We Need a Pro-Choice Movement for Algorithms
Hi friends –
The other day I said to my daughter that I needed to “toot, skeet, and tweet,” – referring to writing posts on the social networks Mastodon, Bluesky and Twitter – and she truly didn’t believe these were the real names of these activities. But, here we are, deep into the absurdities of this era of social media fragmentation, with new platforms popping up, and old ones falling apart, and all of them using different hokey names.
In the midst of all this upheaval, however, there is opportunity. And in this week’s article for New York Times Opinion (gift link), I make the case for a social media future where users have more choice in what they see in their algorithmic feeds.
Here’s my argument in a nutshell:
What’s the Problem?: Algorithmic feeds mean that the users don’t control what they see; corporations do. Not only can that lead to “filter bubbles” and extremist “rabbit holes,” it also simply gives profit-driven corporations an unprecedented amount of power over public discourse.
In a 2020 paper, Stanford political science professor Francis Fukuyama, described the perils of allowing corporations control information curation as follows:
“At the moment, we are reasonably confident that the people sitting on the other side won’t deliberately pick up the gun and shoot us with it. The question for American democracy, however, is whether it is safe to leave the gun on the table, where another person with less good intentions—whether the owners of the platforms or outsiders who figure out how to manipulate them for their purposes—could come along and pick it up.”
When I asked Fukuyama about Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, he said it “was an acting out of exactly my gun metaphor—we have one rich individual who can use his money to reshape the political discourse.”
What Can be Done?: There are a lot of options that could be considered - everything from making social media companies utilities to auditing their algorithms. But in this column, I propose tackling the lowest hanging fruit: giving users control of the algorithms themselves.
What Would that Look Like?: In my ideal world, I would like to be able to choose my feed from a list of providers, such as librarians, who are already experts at curating information, or from my favorite news outlet.
I’ve gotten a chance to see what that would look like in recent months on the social network, Bluesky, which has started offering users a choice of feeds. It opened up its data to allow outside developers to build custom algorithms.
I have been using as my central feed one called Home+, which includes “interesting content from your extended social circles.” But I also often check one called “Tech News.” I rarely check my actual default feed.
Having the feeds eases me of the burden of having to try to figure out who to follow. Instead, I can just dip my toes into already curated feeds that introduce me to new people and topics.
What are the Limitations?: Of course, there are always limitations to any solution. In this case, there is the very strong power of defaults. Most users likely won’t bother to switch feeds, just like most users don’t change their default privacy settings.
Bluesky says that only 20% of their 600,000 users have adopted custom feeds. And when she ran the ethics team at Twitter, Rumman Chowdhury researched algorithmic choice and found that most users found it difficult to envision. “The paradigm of social media that we have is not one in which people understand having agency,” she told me. Chowdhury’s team was let go when Musk took over, so they never got a chance to test it properly.
So, What’s the upshot?: As an eternal optimist I believe that just because people can’t envision a different future doesn’t mean we shouldn’t build it.
Also, a personal update: This fall I’ll be a Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center. I’ll be working on a book about the impacts of artificial intelligence on human flourishing and researching new opportunities and methods for data-driven accountability journalism.
Thanks for reading.
Best
Julia
P.S. I have a few Bluesky invite codes if you want to try it out. Just reply to this email to get one!