This video by a Danish military expert, Anders Puck Nielsen, talks about social media and how to improve it. What he suggests is typical of most well-meaning people who want to improve social media, but all of them are at least slightly bizarre because we all know that won’t happen without government regulation.

While watching Nielsen’s post, I saw some fnords. First, Nielsen starts by suggesting an unbiased algorithm. He’s talking about right-wing versus left-wing. He ignores – as do most people – that the biggest and most significant bias in social media algorithms is the one that creates profitability for their owners. I’d say that most of social media’s problems for society have this as their root: they are designed to make their owners fabulous amounts of cash and give them enormous power, and they’re highly successful in that goal, and everything else flows from the “make money and grow powerful” imperative.

Continue reading Social media’s bias is money and power →