Public Interest Algorithms: An idea whose time has come, and will quickly be shelved by free-market ideology
Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has proposed a technical measure to defend against the trend of social media to divide us: Public Interest Algorithms. See this in the Brookings Institution website: Wheeler on Public Interest Algorithms
Tom Wheeler is a very smart guy, so why has he poisoned his concept by branding it as a public interest initiative? In an era when free-market ideologues hold sway over the intransigent core of Republicans in Congress, and Silicon Valley is jam-packed with libertarians, anything that smacks of public interest is derided as an instrument of the Nanny State. If you can’t legislate restaurants to stop providing super-sized soft drinks to their customers (a clear public health hazard), how are you going to keep at bay the Sultans of Social Media who will fight tooth and nail against public interest algorithms tampering with their business models?
A current Senate hearing on Russian meddling with U.S. elections via social media finds Facebook and Twitter PR spinners making conciliatory noises while at the same time holding fast to their narrative of social media as the best outlets for the freest flow of information ever conceived of by the human race. The problem with this narrative is the unbounded nature of the “flow.” It’s not like a stream that gathers the contributions of multiple tributaries and flows in a direction (toward the truth or at least a wide consensus). It’s not even like a river that has overleapt its banks in a flood, since a flood, too, still has a recognizable shape and direction. It is a deluge pounding down anywhere and everywhere, a Hurricane Harvey hovering over continents. The “public interest” is a drowning victim.
Continue reading “Public Interest Algorithms and the Jungle of Earth Two”