Category: Reflections

This week was somewhat easier in terms of familiarity with the subject material–COMP683 was just last term, so the subject of analytics is still very fresh in my mind. I’m not sure if I’ve understood the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic purposes correctly, but in my mind, “intrinsic analytics” are how the system knows what it needs to do its job, while “extrinsic analytics” are how we learn about how the system is being used and how it could be further usefully modified.

I’ve always liked thinking about how humans run their own algorithms. To me, it’s all about patterns. Sometimes, those patterns can comfort us or provide a template for how to deal with unfamiliar situations. Sometimes, those patterns can be subverted to make a point or trigger deeper examination. With different starting conditions and varied inputs during execution, different patterns of behavior are selected. People hate being compared to a machine that acts by rote, but the truth is that we all have our habits and a general “common sense” understanding of how we should comport ourselves. (I note that “common sense” is neither common nor especially sensible! A lot of it depends on your social position in life, your physical community, and the particular situation at hand. People in the same physical place, but in a different situation or with a different background, may always have a different “common sense” than us, but it is no less valid because of it!)

I had not encountered the term “Matthew effect,” but I am of course familiar with various bandwagon effects. For example, in a busy registration line at a conference! One of the most important things to do to ensure a good experience for the attendees is to minimize the line. One solid way to do this is to actually secretly open some hours in advance of the public time, in order to get people registered as soon as they start trying to line up. If people see a line forming, their first instinct is “Oh, I should grab a place in the line now or I’ll have to wait longer later!” With that, the more people line up, the more people will keep lining up, and suddenly you have a registration line that is six hours long. Instead, if you process people immediately, everybody passing by sees a minimal line. They don’t feel the need to line up in fear of encountering a longer wait time later, and thus a lineup can be kept manageable and quick to process, and everybody has a much better experience overall.

And that’s an example of a human algorithm. Understanding how people in general tend to behave allows us to design systems to take advantage of (or stymie) those behaviors. It’s not perfect, being based on probability, but on balance it’s incredibly useful.

In fact, that was one of my biggest insights this week. As much as we might blame “the machine” for constructing echo chambers and filter bubbles around us… we humans are probably just as much to blame, simply by selecting options that are comfortable versus more challenging. I can’t fault us for that, but it’s important to note that even if we built a perfectly unbiased Web, our own human behavior might reconstruct the echo chambers around us. In that respect, then, perhaps we do need to construct our systems with a little bit of bias–to help us push outward and continue challenging ourselves! That wouldn’t be to maximize engagement, necessarily; it would have to be built for a different set of rationales altogether.

As a final aside in this reflection, I suppose it’s reasonable to note that I wish I had more time in the week. There’s so much I want to read but simply do not have time for… And I feel bad, because there’s a huge list and even if I only select the items I’m keenest on reading, I still don’t have enough time to read them all to the depth I want. It’s quite frustrating, even disappointing.

Reflect (psych impact): In my experience of various forms of social media, there have been quite a few different classes of people. There are also mediums better suited for each class to express themselves. Largely, I see people who are communicating (subgroups for those who are communicating for self-expression versus communicating for tasks), people who are posturing, and people who are watching.

People who communicate may use many different mediums. Self-expression tends to be drawn towards formats which encourage (or at least do not penalize) lengthy submissions. Lengthy submissions also encourage an asynchronous method, so that longer posts may be read at leisure. Task-oriented communications are much more flexible, and may function well with synchronous methods for quick answers or asynchronous methods for non-urgent or lengthier requests / updates.

People who posture seem to prefer shorter, faster, “bursty” communications, where the greatest urgency is in being the first to respond, possibly posting multiple times before a response can be returned in turn. Asynchronous methods work for this, but seeking the dopamine hit of an immediate response favors platforms with immediate notifications or synchronous methods. A greater emphasis is also placed on displaying markers of ingroup belonging, the better to earn praise and recognition from fellow members of the ingroup and increase the sense of relatedness.

