We have no idea what content is most viral on YouTube, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, or X – because they refuse to share basic data.
On the DSA’s Birthday (Oct 4th) we’ve led a “mass data access request” along with @mozilla and DSA40 Data Access Collaboratory, where a series of ~20 orgs requested daily data on their top 1,000 most-viewed posts in EU Member States. Every single one refused.
Join us in demanding platform transparency.
Posted on mastodon: https://chaos.social/@algorithmwatch/115620980818833875
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
My guess is they don’t want data scientist types to find trends pointing to the possible “moderation” of viral posts of a certain political potency, not to make them more popular, but to suppress or wholly censor something impactful from being spread further. Censorship. I mean censorship.
It just wouldn’t surprise me if posts that started being shared at an explosive rate for insert highly-affecting thing here were quietly “turned off” for many an audience’s algorithm at some point by meddlesome human hands. The public having this data could reveal that or other types of manipulation when compared to other platforms, in aggregate, etc.
But idk, not a data doctor