O’Shaughnessy, Brendan. “Watching a Train Wreck.” Notre Dame Stories, 13 Feb. 2023.
Brendan O’Shaughnessy is an award winning author who has been writing for Notre Dame, a prestigious university for many years. His article ‘Watching a Train Wreck” discusses issues around the algorithms that social media uses to promote content. He argues that there needs to be a balance of what is and is not moderated. However, his main argument is that we cannot leave this solely to machines to do for us. This article is useful because it presents a different perspective because it shows that social media moderation is not just about what is blocked, but also what is promoted.
- “The company was aware that delegating the firing decision to machines could lead to mistakes and damaging headlines, ‘but decided it was cheaper to trust the algorithms than to pay people to investigate mistaken firings so long as the drivers could be replaced easily'” (O’Shaughnessy).
