I have been thinking about this topic for a while now, and while it doesn’t fit into my responsibilities for the DailyLobo, I feel like I must address this issue as it continues to spiral out of control.
This, though, requires some background information about me and the way that I view a number of things.
I grew up with the rise of the internet, in fact I don’t know of a world without it.
Throughout my life the computer has been able to get me through dark moments and bring me joy.
It was a simpler time when people merely used the internet to shift through stories and post with friends that no longer lived with you.
There were memes and joy and a sense that we were going to so drastically change society with this device that all would get better.
This sounds cynical nowadays, as all of these things have mostly evaporated and instead the internet and a number of sites are now tearing the very fabric of society apart.
Much like the rest of normal society, I was flabbergasted by the ludacris attempts by Donald Trump and co. to try and end democracy within the United States.
Maybe it was my naive nature, but I merely assumed that all of his bluster and bravado would be largely ignored and that no trouble would ensure.
This, of course, didn’t happen.
Largely driven by crazy conspiracy theories that originated within the online realm, Trump supporters led an attempted insurrection to instal Trump as dictator for life and throw the world into WWIII*.
It has shown what a number of people watching the online realm have feared, that the social platforms that once helped us grow as a society have created deranged groups that no longer accept basic facts and are willing to do a number of things to help only themselves at the expense of others.
Was a large part of the problem Trump? Yes, he had the largest megaphone and thus had a large amount of sway over people that wouldn’t do these actions.
Did COVID-19 exacerbate this problem. Absolutely.
People didn’t want to accept the fact that a deadly virus was killing off a large number of people and gravitated towards irrational ideas in an attempt to try to understand what was happening around them.
How did, though, these groups infiltrate the minds of many? FBI director Cristopher Wray’s quote on the matter sums it up well: “It used to be some angry demented guy living in mom’s basement. He’s now able to communicate with a similarly angry guy in grandma’s attic in another part of the country. And they get each other spun up …”
Wray also added that social media is a major catalyst for these groups along with terrorist groups to spread their ideologies (ISIS was largely started on Twitter in 2015): “Terrorism today moves at the speed of social media.”
Thus, this leaves us with some very uncomfortable questions as to how social networks and the internet have created this backsliding culture, but the main one should be as follows: Why did this happen?
This is a more complicated question that I don’t know all of the answers to, but the main reason for this current debacle is the algorithms that sites use.
This is my very primitive knowledge on the matter (and if anyone would like to add something about this then feel free to).
Whenever you, the user, click on something, algorithms pick it up and relay that information back to the larger server.
This in turn makes the server believe that you have clicked on the post, thread, or story for a reason and then relays that back to the algorithm.
Concurrently, if I was to click on multiple anti-vaccination posts, the algorithm would start to feed me trends, posts, threads, videos and other information that fits into these clicks.
But why would sites do this?
It’s for a very simple yet greedy reason.
The more time you spend on the site, the more money they make.
The more money they make, the more power they get.
The more power they have, more advertisers will start flocking to their websites to gain money and to sell you product.
It truly is a dastardly thing to do, to turn your profile into a highly concentrated vat of information that sites and companies can use to sell you products.
But many are fine with this, as long as these sites make them money as well.
This is the thinking of the influencer, who wants to be the loudest voice in the room so that the algorithm favors his post on the trending page.
This is where truly the algorithms fali the basic user.
Basic users will flock to the loudest voice, which can be elevated through manipulation such as hashtags and bot’s, even if they aren’t the definitive voice of reason on the subject.
This is why the rise of disinformation and misinformation has happened, as the loudest among us have created a system that bends to their rules and not the basic rule of fact.
Yet, many of these sites (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) merely address problems when they arise and never look at the structural incentives to post outlandish things.
They can ban however many accounts, but the structural advantage of misinformation and information that affirms specific world views will always exist as long as these algorithms run rampant and unchecked.
Some have postulated that section 230, the American law that prevents social media companies from being sued is the largest part of the problem.
I disagree.
Yes, without section 230 Donald Trump’s Twitter account wouldn’t have lasted one year into his presidency.
But at the same time, without section 230 no real discussion or sharing of ideas (the marketplace of ideas) could happen.
Censorship of ideas would actually exist on the major sites, and harsh content moderation would be the king of the world.
Does this mean that social media companies shouldn’t police content in a more forceful manner?
No.
I would argue that many of the issues that existed within 2020 wouldn’t have been such a problem if companies actively used their own guidelines in a stricter manner.
There, though, must be balanced otherwise this circular thinking will explode even further than it already has.
While there are alternate social sites (things I was going to write about for the DailyLobo, but that fell through due to the dissolving of a number of groups in NM), most of them aren’t thriving as many would have you believing.
These echo chambers have a number of drawbacks as well, hackers have been able to access data on GAB, a far-right social network that is home to a number of unsavory people.
It’s also hard to grab the number of true users that exist within the networks of these off-shoot sites, as while they do have a large number of accounts, many of them are unused or simply placeholders.
They may also be bots, designed with the intention to inflate the number of accounts on any given site.
These sites also unintentionally split the communities that they try to obtain due to the sheer number of them.
But the dangers that this deranged information provides society as a whole can be seen in this report from the great CNN reporter Donie O’Sullivan (while also explaining in more detail the issues with social media algorithms): https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2021/03/26/anti-vaccine-mother-covid-19-misinformation-orig.cnn-business/video/playlists/business-coronavirus/
So, this leaves us with a very large question: What can society do about this?
I have a few ideas.
- Force sites to eliminate their current algorithms, and then replace them with ones that promote quality over quantity (i.e. substance over opinion).
- Make sites label opinion posts and journalistic posts (i.e. make users pick a function that labels the post as either an opinion post or a journalistic post) and punish those that misuse the function.
- Weaken section 230 so that while social media sites cannot be sued for opinion posts, sites can be sued for leaving up misleading or non factual information.
- Allow the federal government to set up an internet oversight board (which can be tied to the FCC or CISA), which can fine sites for leaving up misinformation and for ignoring their own content moderation policies (among other things) .
- Rework the DMCA to force companies to make substantial changes to their systems, giving more power to the user while also giving power to content moderation.
- Ban civilian bots from networks (i.e. site administrators can have bot’s but users cannot) and impose fines for those that violate such rule.
These are merely one man’s opinions on the situation and how to fix them, but we must be prepared to see change happen within the digital space.
This wild west style that we are currently in will only get worse over time, and while many within the far-right movement are in hiding and licking their wounds they will return.
We must be prepared for them to return.
Spencer Butler can be contacted at sb751094@gmail.com or on Twitter @SpencerButler48
*( If you truly think that China, Russia, Europe, Canada, Mexico and others would idly sit by and watch the USA either lose democracy or become facsist, then you haven’t been paying attention…)
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