Of Algorithms and News
I intensely dislike fake news or, for that matter, slanted news. I do believe that the term “fake news” should be limited to things that are totally made up, not things in which the reporting is slanted, or in which poor conclusions are drawn. People were and are justified in mistrusting the media.
Personally, I don’t see this as either due to a liberal or conservative bias, but to a stupid bias and an income bias. Stupid, because journalists are too often willing to function without an understanding of essential data. For example, any journalist who refers to a poll, statistics, probability, or anything related should have a basic knowledge of how those things work. The money slant, in particular, results in slanted headlines, so people who read just headlines and even opening paragraphs often get a very slanted story. The headline is designed to sell.
Unfortunately, people have turned from potentially slanted media sources, which frequently had the relevant data by which the slant could be corrected (often in the last paragraph or so), and instead started to use sources with no factual control at all. So we have a problem with misinformation driving many people’s actions. I don’t see this as a problem of left, right, or center, but rather of people.
The War on Fake News
I say all of this, however, to go to a worse problem: The war on fake news.
Fake news isn’t new. Anyone who has served in a church or any other social group will have heard rumors and gossip. Fake news is just gossip writ large. We like to blame technology for our problems, but technology just enables the sort of bad behavior we’d engage in without it. Fake news is effectively distributed by social media. It used to be distributed by word of mouth, anonymous notes, or whispers. And just as it was around the caveman campfire, so it is with social media.
Search
But now various social media moguls or organizations want to somehow filter the fake news. I acknowledge that they are private organizations and can, of course, decide what they ought to publish. I’m a strong believer in a free press. What concerns me is the way in which people surrender themselves to this sort of limitation. We hear the word “algorithm” and it somehow separates us from the fact that someone else is going to decide what we’re going to see. Google has search engine algorithms to determine which web sites will show up when you search. That’s a necessity. They need to filter for content, or search wouldn’t work. Then they add measures of reliability of that data, and that sorts what you’ll see first. Still, this is arguably what a good curator of content should do. But then we fall into line by always taking our information from the first one or two lines.
Social News Feeds
Facebook is not satisfied with providing me with all of the posts from people that I am friends with and pages that I like. They have to somehow decide what I am supposed to want to see based on their observations of my behavior. Should I fall into line? Now Facebook wants to decide what news stories are most reliable. They’re going to move material from the pages I like (which I often prefer to see first), because they think I ought to want to see family and friend stuff first. What about those businesses and ministries that are operated by family and friends, and that I want to follow very closely? In this case it’s not like Google where you have to curate in order to fulfill the basic mission—finding content that accurately matches a search. Rather, the idea is to keep you engaged with the business (Facebook’s business) so that they can place paid advertising in front of you.
Many businesses are deeply disturbed because this makes social media advertising harder. That actually doesn’t concern me. Business has survived changes in the atmosphere before. I find myself in what seems to be the odd position of being OK with this from a business standpoint, but not personally. After all, Facebook is a business. I completely understand their need to keep people using their platform. It’s financially beneficial to them to have you as thoroughly hooked as possible. Personally, on the other hand, I have to ask whether this is acceptable.
An Algorithm is People
I think the word “algorithm” separates us from the reality. As Facebook designs your feed, it is people who design the algorithm, and you’re allowing the staff of Facebook to decide what stories you will see, based on what Facebook staff thinks is reliable. Yes, there’s a user survey, but the interpretation of the results and the design of the algorithm is in their hands. This ability to slant what you see, and influence subtly (and the more subtly the more dangerously) what you believe is, I believe much worse than Fake News (which you can check), or slanted news (which you can analyze). This isn’t providing you with material you can analyze. It’s preventing you from knowing what it is you should have analyzed.
Again, it’s not Facebook’s or Twitter’s, or Google’s fault, in the sense that they’re trying to do something evil. The very success of their business model is tending us toward more easily controllable and more herdable. It’s not the technology that is to blame. People have manipulated information through the ages, and it has worked brilliantly for those who were good at it. The problem is that we’re not recognizing it when it’s being done to us by organizations we would consider to be helpful.
What Do I Do?
The one and only way to combat fake or slanted news is through research, analysis, and careful thought. Nobody’s general program is going to save us from it. It’s dangerous to expect it to. That’s simply handing your mind over to someone else to shape, even if that shaping is done by an algorithm.
Here are my suggestions:
- Go out of your way to go beyond what is put in front of you (reading far down a news feed, taking advantage of sorting options, etc.)
- Intentionally seek out different sources.
- Do your own evaluations of reliability.
- Check the sources used by your sources.
- Take time to learn about things that aren’t in your normal sphere, such as statistics and surveys, economics, political theory. Not get a degree; just read a little bit that is not about what, but about how.
- Remember that when something happens on your computer, tablet, or phone, there are people behind it. It’s not magic that is choosing that news story that just popped up. The algorithm that did it is created by people. Do you trust them?
