Notebook: (1) Predicting for Text

by Ann Kjellberg, editor

A lot seems to be shifting under our feet in the way writing comes to us in 2023.

Recently The Wall Street Journal uncovered a hitherto unknown effort by Facebook to suppress political content in the wake of the events of January 6, 2021, a measure that resulted in diminishing “high quality news” relative to “material from outlets users considered less trustworthy” in users’ feeds. The purpose, internal documents from Facebook parent company Meta disclosed, was to “reduce incentives to produce civic content” after years of criticism that their algorithm’s elevation of inflammatory items sows unrest and does harm. In Meta’s reasoning, suppressing all news relieved them of having to adjudicate it in ways that might appear “political.”