People who are watching are those who do not respond or post–the “lurkers” of any platform. It’s more difficult to get a read on these folks, because of their non-response. Some may be present to gather information, some may be present because of external factors, and some may be present for passive viewpoint reinforcement or validation. (Those actively seeking opposing viewpoints tend to need to initiate discourse to better understand and engage with the other, taking them out of the passive mode.)

I’m interested in the measurements performed in some of the studies I read–measuring salivary cortisol levels, for example. Something like dopamine levels would be much more difficult to study, I suspect… but doubtless somebody’s studied addictive qualities from a behavioral standpoint, if not a physiological one. What I’ve read so far seems to lean towards heavy use of surveys to get an insight into subject self-assessment, but I’d be quite interested in seeing a physiological assessment if that could also be figured out in a robust way. I suspect there’s also something to be said for including System 1 / System 2 thinking research in this, as well.

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Reflect (identity): Well, first we would need to distinguish between being present in a group, versus belonging to a group. It’s also useful to note that each group’s participants will each have their own assessment of whether an individual “belongs” to the group or not.

But from my own perspective… my online networks have atrophied greatly over the years. Most of this is a result of lack of time to spend maintaining them due to the demands of work and offline life. In other cases, I have been excluded from groups because of heterodoxy. In other cases, I have excluded myself because of conflicts with my own concept of my identity.

I actively avoid online social platforms that prioritize shallow responses or reflexive posturing. These do not comport with my desire to project (or indeed, actively be) a persona that thinks things through and is open to seeing / empathizing with different points of view. This is also why some groups no longer welcome my presence: the pressure to identify with the ingroup and actively villainize the outgroup is something I resist, but this has become more and more prevalent in all online social groups that I have seen, save those rooted in offline socialization.

In some ways, I have over time defined myself not as a member of any online-only group, but in opposition to them. To me, an online communication is an initial or adjunct method which leads to or complements an offline relationship of some sort (be that friend, acquaintance, debate partner, etc.). If I did not consider an offline interaction to be possible, I would have no motivation to create or sustain an online interaction long-term. I want to learn more about individual people and how they see the world; I’m not very interested in ideological tests or ostentatious displays of ingroup belonging.

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Reflect (community): I chose to join a set of forums devoted to Christianity. This particular religious community is one I have some length of experience with, having been raised as a Christian and continuing to identify with that religion’s core moral tenets for some time. However, my avoidance of shallow slogans led me into my first burst of heterodoxy, and my continued development as a person of alternate sexuality made me greatly unwelcome in that community (and within my own family). It is, therefore, rather uncomfortable to return.

I have observed many displays of ingroup belonging, much of which focus on Republican / MAGA identification within the US. There’s a great emphasis on seeing with your eyes and making immediate assumptions that “everybody” can understand unless they’re are deliberately approaching in bad faith. A prima facie reading of “evidence” is not always correct, however. This becomes frustrating to some group members, because any attempt to look beyond the surface is not group-sanctioned behavior, making anybody who engages in thoughtful reflection automatically a member of the outgroup.

This emphasis on ingroup / outgroup identification is also important to the site as a whole, as the site requires participants to identify as Christian or Non-Christian, and has separate codes of conduct for both categories. Similarly, the site makes assumptions for what definitions will be used–a status of “Married” is only permitted for a single male married to a single female, and same-sex marriages (including those recognized by some Christian denominations!) must use the status “Legal union (other)”. Participants in different categories are allowed or disallowed access to different sections of the site. In this way, an individual’s group identification becomes paramount, because it expressly limits what that individual can do or say.

I have also observed some participants who actively seek greater evidence or call upon different definitions or concepts provided from different sources. To an extent, these participants seem to hearken back to a time when older ideas held sway, and the markers that defined the ingroup were notably different. Because they do not display the markers of the current ingroup definition, these participants seem to exist in an uncomfortable between-state; neither accepted by the ingroup’s members, nor willing to accept membership in the outgroup instead. It is useful to note that such people exist, but it is also instructive to see the social pressures brought to bear upon them.

