I am

In my previous post I showed how TED asks us to select certain attributes from their ‘I am’ list.  But how did they decide which attributes to enter on to the list? For example, they list 5 out of the top 7 religions (according to Wikipedia) but not Sikhism, even though there are more Sikhs than there are Jews in the world.

Gillespie (2012) cites the evaluation of relevance as one of the dimensions of public relevance algorithms.  He also points out that database producers are made distinctive more by what they choose to exclude.  We don’t know why TED chose to exclude Sikhs, or Bahai, from their list, but by doing so they have rendered them invisible.

 

 

Should We Be Wary of Algorithms?

Via @nprnews: Should We Be Wary of Algorithms? http://t.co/7Y9eu4mcwk #mscedc

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TED has invited me to ‘share this talk and track [my] influence!’.  How can I possibly resist?  It is very clever of them.  Because now I want to find other TED offerings to share with my network. I want to Tweet them, to Pin them and embed them all over the social net. And then I want to look at the numbers.  week_8_4

But what is TED going to do with my numbers?  I know they store information such as the Talk I shared, when I shared it and the number of people who followed the link, because they tell me that is what they will do.  But what else could they be doing?  They have my email address, my twitter username.  They entice me to complete my profile and add tags about myself.week_8_3

I could give them a lot of information about myself; but I don’t need to do this because they probably can work it out for themselves if Jennifer Golbeck is to be believed (see The curly fry conundrum: Why social media “likes” say more than you might think).  There are algorithms which can accurately predict many of my traits based on my use of social media.

So back to my TED numbers.  Why do they want them? Their Privacy Policy reassures me that it is all for my own good – “We may use this information to help customize your TED.com experience based on your previous activities on TED.com.” They also warn me that other social media outlets may use my data in other ways when I share via them.  Although I believe them I will resist completing my profile. I don’t want to end up in some ‘filter bubble‘ where TED decides what I should be watching.