The Internet was an attempt to free us. To free information. It brought information to the people, and as a byproduct, it let people participate in the spread of that information.
Then the algorithms came in pursuit of engagement and trying to tailor an informational experience to each user. This is all stuff you know. It’s no secret that we don’t create for people anymore. We create for algorithms and hope for people. These are all things we accept.
If you are a science-minded person, then the algorithms will learn and serve you science-related media and information. If you like hate speech, some algorithms may be less inclined to provide, but not all. Regardless of your rhetoric or biases, you can find an algorithm that will serve you and let you sit in whatever knowledge bubble you want. Don’t like Taylor Swift? You never have to hear about her. Your bubble isn’t fed only the information you want the most, but with what has created the most engagement. What is engagement?
You may know this too, or think you know this. Engagement is a click, a tap, a reaction, a share, or a comment. How do you get a click? That’s where clickbait titles come from, often bending the truth or outright lying to get content in front of the most eyes as possible. The content is secondary, it’s the eyes that count. It’s the eyes, not the quality, that provide revenue. No place is more driven by pure revenue than the Internet.
What about the other metrics? How do you drive other forms of engagement? More often than not, it’s by creating an argument. Go into any comment section with more than a few voices, and you will find an argument somewhere, often already pushed to the top by the algorithm. Most of the time, when you find yourself looking at the comment section, aren’t you looking for that argument? Isn’t that why you clicked or tapped too even if you don’t plan to engage beyond that?
Go out onto the Internet and try to find original thought or, even harder, original information. You might not have to search hard, but you will have to search. It’s not going to be served to you. This type of information and thought is not served by algorithms because it is not built for them. Instead, you get it filtered through the lens of people who want to get your click and create engagement. They will lie to get the click or write in service of an argument. Even when you find an attempt at honesty, they still have to do something to differentiate themselves from everyone else writing their own version of the same story. If all else fails, they’ll just stick their content behind a paywall.
If you are science-minded and interested in space like me, then I ask you to think about this. When was the last time you saw a news story from NASA hit one of your feeds? Was it actually from NASA? An actual NASA press release? They have those all the time, but I’d bet that if you saw a “NASA” story, it was filtered through some other lens, often sensationalized, opinionated, and with a clickbait title for good measure.
The Internet is information that’s eating itself. Every news story spins off hundreds—if not thousands—of other stories, all of them drifting away from the truth and from what matters. It’s not new, you can go back as far as you want in recorded history and see it. We started to crawl with newspapers, we learned to walk with 24-hour news, and then we ran with the Internet.
It was already bleak, but what has changed? Until recently, human work was still required even on the Internet. Every story had to be written, and every opinion rendered. You didn’t have to have a news organization backing you anymore, but you had to teach people and, through those people, teach the algorithm that your opinion was of value. With AI, it’s off to the races. AI can do a lot of things, but it was built by this system and for this system. News feeds, even from so-called reputable sources, are filled with AI, and when done well, most people can’t tell. That’s not where it ends, though. Images, videos, coding, AI is already there, and it’s only going to get better at growing this self-eating cycle.
I haven’t even mentioned all the bots that exist today and will exist tomorrow. Some of which exist just to create “engagement.” They are sharing content, reacting, and even arguing in comment sections. We built this beautiful thing on this beautiful idea, and then our algorithms—even those driven by good intentions—twisted it to make it ugly.
The Internet is a battlefield of clickbait titles and premises designed to create argument. Unfortunately, the easiest arguments to understand and engage with, and also the ones that mean the least to the furtherment of human civilization, are those that have two clear sides with little gray area. This has another unfortunate side effect. This black and white argument feeds right into the liberal vs conservative discourse that we have somehow divided all of humanity into. It’s to the point where all information is consumed through the liberal vs conservative lens. You need look no further than the state of discourse in the United States to feel its real effects on our society. And I’m just as guilty as anybody.
Over 40 years ago, we turned down a new road and undertook a massive project to connect humanity. We’re here now. We’re more connected than ever. You have the Internet in your pocket. Do you feel more connected?