In an ideal setting, a group’s defining features might be narrowly set–a social group of conservatives might hold several religions, and a social group of Christians might hold several political viewpoints. In this ideal setting, the group’s narrow definition would act as common ground that brings members together, while other aspects of their identity could prompt conversation or exploration without threatening their membership in the main group. But as groups define themselves with more aspects, they become less tolerant of other viewpoints. It is no longer sufficient, for example, to identify as Christian; fealty to MAGA is required, as is the belief (among others) that the 2020 US presidential election was somehow “stolen.” Conversely, any sort of redistributive or recompensatory economic views are markers for the outgroup, and ingroup members may not hold these views while remaining members of the group in good standing.

In any social group, one of the greatest pressures is to conform, or at least to avoid “rocking the boat” by questioning or outright rejecting part of the group’s defining features. As these defining features grow to encompass more aspects of an individual’s identity, it becomes more socially threatening to express heterodox positions. This leads to more people choosing silence over expression, or moving to other topics where group identity is not being actively invoked or threatened in any way. Not only does this make the community as a whole less welcoming and more exclusionary, it also functions to reduce participation within the community itself, leaving only those who loudly police the group’s membership as they see fit.

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Reflect (problem-solving): A social group (in any medium) needs at least some commonalities in order to cohere as a group and maintain relatedness for the group’s participants. However, healthy groups maintain a diversity of perspectives and beliefs within those commonalities; groups which become progressively more exclusionary by requiring more common attributes become susceptible to groupthink, becoming an echo chamber or even filter bubble for those within.

A healthy “senior cadre” of group participants would help to prevent or forestall this progression in several ways. First, they provide an example for other group members in how to tolerate different perspectives without being threatened in their core identity, how to discourse in an acceptable fashion, and how to push back against a more intolerant approach. Second, by themselves welcoming those differing views into the senior cadre, they reinforce the message that those with such views are normal and acceptable members of the group, even at the highest level. This makes the group more welcoming to those who hold those viewpoints as well. Third, by having multiple perspectives and participants involved in this senior cadre, it becomes more difficult for group participants to reasonably claim that the group is “ruled” by a few “elites.”

This is not unlike the concept of a group of moderators, but the focus is quite different. A moderator may be expected to perform a fair amount of administrative work, including arbitrating disputes to “moderate” the temperature of discussion or enforce a code of conduct. My concept of a senior cadre focuses less on the technical admin duties and more on ensuring a healthy group by being involved and modelling desired standards of behavior. Even reproof of group members can therefore be delivered less as a reprimand from above, and more as a correction from a senior peer.

The senior cadre therefore does not replace the role of moderators. If moderators are focused more on code of conduct, policing, and technical administration of the online environment, they may be re-titled as “administrators” or similar. It’s a different skill set from the senior cadre, but complementary in purpose, freeing the senior cadre to work as peers and role models within the group membership. To this end, it would also be useful for the senior cadre to have some understanding about how to maintain a healthy group and why it is important to cultivate differing points of view.

It’s also important for the senior cadre to understand that these differing points of view cannot extend to those who believe in excluding other members of the group for being “insufficiently committed” or anything similar. The difference between holding a difference of philosophy (acceptable) and advocating a forcible group takeover or ejection of other group members (unacceptable) can be surprisingly subtle in practice, and the cadre should be prepared to take measures to ensure that the group remains healthy in the long-term by addressing problematic members as quickly as possible, before attitudes metastasize and become embedded in a significant number of group participants.

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Field Trip #1: Our first field trip was in Microsoft Teams. For me, this was pretty standard–my workplace uses Teams already, so I have video conference calls multiple times per week. Still, every group is somewhat different!

