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The Algorithm of Polarization Fears a Free Web
-- By AlexRouhandeh - 08 Dec 2024
The Freedom to Disagree
Twenty days after the 2024 election, Faiz Shakir — an advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders — appeared on New York Times columnist Ezra Klein’s namesake show to discuss the question: Would Bernie Have Won? While unpacking the topic, the two lamented the internet’s reshaping from the time of blogging, where conversation around disagreements was the norm, to the age of social media, where disagreements are avoided in favor of declarations to like-minded followers. The two agree that this trend has shaped politics, illuminating the power algorithms play in steering society.
A 2021 study conducted by the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs found “when people are less reactive to news, their online environment remains politically mixed. However, when users constantly react to and share articles of their preferred news sources, they are more likely to foster a politically isolated network.” When people operate their own blogs, no algorithm unknowingly works to curate such an environment. This dynamic exemplifies the value that free software could play in facilitating a less polarized political environment.
A Free(er) Marketplace
Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, defines free software as that which affords the user freedom to use, study, share and modify. Stallman makes clear that free software refers to “freedom, not price,” thus individuals may charge for distribution of their software. This system reorients the transactional nature of the internet away from a marketplace where users exchange data for the ability to use software to a system of possessing software for individual use. If software and original thoughts were valued over data collection, algorithms may play less of a role in driving the web.
Eben Moglen of Columbia Law School and the Software Freedom Law Center described the internet as a “new infrastructure” in his 1997 article the “The Invisible Barbecue,” noting this infrastructure has been organized under private rather than public control. Had the internet infrastructure been placed in public control with its content being produced by free software, the economics of the web would look different from that of today, with less emphasis on centralized platforms. In this system, users would have the tools and freedom to operate their own competitive blogs and websites. They would spend more time curating their own online spaces and seeking out unique communities rather than being paired with them and fed reinforcing content.
An Internet of Choice
While many people use social media to interact with people from their daily lives, many also use it to interact with strangers. An article published by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University writes that “Disinhibition, or the tendency of users to act outside the norms of society by being, for example, more aggressive online or less likely to use self-restraint, is common on social media.” It states that disinhibition can spring from “online anonymity or distance from others” and that the negative behaviors tied to disinhibition can feed radicalization.
The study writes that algorithms exacerbate the creation of echo-chambers, driving people deeper into like-minded communities. With certain social media platforms boasting hundreds of millions of users, ordinary people can stumble upon and become entwined with extremist ideas with a greater level of ease than before the rise of social media. If the internet were a collection of websites and blogs run using free software, it’s plausible that many people would not encounter polarizing forces or have any interest in doing so. This web would be intentional, providing users greater agency to decide what information they encounter and what forces can engage with their platforms
Localizing the Web
An internet where individual entities control their software and host their own platforms means there'd be less reliance on catering scalable content to algorithms, which could create new openings for websites to provide utilitarian information and draw in new users through outreach off the web. A greater focus on the convergence of physical and cyber life through in-person outreach means local information providers, like newspapers, could better compete in the vast cybersphere In 2007, prior to the advent of the iPhone and rise of Facebook, nearly 51 million weekly newspapers were circulated in the U.S., but that has fallen to roughly 21 million in 2022, according to estimates by the Pew Research Center.
When newspapers close, populations become more polarized. A 2018 study published in the Journal of Communication found that after a paper closed, “Voters were 1.9 percent more likely to vote for the same party for president and senator.” The authors note that while the margin is small, such figures can decide elections. Additionally, the News Literacy Project notes in its analysis of this study that disappearing local news means increased attention on national news, which often features partisan conflict. By decentralizing the web and empowering website hosts, the internet marketplace may look closer to that of 2007, when weekly papers boasted greater circulation and the political environment was less polarized, according to Pew.
A Web for IRL
The Internet continues to serve as a pervasive force in society, shaping culture, delivering information, and influencing elections. What was once a mere tool has become the center of an economic system that anchors the world’s five largest companies by market cap. While it provides innovation, it also creates harm — a 2016 study published in the Acta Informatica Medica journal warns that “Internet is provided in abundance and is easily accessible and the illogical use of the Internet makes it be quite dangerous, especially for young users.”
Society must ask whether the internet economy is oriented around logical use. A plurality of Americans prefer in-person communication, according to 2024 polling by YouGov? , and most prefer in-person shopping, according to a 2022 Pew report. But with hundreds of millions of people subject to algorithmic incentives to stay online, social media remains a force of interconnectivity that steers society toward a culture of like-mindedness, visceral reactions, and self-gratification. As Moglen writes, the digitalization of the human experience “potentially turns all forms of human symbolic activity into software.” With free software, humans can move away from algorithmic-driven behavior that sews divisions.
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