The Politics of Systems

This is not a substantial post just a pointer to this interview with Digg lead scientist Anton Kast on Digg’s upcoming recommendation engine (which is really just collaborative filtering but as Kast says the engineering challenge is to make it work in real time – which is quite fascinating given the volume of users and content on the site). Around 2:50 Kast explains why Digg will list the “compatibility coefficient” (algorithmic proximity anyone?) with other users and give an indication why stories are recommended to you (because these users dug them): Digg users hate getting stuff imposed and just showing recommendations without a trail “looks editorial”. Wow, “editorial” is becoming a swearword. Who would have thought…