Tag Archives: social media

Killing Conspiracy Theories is Killing Social Media

When I was a younger man, I was interested in conspiracy theories. I didn’t believe in them, but I was interested in them and the people who did believe in them. This was pre-Internet. While there were some big-name conspiracies – “who shot JFK” and “alien autopsies in Area 51” stuff – most of it was in the dark corners of the world: a few nutjobs with pirate radio stations rambling into the desert ether, mimeographed newsletters full of rambling purple prose, and badly edited and barely readable books. I was fascinated both by the horror and credulity of conspiracy theorists. They combined a totalizing belief in a nightmarish fantasy with a profound level of intentional ignorance that I found – and find – chilling.

Today’s conspiracy theorists are out in the open, often in high office. But how did it happen? How did we get here? I believe I have the answer, and the answer is social media.

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Social media’s bias is money and power

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.

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