TY - GEN
T1 - Explaining the News Feed algorithm
T2 - 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2017
AU - Cotter, Kelley
AU - Cho, Janghee
AU - Rader, Emilee
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2017 by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. (ACM).
PY - 2017/5/6
Y1 - 2017/5/6
N2 - Facebook uses algorithmic curation-automated selection and ranking of content- to present a personalized News Feed to each user for consumption. However, the News Feed user interface provides little information to help users understand how the ranking algorithm works. We analyzed the company's "News Feed FYI" blog series to better understand the degree to which Facebook employs "how" and "why" explanations of its News Feed algorithm. These types of explanations have been used in other recommendation and intelligent systems as a means of promoting user understanding and acceptance. Our findings show that the "News Feed FYI" blog posts focus more on explanations that justify why the algorithm works the way it does, and less on explanations that describe how the system works. These findings suggest that the "News Feed FYI" series would be more helpful for increasing users' confidence in the system, but not improving their trust in the system.
AB - Facebook uses algorithmic curation-automated selection and ranking of content- to present a personalized News Feed to each user for consumption. However, the News Feed user interface provides little information to help users understand how the ranking algorithm works. We analyzed the company's "News Feed FYI" blog series to better understand the degree to which Facebook employs "how" and "why" explanations of its News Feed algorithm. These types of explanations have been used in other recommendation and intelligent systems as a means of promoting user understanding and acceptance. Our findings show that the "News Feed FYI" blog posts focus more on explanations that justify why the algorithm works the way it does, and less on explanations that describe how the system works. These findings suggest that the "News Feed FYI" series would be more helpful for increasing users' confidence in the system, but not improving their trust in the system.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85019546195&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1145/3027063.3053114
DO - 10.1145/3027063.3053114
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85019546195
T3 - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
SP - 1553
EP - 1560
BT - CHI 2017 Extended Abstracts - Proceedings of the 2017 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
Y2 - 6 May 2017 through 11 May 2017
ER -