We Must Talk About the Role of Facebook, Twitter in Society

I have lots of thoughts about the outcome of the US election but have been letting them ruminate to avoid contributing to the cacophony of hot takes. Here is a first bit that I feel strongly about as it ties into topics that I have covered repeatedly here on Continuations.

I have been writing about the danger of the “filter bubble” on and off over the years and have called for an “opposing view” reader. I have also written about the danger of “information cascades.” This election has definitely shown that these phenomena not only exist but have massive influence on how people think and behave.

Companies such as Facebook and Twitter that create huge value for their owners have an obligation to society to break people out of their filter bubbles (instead of re-enforcing them) and to detect and curtail information cascades on bogus stories and hate speech. The night of the election I happened to be talking to a product manager who works on Facebook’s feed. She said: we don’t want to be editorial. I said: you must be editorial, meaning: you must pro-actively work against filter bubbles and information cascades. Civil and democratic society will come apart otherwise.

Here is a way of thinking about it that clarifies this for me. Imagine a system that at the push of a button allows its users to deliver a physical object into the homes of hundreds of millions of other people. Now imagine the operator of that system saying: we don’t “edit” what people send via the system. You could put in a hand grenade with the pin removed or a bouquet of flowers. We just deliver it. We are only in the delivery business.

We would find this position preposterous. As society we would have none of it. Yet we have exactly that when it comes to information. The system operators are making no distinction between uplifting content and propaganda. They allow for “mind grenades” to be lobbed into millions of homes. 

I do believe that it is possible for all of us to become so well educated and so psychologically free that we could withstand these mind grenades on our own. But that is a hopeful vision for the future, it is not the here and now. In the here and now propaganda continues to be effective. And that puts a huge responsibility on the operators of powerful systems. I do not know what the best way is to hold platforms accountable, but the process of figuring it out starts with ongoing coverage and discussion of their role.