Facebook, Twitter, YouTube pressed on ‘poisonous’ algorithms

Bickert, Facebook’s vice president for content policy, testified that its tools make the platform’s algorithm more transparent, so users can see why certain posts appear on their news feed. — AFP

Executives from Facebook Inc, Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc’s YouTube were pressed by lawmakers on April 27 on how user content is shared and highlighted on their platforms through algorithms that one senator said can be misused, “driving us into poisonous echo chambers”.

Senator Ben Sasse, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s panel on Privacy, Technology and the Law, made the comment as members examined algorithms – the lines of software code that determine how user-generated information is displayed and who gets to see it.