As social and political life increasingly takes place on social network sites, new epistemological questions have emerged. How can information disseminated through new media be understood and disentangled? How can potential hidden agendas or sources be identified? And what mechanisms govern what and how information is presented to the user? By drawing on existing research on the algorithms and interfaces underlying social network sites, this paper provides a discussion of Facebook and the epistemological challenges, potentials, and questions raised by the platform. The paper specifically discusses the ways in which interfaces shape how information can be accessed and processed by different kinds of users as well as the role of algorithms in pre-selecting what appears as representable information. A key argument of the paper is that Facebook, as a complex socio-technical network of human and non-human actors, has profound epistemological implications for how information can be accessed, understood, and circulated. In this sense, the user's potential acquisition of information is shaped and conditioned by the technological structure of the platform. Building on these arguments, the paper suggests that new epistemological challenges deserve more scholarly attention, as they hold wide implications for both researchers and users.

中文翻译：

---

算法，接口和信息流通：审视Facebook的认识论挑战

随着社交网站上越来越多的社会和政治生活，新的认识论问题出现了。如何理解和理清通过新媒体传播的信息？如何确定潜在的隐藏议程或资源？什么样的机制控制着什么以及如何向用户提供信息？通过利用对社交网站基础算法和接口的现有研究，本文讨论了Facebook以及平台提出的认识论挑战，潜力和问题。本文具体讨论了界面如何影响不同类型的用户如何访问和处理信息的方式，以及算法在预选看起来可表示的信息中的作用。该论文的主要论点是Facebook，作为人类和非人类参与者的复杂社会技术网络，它对如何获取，理解和传播信息具有深刻的认识论意义。从这个意义上说，用户潜在的信息获取是由平台的技术结构决定的。在这些论点的基础上，本文提出了新的认识论挑战，因为它们对研究人员和使用者都具有广泛的意义，值得学术上更多的关注。