“We need to open up and be transparent around how our algorithms work and how they’re used, and maybe even enable people to choose their own algorithms to rank the content or to create their own algorithms, to rank it. To be that open, I think, would be pretty incredible.”

But what Joan is calling for is this notion that the more you get close to how human beings are relating and how human beings are understanding, the harder it is to replace all of that with a fancy algorithm. And one thing about librarians is they know their local context and they understand the different constituencies that are involved. All of th... See more

If you’re going to basically declare that Twitter is a sacred public good, the world’s town square, you’ve got to at least acknowledge—and presumably have an argument to justify—the fact that there’s something just a little troubling about the richest man in the world buying the town square.