It's Not Just Facebook

"It occurred to me recently that the problem with Facebook’s omnipotent algorithm is very similar to a problem we see with scientific publishing. In scientific publishing, we also have a widely used technique for filtering information that is causing trouble. In this case, we filter which publications or authors we judge as promising.

"For this filtering, it has become common to look at the number of citations that a paper receives. And this does cause problems, because the number of citations may be entirely disconnected from the real-world impact of a research direction. The only thing the number of citations really demonstrates is popularity. Citations are a measure that’s as disconnected from scientific relevance as the number of likes is from the truth value of an article on Facebook.
"Of course, the two situations are different in some ways. For example on social media, there is little tradition of quoting sources. This has the effect that a lot of outlets copy news from each other and that it is extra hard to check the accuracy of a statement. Another difference is that social media has a much faster turnover-rate than scientific publications. This means on social media people don’t have a lot of time to think before they pass on information. But in both cases, we have a problem caused by the near-monopoly of a single algorithm."

The trouble with Facebook and what it has in common with scientific publishing