- Lo and behold, here we are in America 2020,
possibly the most divisive time
that we've ever lived through
and I think that our technology
bear's lot of responsibility for that.
An algorithm is nothing more complicated
than a calculation,
Like we talk about algorithms
as if they're some kind of
self-aware artificially intelligent.
No they're just lines of code.
It's kind of like a recipe,
you're basically looking at a list of algorithms
and the problem comes when we put too much faith in them.
You know,
they are very useful at
making calculations
that we cannot ourselves do.
You could look at Google Maps
and all that traffic data and say,
Well,
maybe if I take this freeway.
And then this exit here,
but you you'd be spitballing it,
right you'd be guessing.
Their algorithm has a lot of data,
and has a lot more data than you.
It's a lot better at calculating things that you.
So that's an example of
why we put our faith and trust in algorithms
in this world.
Where we shouldn't necessarily always do that.
I always like to think of my Spotify
Discover Weekly playlist,
which if you don't know if you're not on Spotify,
it is the one playlist,
that it will assemble every week,
of music that it thinks you'll like.
Some of it new, some of it not so new,
some of it new to you.
During quarantine,
I have been assembling
a Drum & Bass playlist,
because, I find that's
the the best thing to run to.
The Spotify algorithm
is so dumb,
that it thinks that I just
am only into Drum & Bass now.
The algorithm thinks that the way that you are now,
the things that you like in this
moment or in this past week
or in this past day,
is the way you will always be going forward.
So, my Discover Weekly playlist is now unusable.
A larger scale example of that, of course, is YouTube.
Which will send you down this radicalization hole,
you know.
We've all got that story of the relative,
who started with one Fox News video on YouTube.
Then they follow it the,
"you might also like these videos" down the side,
and they end up you know getting into QAnon.
There's no thought to it,
there's no,
this is,
you know,
where you need humans to be part of the equation.
Because otherwise these algorithms,
can take us to some really scary places.
For example,
the YouTube algorithm helped get Jair Bolsonaro,
elected in Brazil.
He was basically a fringe YouTube star.
And the algorithm, like,
once once a curious voter clicked on
a Brazilian political video
that was maybe leaning a little bit right wing.
It kind of led you on this rabbit hole
all the way down to Bolsonaro.
It also happened in the US,
there are a number of studies
that shows that you had way more
recommendation videos
that were positive to Trump than you did to Clinton.
And again it was because of the controversial nature,
of that content,
like it was more controversial
to have a video that was pro-Trump.
Therefore YouTube would recommend it more.
Facebook has itself,
noted that its own algorithm
tends towards more controversial
and divisive content,
because they measure these things through engagement
and what engagement includes
is not just did you like it
or did you put an angry face on it,
or any of the other emojis,
but also how many comments were under it.
Your crazy uncle is having an argument
with your best friend,
like, you know people who you hope would never meet
in your Facebook feed and all of a sudden they're going at it.
So, to Facebook, that's an engagement, that's a positive thing.
Facebook likes that.
Controversy is good for these companies,
because it means you're spending more time on the site.
And they're not measuring
any metrics of, like, how happy
you are being on the site.
How good for Democracy is this?
No, they just want to have that metric
of how much time are you spending on the site.
So they can pass on that metric to advertisers,
and so it is in their best interest
to promote more divisive content.
So this is really scary stuff,
and it comes from Silicon Valley
placing too much trust in its content algorithms.
I think the most essential thing
any consumer of technology and social media can do,
is question algorithms.
Question: who is providing it with this content?
What is their best interest?
And why have they changed
the service that I really love?
If they know that this algorithm
isn't likely to make you spend more time on their site,
they're more likely to roll back
that feature or roll out a new version of it.
Get loud about it.
Complain.
Tweet about it.
And don't just assume that they're here to stay.