Feel good algorithms on social media; merit badges for the ego

Feel good algorithms used in social media not only make you feel good about yourself, they can make you feel quite a bit more important than you really are.

And you may not realize it!
 
First things first: A dung beetle in the rays of the warm sun, a snake on a comfortably warm rock, a cat on a cozy blanket, a human on Facebook with lots of 'likes' or on Twitter with 'top tweets'.

We cannot speak for the dung beetle but we are certain about the cats and the humans: feeling good is important beyond words.

As the smart, internet literate reader of this blog you have heard about personalization. It describes facts like Google scanning your emails and analyzing your searches to figure out what ads to present to you.

Personalized web searches will show different results for different people, at least results arranged differently. There are experts who warn that personalized news may eventually only show news that reinforce your existing opinions and world view, ignoring those that challenge your beliefs and your mind.

We have amused ourselves by laughing at the perception Google's algorithms seem to have of K-Landnews' TheEditor. Our latest incarnation according to Google: a retired wealthy English expat veterinarian with some serious dental problems.

Personalized ads can be very helpful, personalized searches can still have benefits but "feel good" algorithms are, to TheEditor, a different beast.

A friend sends you an email raving about a car, and the ads on your page turn all about cars and accessories - that change is visible enough. If you pay attention, you are aware of cause and effect.

A personalized web search result? If you use more than one search engine, you know that the results vary. Whether this is the result of personalization or caused by generic differences in the engines does not matter for now -- the crucial point is you are aware of differences.

How do you detect a feel good algorithm?

You may never notice.  Here is an example from the K-Landnews Twitter experience.  If you look at a tweet, you can see the number of times it has been retweeted. That's a straight forward piece of information, and it can make you feel good but does not fall under our definition of feel good algorithm. The number of retweets is a "metric", easily measured, indisputably accurate [within the laws of coding], and the side effect may be to make you feel good -- no problem.

But do you know that search results in Twitter can depend on whether you logged in to your account or not logged in?

Oh, you know that already?

It took TheEditor a while to see manifestations of this difference and even longer to find a reproducible example.

See the "Top Tweet" label and the little bull horn on the screenshot of the krautlandnewseditor tweet below?

We saw this label ONLY when we were logged in to the K-Landnews Twitter account.

Yes, the tweet was really among the "top" tweets at the time, but so were the other tweets shown on the image. So, here is Twitter's algorithm telling is "kudos, other people and our algorithm liked your tweet".

That is a feel good algorithm!

To a less cynical or modest person (there is some overlap in the two concepts), marking the tweet in this manner might give the impression that this tweet is special, kind of, even more of a "top" than the others.

The tweet by "WorldPeace" underneath ours does look a little less cool, or does it?

The rub is: if the the user WorldPeace is logged in, he or she may well see their tweet marked as "top tweet", not ours.

The bottom line?

If you are looking for "feel good" feedback, don't do it on social media, get a cat. Or a dog if you must.