This is also, I would say, fairly similar to most other videoconferencing applications I’ve used through the years, including Discord, Skype, and Zoom. That is, you have your video and audio feeds, there’s a gallery view of talking heads, there’s the ability to screenshare (which is really just replicating your desktop video feed into the video stream, after all)… the software focused less on creating a social space or structure, and more on providing a toolset.

I say that, and yet obviously Teams is more than “just” a toolset. The ability to create “teams” within Teams (which are structured as a bulletin board) or group chats (structured as a chat room) clearly gestures at offering different ways to create and manage a social space. The videoconferencing features, however, are a toolset–there’s nothing specific like a game world or any skeuomorphic elements that make it anything more than a videoconference. And I’m okay with that. It’s sort of basic, but in a business-focused environment, I don’t really need anything more than that.

We’ll be back in Teams for our final virtual field trip as well, so until then!

Much of my reading this week seemed to unwittingly bring up the themes of the recommendation engine and our (humanity’s) motivations.

The recommendation engine is a powerful bit of software. Like most tools, it’s a double-edged sword. The ability to analyze users and extract meaningful signals that can be used to make connections and matches with other signals, in order to recommend new material, is extraordinary. Imagine how much time I might spend on Wikipedia if I had a recommendation engine analyzing the articles I spent time reading and suggested new, fascinating topics that I could dig into!

And therein lies the biggest problem with the recommendation engine, too. It is, after all, merely a tool. The analysis extracts signals, but precisely which signals are extracted is not defined. Nor is it defined how to connect and match those signals. In both cases, the tool has an “owning” user who defines how the tool will operate.

In some ways, I think we (humanity) have been somewhat let down by the assumptions made as earlier versions of technology arose. “Time spent on page” became a proxy measurement for “interest;” “number of comments” became a proxy measurement for “engagement.” These proxy measurements are popular, I suspect, first because they can be accomplished with current technology, but second because they can be accomplished silently and automatically–without subject input. Certainly, if we click the “Like” button on something, that’s an affirmative input to the system… but in the absence of subject-initiated input, systems would have no signal to act upon unless these proxy measurements were pulled into the mix.

Because of this, the recommendation engine’s suggestions can become too easily warped, even without bringing motivation into the picture. Is it interest that kept me on a page, or some sort of stimulating input that preys on addictive or gambling personalities? If the metric to boost is actually “time spent on page,” one is just as good as the other. Am I happily engaged with thought-provoking content, or am I angrily hammering the comment button on something divisive? If the metric targeted is actually “comments posted,” then again, one is just as good as the other. Our use of proxy measurements has, perhaps, led us all to target the wrong things.

And then we come to motivation! In the hands of someone well-intentioned, the recommendation engine might be able to be tuned, adding additional signals into the mix. Sentiment analysis can find angry or upset discourse and de-prioritize that content, in favor of boosting content with more neutral or positive discourse. Perhaps a user setting labelled “show me more viewpoints” could intentionally expand the window of content shown. And I doubt very much that such a system would necessarily lack available profits… the problem, as I see it, comes when the pursuit of more profits with less work comes into play. Balancing the requests and views of many invested users takes effort. Trying to make friendly features available that build and maintain a healthy community takes effort! In our drive to always do more with less, human effort is an investment that is all too easily pared away in the drive for more profits. (AI / LLM tools, anybody?)

More broadly speaking, I think the recommendation engine is just the most visible example of tools that had great promise and have over time become warped into causing great damage. I would submit that it’s not enough to simply develop an amazing technology and trust in “the market” to do “the right thing” with it. Developing something great is only half, maybe even only a third of the battle. Asking ourselves how to best use it, and why we use it, is just as important. And if there’s a third part of that story, I think it’s to be found in the “maintenance” of the tool’s owners. Because it’s not enough to make the decision to use one’s power for good (so to speak) only once. It’s an ongoing decision that has to be made again and again, even as others may choose short-term profits over long-term societal health.

And that, too, is part of social computing, isn’t it? If only more people recognized it as such.

