-consumers-from-fake-reviews.html%20\">Yelp employs an algorithmic review reviewer<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0which constantly scans reviews and relegates suspicious ones to a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153filtered reviews\u00e2\u20ac\u009d page, effectively de-emphasizing them without deleting them entirely. But of course that algorithm is not perfect, and it sometimes de-emphasizes legitimate reviews and leaves\u00c2\u00a0actual fakes intact\u00e2\u20ac\u201doops. Some businesses have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/mediashift\/2013\/01\/yelps-rocky-relationship-with-small-business029\/\">complained, alleging that<\/a> the filter can incorrectly remove all of their most positive\u00c2\u00a0reviews, leaving them with a lowly one-\u00c2\u00a0or two-stars average.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\">This is just one example of how algorithms are becoming\u00c2\u00a0ever more important in society, for everything from <\/span><a style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\" href=\"http:\/\/personalization.ccs.neu.edu\/paper.pdf\">search engine personalization<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\">, <\/span><a style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\" href=\"http:\/\/dataprivacylab.org\/projects\/onlineads\/index.html\">discrimination<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\">, <\/span><a style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nickdiakopoulos.com\/2013\/08\/06\/algorithmic-defamation-the-case-of-the-shameless-autocomplete\/\">defamation<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\">, and <\/span><a style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/technology\/future_tense\/2013\/08\/words_banned_from_bing_and_google_s_autocomplete_algorithms.html\">censorship<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\"> online, to how <\/span><a style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\" href=\"http:\/\/mathbabe.org\/2013\/03\/31\/value-added-model-doesnt-find-bad-teachers-causes-administrators-to-cheat\/\">teachers are evaluated<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\">, how<\/span><a style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2013\/09\/the-stock-market-may-have-crashed-18-000-times-since-2006-and-no-one-noticed\/279725\/\"> markets work<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\">, how <\/span><a style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\" href=\"http:\/\/projects.propublica.org\/emails\/\">political campaigns are run<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\">, and even how something like <\/span><a style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\" href=\"http:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2316327\">immigration is policed<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\">. Algorithms, driven by vast troves of data, are the new power brokers in society, both in the corporate world as well as in <\/span><a style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\" href=\"http:\/\/www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com\/gov\/2013\/agenda_overview.php\">government<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 16px;line-height: 23px\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2013\/10\/rage-against-the-algorithms\/280255\/\">Rage Against the Algorithms &#8211; Nicholas Diakopoulos &#8211; The Atlantic<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Algorithms, driven by vast troves of data, are the new power brokers in society.  Is this necessarily a good thing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[492],"class_list":["post-3612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-did-you-know","tag-algorithms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3612"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3619,"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3612\/revisions\/3619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.waubonsee.edu\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}