A former digital strategist for Barack Obama has demanded an end to big tech’s profit-driven optimization of outrage and called for regulators to curb online disinformation and division.
Michael Slaby – author of a new book, For All the People: Redeeming the Broken Promises of Modern Media and Reclaiming Our Civic Life – described tech giants Facebook and Google as “two gorillas” crushing the very creativity needed to combat conspiracy theories spread by former US president Donald Trump and others.
“The systems are not broken,” Slaby, 43, told the Guardian by phone from his home in Rhinebeck, New York. “They are working exactly as they were designed for the benefit of their designers. They can be designed differently. We can express and encourage a different set of public values about the public goods that we need from our public sphere.”
Facebook has almost 2.8 billion global monthly active users with a total of 3.3 billion using any of the company’s core products – Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger – on a monthly basis. Its revenue in the fourth quarter of last year was $28bn, up 33% from a year earlier, and profits climbed 53% to $11.2bn.
But the social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg stands accused of poisoning the information well. Critics say it polarises users and allows hate speech and conspiracy theories to thrive, and that people who join extremist groups are often directed by the platform’s algorithm. The use of Facebook by Trump supporters involved in the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol has drawn much scrutiny.
Slaby believes Facebook and Twitter were too slow to remove Trump from their platforms. “This is where I think they hide behind arguments like the first amendment,” he said. “The first amendment is about government suppression of speech; it doesn’t have anything to do with your access to Facebook.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
