Mosseri talked about ‘shadowbans,’ harassment, and content takedown disagreements of black creators. He said the company will focus on four areas to improve its services: harassment, account verification, content distribution, and algorithmic bias.
• Harassment• Account verification• Content distribution• Algorithmic bias — Adam Mosseri ? (@mosseri) June 15, 2020 Out of these four, algorithmic bias and content distribution go hand in hand, as people spend most of their time on their feed or the explore tab. Mosseri said that the company has heard a lot about ‘shadowbanning’ — a practice where the platform limits the reach of the certain posts — and it’ll soon release information on what kind of content they downrank. Instagram will also examine if its algorithms have some subconscious bias, but didn’t provide details on what it aims to do to find and correct it. Plus, it will look into safety issues black people face on the platform. The photo-sharing platform’s CEO said that Instagram inalso looking for ways to better serve other underrepresented groups on the app: Ideally, Instagram should ask outside academics to study their algorithms and policies to find the bias. Plus, it needs to include marginalized communities in the discussion to solve these problems. Bias against underrepresented groups is not something that can be solved in a single day. It’ll be a long process.
