Big Tech: Boon or a Bane!
Vivek Murthy, US Surgeon General said at a White House briefing “Modern technology companies have enabled misinformation to poison our information environment with little accountability to their users”.
It is a truism that we live in a “digital age.” However, it would be more accurate to say that we live in an algorithmically curated era — that is, a period when many of our choices and perceptions are shaped by machine-learning algorithms that nudge us in directions favored by those who employ the programmers who write the necessary code. A good way of describing them would be as recommender engines. They monitor your digital trail and note what interests you — as evidenced by what you have browsed or purchased online.
Amazon, for example, regularly offers me suggestions for items that are “based on my browsing history.”
Moreover, Amazon’s algorithms promote books with false anti-vaccination claims and COVID-19 conspiracy theories and have found people are easily able to evade rules against promoting false cures in product reviews, such as for the anti-parasite drug ivermectin (The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned against taking formulations of ivermectin meant for animals.) and claiming COVID-19 vaccines were “making people sick and killing them.”
Misinformation on major social networks has proliferated in recent years. YouTube, in particular, has lagged behind other platforms in cracking down on different types of misinformation. The platform, which Google owns, led to the misinformation by claiming that approved vaccines cause autism, cancer, or infertility or contain trackers. Moreover, researchers claim that YouTube’s stronger election misinformation policies had a spillover effect on Facebook.
Facebook’s critics have long charged that misleading, inflammatory content that often reinforces the viewpoints of its viewers generates significantly more attention and clicks than mainstream news. However, the forthcoming peer-reviewed study by researchers at New York University and the Université Grenoble Alpes in France has found that from August 2020 to January 2021, news publishers known for putting out misinformation got six times the amount of likes, shares, and interactions on the platform as did trustworthy news sources, such as World Health Organization.
Pew Research Center’s survey of U.S. adults conducted July 13–19, 2020 found that more than two-thirds (64%) believe social media have a mostly negative impact on how things are going in the country today, leading to hate and harassment on these platforms. Furthermore, there are concerns about users believing everything they see or read — or not knowing what to believe.
Even though these BIG TECH giants have said that they have toughened their policies to avoid misinformation, long-term regulatory action will be needed to address the structural factors that contribute to an online environment in which misinformation thrives.
