Algorithms: Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em

Andreas Birkbak & Hjalmar Bang Carlsen, “The World of Edgerank: Rhetorical Justifications of Facebook’s News Feed Algorithm,” in Computational Culture:

We found that prudent action in the world of Edgerank is to be authentically engaged and able to engage others. It follows that a central tension in the Edgerank grammar is that between authenticity and automation. The automated calculation of relevance is on the one hand necessary for users in a world filled with signals, and on the other hand always in danger of flattening the world to a point where the user is unable to be affected by it.

[Edgerank is a name, now somewhat deprecated, for Facebook’s scoring system that determines what you see in the newsfeed.]