Content prioritization – as a resorting algorithm- means deciding what information are most important and should be displayed first or received more attention. For a correct understanding of this term, it may be helpful to state some concrete examples in everyday life.
Chain stores increase sales by creating an attractive display, using window displays effectively, and highlighting discounts. Strategic placement of discounted products helps improve the shopping experience. Seasonal adjustments are also done to keep customers’ attention. Stores also, considering the customers’ interest in a specific type of product, place it more prominently in view or at the store entrance. Similarly to computer science world, stores consider the sales volume and people’s preferences, rearrange, and update the layout of supermarket products, aligning with past seasonal sales. In chain stores like Walmart or Safeway, these arrangements are simultaneously implemented across all branches.
In computer science, it could involve organizing a website to showcase crucial buttons at the top or arranging files to find easily. In computer science, it’s about choosing what information to showcase first. It’s like putting the most important stuff upfront for a better experience.
Major online platforms like Facebook, Google, and others have transformed the world, but they have some social disadvantages like racial discrimination and misinformation due to reducing information privacy. Black and Brown people are vulnerable against equitable opportunities in housing, employing, and studying due to biased data. Low-income people may decline privacy protections due to use cheap data-secure devices and services. Currently, personal information, particularly residential addresses, can be used to determine socioeconomic status. (Allen, 2022). For example, the algorithm used to estimate kidney function is developed from biased data sets or rely on incorrect assumptions. There is a concern that it results in care disparities for racial and ethnic minority groups. This healthcare algorithm shows Black people have healthier kidneys compared with White people. So Black people’s access to kidney transplants is restricted. (Jain et al., 2023). Also, face recognition algorithms with high classification accuracy has a divergent error rates in female, Black and 18-30 years old (Najibi, 2020).
In my professional work as a research assistant, I use google to find new information about tools that we use in our lab. Google search engine put big companies in the top of its result list. Based on this type of algorithm, new start-ups lose the opportunity to participate in marketing and the market is monopolized by a few big corporations. I trust the results of this hierarchical research algorithm, but I heard that some companies or persons by paying a fee could be moved to the top of the search list. As a result, trust in the results could be shaken. Also, I usually use university library and some professional scientific website. Sometimes, I use google scholar to complete or check my search from other websites. I do not consider any evidence of discrimination in this filed. However, it should be kept in mind that English-language journals and journals published by European and American centers are more accessible in the initial search than journals published from other parts of the world. So, this can lead to discrimination in the reading and referencing of such articles.
PageRank
PageRank is a google algorithm to display search results based on some defined order. In network world, increasing the PageRank score of a web page will mean that page is more visible and place higher than other pages in a search list.
In personal life, this algorithm helps me to find more match results based on my search. For example, in online shopping, based on my keywords and filters, it presents me the best quality and good price products and more reliable buy/sell sites. Therefore, by trusting its scaling, I not only get the goods with high quality and reasonable price, but also save my time. Or, for example, when choosing a restaurant to have dinner with the family, with a quick search, in addition to the suitable restaurant in terms of space ranking and other facilities, you can even choose the most favorite food of that restaurant. However, these results sometimes could be popular not factual because some companies offer to sell high PageRank links. Another example is searching for the most watched movies of year. PageRank with the list of active websites in the field of movie based on the most used site, makes it possible to avoid wandering in checking multiple sites and not finding the desired result. But we should be aware of its limitations such as older pages may have higher rank (“PageRank,” Feb 5, 2024) or uncontrolled posting of spam links (“Limitations of PageRank,”).
Not only PageRank impacts our life, maybe we can impact it. We need to remember that changing the PageRank is not directly in our control. PageRank is changed algorithmically based on the quantity and quality of its incoming links. But we can indirectly contribute to a website’s online presence like as sharing the website’s content on social media to increase its visibility, or if we have a personal website (or blog, I am not sure it works) we can link to the other sites to increase their visibility and ranks.
Reference:
Jain, A., Brooks, J. R., Alford, C. C., Chang, C. S., Mueller, N. M., Umscheid, C. A., & Bierman, A. S. (2023). Awareness of Racial and Ethnic Bias and Potential Solutions to Address Bias With Use of Health Care Algorithms. JAMA Health Forum, 4(6), e231197. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamahealthforum.2023.1197
Limitations of PageRank. https://salomewairimu.github.io/essays/pagerank.pdf
Najibi, A. (2020). Racial Discrimination in Face Recognition Technology. Blog, Science Policy , Special Edition : Science, Policy, and Social Justice https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2020/racial-discrimination-in-face-recognition-technology/
PageRank. (Feb 5, 2024). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank