Tech

In retrospect we should not be surprised that an industry excluded from basic liability and told it would not be held accountable grew up to be irresponsible and unaccountable.

The story of Section 230 in the United States—and around the world, as other countries followed America’s lead in giving free rein to these American companies—is stunningly simple. Technology platforms had been given the freedom to sell the first consumer product ever that was absolutely immune from age-old common-law or modern regulatory oversight

The growth in extremism and terrorism is the flip side of ICT (information and communications technology) development. This is the other price that humankind pays for successful Silicon Valley startups.

people keep coming back to social media because they help us do something that makes us distinctively human: create, revise, and maintain our identities to gain social status. Social media allow people to present different versions of themselves, monitor how others react to those versions, and revise their identities with unprecedented speed and ef

people who use social media frequently perceive significantly more political disagreement in their daily lives than those who do not.

The platforms’ business model is dependent on the volume and velocity of the inflammatory content being offered. It is not a side issue. It is the driving metric. The more engaging the content, the more eyeballs. The more eyeballs, the more advertising revenue.

Gamergate announced our new era, of American life shaped by social media’s incentives and rules, from platforms just beyond the outskirts of mainstream society.

Instead of leveling the field between small and large, the open Internet has dramatically tilted it in favor of the most massive players.

Think of the story of the death of truth as the story of two pernicious algorithms. One, unleashed by Section 230, allowed the social media platforms to recommend the content, however divisive or false, most likely to attract attention. The second set of algorithms are operated by what have become multibillion-dollar businesses you probably have ne