Do Facebook's Algorithms Pose a Public Threat?

 

Friend Xerxes is concerned about people falling into self-confirming information silos on the Internet, because of Facebook’s algorithms. The result, he fears, is that bizarre conspiracy theories are spread widely without ever being contradicted; and violence may result. He speaks of “A rising tide of people in this country [who] apparently believe … that they are called overthrow the established powers-that-be. By any means. Including physical insurrection.”

There does seem to be a general decline in civil discourse. Let’s assume the theory is true. 

Logically, people falling into limited information silos is equally likely on either the left or the right—or, for that matter, in the middle. At first glance, any of these is equally troublesome. 

But if we are talking of the potential for overthrowing the establishment and for violence, the bigger problem is on the left. “The right” is, by and large, conservative, and conservative means wanting to maintain traditions. Accordingly, the right is the one group least likely to attempt any kind of insurrection or radical change of government or how we are governed. They might want to throw the current rascals out, but it would be by established, constitutional means. If our form of government had changed recently, this might not be so—the right might then want to go back to an earlier constitution—but both the US and Canada have been stable for unusually long periods of time. There is not a constituency in the US for a return to the monarchy, or in Canada for a return to direct rule from London. Currently, as Xerxes himself notes, no visible group on the right wants an insurrection to change our system of government.

This is not true of the left. The left is by definition seeking change. Black Lives Matter wants a radical change in a society it calls “systemically racist.” Antifa does too; the advocates of critical race theory do. In my riding, last election, the ballot included candidates from both the Communist and the Marxist-Leninist parties. A bit quaint in 2021, but these leftist groups too, in principle, want to radically change our system of government, by violence if necessary.

So if the issue is social instability, to “overthrow the established powers,” the practical argument is entirely for breaking up silos on the left.

You might object that fascists are a counter-example, a rightist group that advocates overturning the establishment and violent revolution. But fascists are deader than Marley’s ghost. Unlike Communists, they do not appear on any ballots anywhere. And there is nothing actually placing them on the right. Historically, they are a Marxist movement, “right-wing” only in comparison to the Leninists. Others have called them the “radical centre.” Historically, the conservatives were their chief opposition, and they have many more views in common with the contemporary North American left than the contemporary North American right. Arguably, the present government of China is fascist.

The specific conspiracy theories Xerxes cites hearing in his daily rounds sound as though they come from left-wing sources. Something about the Queen, Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden being clones; that sounds like a garbled version of David Icke’s thesis that they and other world leaders are aliens. Icke is New Age, and was the national spokesman for the UK’s Green Party. Xerxes’s barber is against cops and immigrants. Being against cops is a position lately promoted aggressively by the left. Neither left nor right is against immigrants currently. This was historically more a left-wing position, as a supposed threat to labour; the current right wants to stop illegal immigration. Xerxes cited the anti-vaxxers. The anti-vaccine movement began on the left, and was primarily leftist as recently as a year ago. The right is anti-vaccine mandates currently, but only over the last few months. 

At a minimum, you are not going to stop any of these movements by breaking open the right-wing information silo. If they are not exclusively on the left, they are found in more than one silo. 

To be fair, there are conspiracy theories on the right: QAnon, Pizzagate. There are just a lot more on the left, and on the left they are more generally accepted: the idea that rich capitalists control everything, for example, or corporations, or “Big Oil,” or “Big Pharma,” or the “whites,” or the “patriarchy.”

The left is also more inclined to violence. Some PPC local official threw gravel at Justin Trudeau in the recent Canadian election; violence at a low level. Some people trespassed last January 6 in the US Capitol building. Nobody told them to do it, and their actions were immediately condemned on the right. Compare Maxine Waters, elected Democrat, calling on her supporters to “get more active, get more confrontational.” Compare Antifa, calling for physical assaults on “Fascists”—meaning, in reality, anyone they disagree with. Compare Black Lives Matter rioting, looting, burning, and killing last year; and Kamala Harris endorsing their actions, then bailing out those arrested. The PPC official, by contrast, was immediately expelled from his position.

So should we step in and shut down left-wing news outlets? This strikes me as exactly the wrong step. Conspiracy theories thrive in the absence of full information, as the “information silos” thesis itself suggests. Rumours take over. Reducing access to any news source therefore makes conspiracy theories more likely, and plausible. Perhaps the Facebook algorithm should be adjusted. While it is obviously desirable in general to try to predict what the audience wants to see—that is the whole point of a search engine--political slants might be omitted from the equation.

And if you stop and think, at worst, we are in a better situation than before the Internet. All of us were then trapped in the same information silo, without any choice, a silo determined by the fairness doctrine, the need for media corporations to appeal to the largest audience, and the relatively small number of people who work in the mainstream media. A smaller number than we perhaps realize: due to time pressures, social pressures within the profession, intellectual timidity, and a fear of taking risks, most media took their cue on any new story or controversy from a handful of outlets. 

This made it easy to manipulate the news, and popular opinion. Conspiracies were more possible, and conspiracy theories more plausible. 

Whether the algorithms automatically direct us there or not, we now have full access to any information source we choose. We can now, for the first time, hear all sides, not just some arbitrarily selected one or two, and make more informed decisions.

In sum, if civil society is becoming less civil, it is not because of the Internet.