Stop the online conspiracy theorists before they break democracy

I remember just a few days ago when media outlets were slamming the "alt-right trolls" for spreading the racist conspiracy theory that the attack on Jussie Smollett was fake. Fast forward to today, it's generally accepted as fake (although Smollett still hasn't admitted it) by those same news outlets, yet there's 0 acknowledgement of the fact that the people they slammed turned out to be completely right, and of course no apology. Just more rhetoric about how this might make people less likely to believe them in the future. Believability is something that's earned, and at this point it's been lost by mainstream news outlets. Shutting down some internet troll bogeyman isn't going to change that, a little self-awareness might.

The powers that be are afraid that social media has caused them to lose control of the narrative. So they hire people like this author to argue there is danger in permitting broad, inclusive, open discussion, where all voices are allowed - a bedrock of our western tradition. This propaganda is designed to weaken popular resistance to censorship laws, and condition people to condone the mass deplatforming we are seeing recently.

Apparently not confident in their ability to make better arguments (to counter the false narratives etc..) she and they propose more government regulation. Great for those who have means to influence policy makers. Bad for the rest of us.

>Cannibals, aliens and clandestine lizard overlords: thanks to algorithms, such ideas threaten the future of Europe

Great subtitle. Is it ok to consider it a conspiracy theory? (no sarcasm)

What scares me is that people are using this as an argument for why companies like Facebook and Google should tightly control everything people see and hear. To me, this is an argument for education and media reform.

"Our ability to understand threats to free expression, security and democracy are all hindered by the opaqueness of technologies designed for advertising purposes to keep a user’s attention for as long as possible, which essentially distort the level playing field of free speech by amplifying or driving a user to certain messaging or enabling the micro-targeting of content."

Transparency would help but how do we answer the "right" of tech giants to run proprietary (non-transparent) systems in pursuit of profits? Regulation by politician/law-makers who clearly don't understand tech (and often have their own self-dealing agendas) doesn't seem to be a wise solution. Courts favor the free speech rights of everyone, which unfortunately includes "disinformation" speech.

My own approach has been to completely boycott companies that choose profits at the expense of rational, civilized society. Financial punishment is typically the only thing that markets pay real attention to. Am curious how others here view the problem.

I agree that a part of this problem is information silos that you're pushed into my machine learning algorithms.

You should see my youtube feed. I watch 1 Jordan Peterson video and it treats me like I'm his biggest fanboy. Oh, and you like him watch these other guys who like him too. Oh and you like them, we'll make you feel even better by watching MORE things like him. WATCH MORE VIDEOS HERE. Stay we'll make you feel like everyone agrees with you.

For me to break this I have to actively go out to break the algorithm by watching videos from people who disagree with Jordan just to add those types of videos into my feed.

I (only kinda) knowing how these algorithms work try to train it to give me a healthy diet of both sides of the debate.

So apply that to a conspiracy.

Oh, you think the earth is flat? Watch this self affirming video about the moon landing.

This works really well when shopping or trying to match a search to the text you're putting in, but it doesn't work well for creating diversified feeds that inform people.

One way to break this up is by breaking up the monopolies on data, so that you can have different companies offer algorithms ON the data that the mega corps have. This would require a ton of regulation because you'd have to force data consumers not to turn around and sell that data. As we've seen can be a problem with facebook. But we need to break apart owning data and owning the algorithms.

I really don't think Q boomers are a threat to democracy.

> Instead of focusing exclusively on the removal of extreme content and accounts, it will be necessary to regulate against harmful infrastructures and malicious behaviours.

I'm as alarmed as anyone else by the proliferation of conspiracy theories, from vaccination autism to QAnon to Flat Earth, but I'm also suitably cautious of official or quasi-official narrative control deciding which views are legitimate.

That is a level of power that never ever fails to corrupt its holders; a cure worse than its disease.