alt Hacker NewsInteresting work, but ultimately silly: of course google maps ranks results. No one (yes, yes, I'm sure like 3 people) want a list of all results, unordered or ordered by something useless like name, when they type in restaurant. And I cannot put into words how uneager I am to have the city or state government manage what comes up when I put indian or burrito into a map.
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Nowhere in the article is the author suggesting that local or state governments manage these algorithms, just that they be audited for fairness given the amount of power these algorithms hold in the market. Google operates something of a monopoly in Google Maps and its recommendations. You don't find an attempt to understand the efficacy of its rankings or how Google or market participants could be manipulating the rankings to benefit themselves interesting?
> No one (yes, yes, I'm sure like 3 people) want a list of all results, unordered or ordered by something useless like name
That's not what the author was suggesting (or indeed, what they built). They were trying to untangle the positive feedback bias showing up first in the rankings gives.
I think there's probably a lot more to untangle, but as a first pass it's super cool!
Uhh, I want a list of all the results. I want to be able to search comprehensively within my map viewer frame.
Where in the post do you see the author arguing about "a list of all results"? To me, it merely draws attention to the fact that there is only one algorithm available in Google Maps, and you rely on Google to calculate "relevance" based on (to us) unknown and intransparent metrics. It draws attention to the kind of power Google has over businesses and our daily lives, without necessarily presenting alternatives. Nothing about that is "silly". It might be more relevant to me to learn about new, small, independent restaurants, but I don't have that choice. If I had access to the full data set, like e.g. OSM, I would.