Looking back over the notes I made while reading, I notice that I’m much more accepting of corporate communications (and marketing) in the relatively “low presence” (as I defined it towards the end) forms of social software. That is, I don’t have any issue with corporate blogs that are essentially offering knowledge so that you’ll stick around long enough to read their sales pitch. Likewise, I don’t take issue with the ads on YouTube videos, either.

But when it came to virtual worlds, I suddenly seemed to take a much more anti-corporate stance. My first reaction was to want all corporations to stay out of the virtual worlds altogether. And though I moderated my position, I still very much exhibited a desire for corporate marketing to stay unobtrusive and optional. Why is this?

For one, I suppose it’s a practical matter of wanting to avoid the marketing. When I hit the marketing section of a blog entry, I can close the tab and stop reading. When I have the ad on YouTube, I can look away or hit the “skip” button. But if I’m “present” in a virtual world and mentally inhabiting the avatar on screen, then it’s much, much more disruptive to that sense of presence to suddenly be confronted with RL companies marketing their RL products and services. If I think about seeing marketing for an in-game, virtual business, suddenly that feels less disruptive to me.

On a more personal level, I suppose I also want to avoid unwilling crossover or leakage between offline and online lives. Real life is challenging enough and has a multitude of unfeeling corporations all grubbing for my time and attention (and personal data); I would enter a virtual world seeking to leave that behind for a time and move into a world less crippled by these effects. Being followed by unskippable ads into what might otherwise feel like a refuge would be an extremely negative experience.

In terms of how I relate to various types of social media, I find that each has a purpose. Blogs are what I write to share information, or to gain information from a single person. Wikis are what I read to gain information from many people on many topics. Videos are what I watch for light fun, and any information gained is secondary to the desire to have fun. Instant messaging systems are merely communication tools, no different from email or a telephone.

What elevates any given type of social media into something truly valuable? For me, it is a sense of community. Communities may form around games or other interests… they are often mediated by various communication tools, but the tools are not usually the point. (When’s the last time you saw a Telegram channel dedicated to how amazing everybody thinks Telegram itself is? I’m sure it exists, even so!) When a series of blogs can be collected into a “friends” view like LiveJournal did, that can become the basis of a self-selecting community. While the tools are not the point, I do think the depth and richness of a community is measured, to some extent, by how much interaction can be advanced by that medium. A free-form blog can go on for some length (clearly!) and that allows more insight into the writer’s thought process and opinion. A 140-character snippet on Twitter is barely enough for anything of substance, save for some snappy remark here and there. Tools like Slack or Discord can allow users to ramble at length, or switch to higher orders of communication by opening voice or video channels, increasing the amount and speed of communication.

So, what do I gain from reflecting on these points? First, I can clearly see that a sense of community is most important to me in elevating social software beyond just being a tool. Second, I can see that I want to avoid simply replicating existing attributes of the offline world (like corporate marketing) into an online, virtual world. Something needs to change in order for this to feel suitably “different” from “the usual”–and the more creatively or subtly this can be done, the less I mind it. But break that sense of separation from the real world, and many of the benefits of a virtual world will, for me (and probably some others), be lost.

Week 1 was all about the course orientation. I didn’t find it too challenging, but the soft entry (at least compared to COMP695!) still managed to lull me into a mistaken impression of the course pace. Anyway!

The list of recommended and background readings in the first week did stump me somewhat. I’m a fast reader, generally speaking, but this takes a lot of time to go through properly. I know we don’t have to read all of it, but it’s still a lot. I did go through and download some of the material just in case it goes away.

And as if that wasn’t enough, I got five more books recommended just out of my introduction post (which I did enjoy greatly). I don’t know how I’m ever going to keep up with this while working full time, much less while taking another course at the same time, but I’m going to have to figure something out…

Oddly enough, if I had a do-over, I might spend more time reading than I did, if only to have gotten me into the headspace of needing to spend every waking minute reading for the next three months. It might have made week 2 a bit easier. Beyond that, week 1 was a good introduction to the course!