People who use social media are learning about how the companies that run these platforms make their decisions on who gets to see what through visual indicators in the interface (UI) of each social media site. These indicators are different for each platform and are not always located in an easy-to-find location on the site. Therefore, it is hard for someone to compare different social media platforms or determine whether transparency leads to greater accountability or only leads to increased understanding. A new classification system has been developed to help provide a standard way of categorizing the way, that an algorithm is presented through UI elements and whether the company has provided any type of explanation as to why they are featured. This new classification system includes the following three areas of development: design form, information content, and user agency. This new classification system can be applied to the six social media platforms currently available and serves as a reference database for identifying common archetypes of features in the each social media platform's UI. The new classification system will assist in determining whether or not the transparency of an algorithm functions the way that it was intended when it was developed and provide future design ideas that can help improve the inspectibility, actionability, and contestability of algorithms.

翻译：使用社交媒体的人们正通过各平台界面中的视觉指示器，了解这些平台的运营公司如何决定用户看到的内容。这些指示器因平台而异，且通常不易在网站中找到。因此，用户难以比较不同社交媒体平台，或判断透明度是否带来更大问责性，抑或仅增加了理解度。本研究提出一种新型分类系统，为算法通过界面元素呈现的方式，以及平台是否提供内容展示原因的解释，建立标准化分类维度。该系统涵盖三个开发领域：设计形式、信息内容与用户能动性。该分类系统可应用于当前六大主流社交媒体平台，并作为参考数据库，用于识别各平台界面功能的常见原型特征。这一新分类系统将有助于评估算法透明度是否按预期发挥作用，并为提升算法的可检视性、可操作性与可质疑性提供未来设计思路。