3 minute read
The Flip Side of Social Media
When Bots Rule the World By Kristen A. Schmitt
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Jeanna Matthews
Social media became a lifeline during the last year as quarantining and social distancing played havoc with in-person gatherings. While many use social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to stay in touch with family and friends, others use it to stay up-to-date on news and current events. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, about one in five U.S. adults got their political news primarily through social media in 2020.
Jeanna Matthews, a professor of computer science, says that isn’t necessarily a good thing. Matthews studies the world of automation and platforms with a specific focus on algorithmic accountability and platform accountability, shedding light on the flip side of the social media equation. Every day, big decisions are made with software: algorithms that plug in numbers and other data to determine whether someone should be hired, what news you should see and everything in between.
“The whole basis of managing our media landscape has been completely uprooted by algorithmic curation and, even more than that, very active manipulation of those algorithms,” says Matthews.
Professional hackers and foreign governments use these algorithms to manipulate information and even attack you. Software curates the content you see based upon your history of “likes” or “votes” and prompts the algorithms, otherwise known as bots, to highlight specific content. It’s almost like “programming” that caters directly to you.
“This doesn’t mean that the content is true,” says Matthews. “In fact, lies and extreme content are often the stuff that spreads the quickest.”
Matthews points out that the use of bots (for example, thousands of false accounts who follow and support topics in unison and sometimes even have the same profile picture) can create thousands of false “likes” that propel misinformation forward because the algorithm works as a voting system. This skewed system is cyclical because the more “likes” something gets, the more engagement that social platform receives, resulting in happy advertisers and more revenue for the company. “Big platforms have turned a blind eye to
Jeanna Matthews works with McNair Scholar Mariama Njie.
algorithmically controlled accounts for years,” says Matthews.
She suggests one of the first fixes to the algorithmic problem is getting rid of the bots, but points out that the social media companies haven’t been aggressive enough because of the benefit they receive from the bots’ existence. Nor do these companies believe they have the same responsibility as those whose existence is purely journalistic.
“Social media companies argue that they’re not a news company, not a publisher,” says Matthews, “which means that they don’t have the same accountability regarding false news on their platforms that those companies would. They’re technology companies.”
While some social media companies banned accounts and removed violent content surrounding the 2020 presidential election, Matthews still urges caution and common sense when navigating social media. She says it’s important to pay particular attention to news sources, possible fake accounts and questionable content that gain an accelerated promotion on platforms — it’s likely due to algorithms and bots and not a true representation of public sentiment.
As for the future of social media, Matthews believes building credible authenticity and transparency will remain a key issue over the next decade. Globally, some governments aggressively censor social media platforms, which is obviously something the U.S. likely will not do. However, creating more transparency and holding social media companies more accountable could be a good first step in gaining traction among the wellestablished algorithms that dictate social media content.
“Right now, we have three major models worldwide,” says Matthews. “One where the government controls all, another with certain data privacy restrictions, and then you have the U.S., which is basically just leaving these decisions to the whims of private companies. I would really like to see our government craft a social media platform model that aligns with Western democratic values, but at this point, there has been very little attempt to do so.”
