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OPINION FEB. 22, 2018
THE DOWNFALL OF DEMOCRACY BY ANDREW BURGESS
Let’s take a collective deep breath and dive into the political nightmares that have transpired since 2016-- a Women-Disrespecting Cheeto™ being better fit for President than Hillary “But-Her-Emails” Clinton or a well-meaning, somewhat more socialist Doc from “Back to the Future.” Or what about millennials killing every industry, Russia, and terrible political Facebook memes? About that last one, though… It might be your fault.
The downfall of democracy isn’t really the fault of neckbeards living in their parents basement and using “reeeee” in conversation, but the fault of the algorithms behind social media. When you click on a YouTube video or expand a Facebook post, the websites use tags embedded in the content as well as your usage statistics to create a disturbingly detailed profile about you; what you like, what products you might buy, your political views, anything to make you spend more time on their website. However, this profit-first mentality has its downsides. When users use social media enough, the content they see is carefully selected for its irresistible click worthiness. Because of this, many users only see social or political opinions they already agree with. But why would I want to regularly see stuff I don’t agree with? Because democracy itself is rooted on the concept of people with different opinions discussing and orienting their views towards what’s best for themselves and society. This isn’t happening because the algorithms running social media aren’t regulated by the government. Even programmers don’t always know what data their algorithms use to generate results. As a consequence, algorithms can racially discriminate, target underprivileged people, or those facing mental illness for advertising -- all outside the responsibility of companies. As data scientist Cathy O’Neil puts it,
“ALGO RITH M S AR E O PI N IO N S E M B E DDE D I N CO DE .”
Social media can’t be our main source of news. A medium that puts overused memes at the same level of importance of school shootings maybe isn’t the greatest source of information. So we instead rely on the Fake News Media™ for news? Yes, but not in its present form. Traditional broadcast media are relying on the social media-inspired tactics of clickbait and appealing to emotion in order to get more clicks, and it’s damaging the news sphere. Trolling and misinformation are also rampant, as people and organizations compete for more views. In their information bubbles, the misinformation can grow to hopeless proportions, allowing the opinion-holders to completely block out any dissenting information. Instead, broadcast media needs to establish themselves as clearly less biased than social media. Social Media Engagement, Democrats vs. Republicans
SOURCE: WWW.DIGITALCONTACT.CO.UK
Some glimmers of hope remain in our Trump-forsaken America. Facebook has redesigned its algorithms to prioritize meaningful social interaction over clicking on sensational news headlines, and as a result, people are spending 50 million fewer hours on the site.
FAKE
STATS 2752
confirmed fake Russian twitter accounts
1.4 M
Twitter users warned of exposure to Russian accounts
470 K
retweets of Trump’s posts by Russian accounts
Democracy can be saved, but it’s our responsibility. 280-character rants or text-wall Facebook posts won’t solve the problem. The only change can come from people lobbying our government to regulate corporations and hold them accountable for their influential algorithms.