'Social media', market power and the health of democracy

[Celerity]

With the whistle blown on Facebook, Congress must allocate ownership of personal data to the person—not the platform—to allow competitive providers to emerge.

https://socialeurope.eu/social-media-market-power-and-the-health-of-democracy

According to its former employee Frances Haugen, Facebook algorithms consciously amplify dangerous misinformation and privilege the most divisive content posted on the network. Such content is more frequently shared by users and foregrounding it maximises traffic on the platform—and so turnover.

This modus operandi, which became still more aggressive from 2018, is generating perverse incentives pushing even relatively moderate users to sharpen and polarise their content to obtain visibility. It is a Darwinian struggle for prominence which, given the rules of the game, leads to the survival of those users most fit for division and risks skewing public opinion and altering political outcomes. A recent working paper I co-authored shows that exposure to political information through ‘social media’ has been closely associated with the diffusion of divisive ideas in Europe in the last decade.

Haugen also revealed that, as the volume of divisive content circulating on the platform grows, it becomes more difficult, and more expensive, to monitor, especially in marginal areas where the economic return is not sufficient to justify the associated expense. This is a very dangerous short-circuit, especially in times when co-ordination via web platforms could issue in last January’s siege of Capitol Hill in Washington.

Digital monopolies

What is worse, and what dramatically exposes democratic societies to the consequences of the algorithms deployed in Menlo Park in California, is that Facebook and its Big Tech peers, mostly also located in Silicon Valley, occupy dominant positions in extremely concentrated markets. A few firms control the information and communications technologies sector, accounting for increasing shares of physical assets, revenues and market capitalisation. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google’s Alphabet (with Saudi Arabia’s Aramco) lead the ranks of the top 100 companies in the world.

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[OAITW r.2.0]

1. I thank God I never signed up for Facebbook.

Another internet timewaster I don't need.