- Users of social media platforms like Facebook are part of constant marketing experiments
- Because algorithms are driven by AI and machine learning, it’s impossible to know how social media companies are choosing what to show — and not show — different groups of people
- Because there is no “random assignment”, marketers can’t fully tell if one ad might work better than another one.
- In the process, groups of social media users can be excluded from important messages
- Algorithms are so precise, they can target people down to an individual level
I think the point is that we designed the black boxes to do X and they do X consistently, just with slight variation.
If I make a cake making machine and it consistently makes cakes, its not a magic box just because I’m not sure if it will be creme frosted or not.
I mean, maybe it’s just different vocabulary for both of us?
To me: a blackbox is a thing where input and output comes out in a consistent way, very functional. While the box can make accurate predictions or decisions, the exact reasoning behind them is often unclear.
Looks like we are on the same page, but just talking past each other.
That’s what a black box is, but colloquially, it’s also a way to call something “unknowable” or “magic.”
I thought you were referring to it as the latter, not the former.