Everyone seems to agree that social media has become a cesspit, with cancel-culture mobs enforcing ideological purity on one side and trolls spreading conspiracy theories on the other.
X and Facebook are accused of amplifying hatred and conflict, with riots in the United Kingdom highlighting how a handful of social media posts can ignite a cauldron of simmering anger and resentment.
In response, governments around the world are cracking down on free speech. Turkey banned Instagram, Venezuela banned X and the UK government has been sending people to jail for inciting violence — and in some cases, just for having shitty opinions.
But there’s a better way to fix social media than banning accounts and censoring “misinformation.”
The root cause of the problem isn’t fake news in individual posts, it’s how social media algorithms prioritize conflict and highlight the most polarizing content in a bid for engagement and ad dollars.
“This is going to sound a little bit crazy, but I think the free speech debate is a complete distraction right now,” former Twitter boss Jack Dorsey told the Oslo Freedom Forum in June. “I think the real debate should be about free will.”
A marketplace of social media algorithms
Dorsey argues that black-box social media algorithms are impacting our agency by twisting our reality and hacking our mind space. He believes the solution is to enable users to choose between different algorithms to have greater control over the sort of content they serve up.
Lyn Alden and Jack Dorsey at the Oslo Freedom Forum. (X)
“Give people choice of what algorithm they want to use, from a party that they trust, give people choice to build their own algorithm that they can plug in on top of these networks and see what they want. And they can shift them out as well. And give people choice to have, really, a marketplace.”
It’s a simple but compelling idea, but there are a…
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