Facebook does the wrong thing for the right reason

Recently I listened to a debate on the radio show Q, “Is the Internet making us smarter or stupider?” Lots of great stuff I’m still chewing on, but one thing caught my attention.

One of the panelists talked about the problem of recency, which is a bias toward the most timely information. We tend to value the most recent inputs more highly than older information, regardless of whether the new information is more important—and whether it’s even correct.

There are a lot of problems with recency, but many of our social media tools and programs thrive on it.  The panelists talked a lot about how Reddit tried to identify the Boston Marathon bomber and ended up getting it wrong. One panelist suggested a system by which users can only “up-vote” a comment once an hour, to try and slow down the flurry of information that comes in faster than it can be checked.