Scapegoating the Algorithm

America’s epistemic challenges run deeper than social media. (NB: It’s not just an American problem)

Dan Williams

Many people sense that the United States is undergoing an epistemic crisis, a breakdown in the country’s collective capacity to agree on basic facts, distinguish truth from falsehood, and adhere to norms of rational debate.

“The Yellow Press,” by L. M. Glackens, portrays William Randolph Hearst as a jester distributing sensational stories. Published October 12, 1910. Courtesy the Library of Congress.

This crisis encompasses many things: rampant political lies; misinformation; and conspiracy theories; widespread beliefs in demonstrable falsehoods (“misperceptions”); intense polarization in preferred information sources; and collapsing trust in institutions meant to uphold basic standards of truth and evidence (such as science, universities, professional journalism, and public health agencies).

According to survey data, over 60% of Republicans believe Joe Biden’s presidency was illegitimate. 20% of Americans think vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent, and 36% think the specific risks of COVID-19 vaccines outweigh their benefits. Only 31% of Americans have at least a “fair amount” of confidence in mainstream media, while a record-high 36% have no trust at all.

What is driving these problems? One influential narrative blames social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter (now X), and YouTube. In the most extreme form of this narrative, such platforms are depicted as technological wrecking balls responsible for shattering the norms and institutions that kept citizens tethered to a shared reality, creating an informational Wild West dominated by viral falsehoods, bias-confirming echo chambers, and know-nothing punditry.

The timing is certainly suspicious. Facebook launched in 2004, YouTube in 2005, and Twitter in 2006. As they and other platforms acquired hundreds of millions of users over the next decade, the health of American democracy and its public sphere deteriorated. By 2016, when Donald Trump was first elected president, many experts were writing about a new “post-truth” or “misinformation” age.

Moreover, the fundamental architecture of social media platforms seems hostile to rational discourse. Algorithms that recommend content prioritize engagement over accuracy. This can amplify sensational and polarizing material or bias-confirming content, which can drag users into filter bubbles. Meanwhile, the absence of traditional gatekeepers means that influencers with no expertise or ethical scruples can reach vast audiences.

The dangerous consequences of these problems seem obvious to many casual observers of social media. And some scientific research corroborates this widespread impression. For example, a systematic review of nearly five hundred studies finds suggestive evidence for a link between digital media use and declining political trust, increasing populism, and growing polarization. Evidence also consistently shows an association between social media use and beliefs in conspiracy theories and misinformation.

But there are compelling reasons to be skeptical that social media is a leading cause of America’s epistemic challenges. The “wrecking ball” narrative exaggerates the novelty of these challenges, overstates social media’s responsibility for them, and overlooks deeper political and institutional problems that are reflected on social media, not created by it.

The platforms are not harmless. They may accelerate worrying trends, amplify fringe voices, and facilitate radicalization. However, the current balance of evidence suggests that the most consequential drivers of America’s large-scale epistemic challenges run much deeper than algorithms.

America’s long epistemic struggles

To evaluate whether social media is responsible for America’s epistemic crisis, we must first clarify what that crisis is. And here, it is essential to note that many of America’s epistemic challenges are not new. Problems such as political ignorance, conspiracy theories, propaganda, and bitter intergroup conflict have plagued the country throughout its history.

Research in political science has consistently documented astonishingly high rates of political ignorance among American voters. A landmark 1964 study found that most voters were unaware of basic political facts, estimating that roughly 70% were unable to identify which party controlled Congress. Similarly, from the Salem witch trials in the late seventeenth century to the widespread Satanic panic of the late twentieth century, false rumors, misinformation, and widespread misperceptions have been ubiquitous throughout American history. As political scientist Brendan Nyhan writes, there was never a “golden age in which political debate was based on facts and truth,” and “no systematic evidence exists to demonstrate that the prevalence of misperceptions today (while worrisome) is worse than in the past.”

Political polarization and vicious intergroup conflict have been more intense at previous stages in American history, not least during the Civil War. Although there was little polarization between the parties in the mid-twentieth century, this was a historical anomaly. It was also partially due to the parties’ shared interests in upholding a system of racial apartheid in the South. This system was, in turn, supported by widespread lies, racist myths, and censorship, from “scientific” racism painting Black people as inferior to the suppression of anti-lynching journalism.

Elite-driven disinformation has also been a pervasive force throughout American history. Both the tobacco and fossil fuel industries waged sophisticated propaganda campaigns to deny the harms caused by their products. McCarthyism involved systematic political repression based on largely fabricated communist threats. And there is nothing new about catastrophic, elite-driven epistemic failures, including their role in events as recent as the Iraq War and the 2007-08 financial crisis.

Perhaps most surprisingly, there is little evidence to suggest that rates of conspiracy theorizing have increased in prevalence in the social media age. In a recent study, political scientist Joe Uscinski and colleagues conducted four separate analyses to test for possible changes over time. They conclude: “In no instance do we observe systematic evidence for an increase in conspiracism, however operationalized.”

Today, many are reasonably worried about the dangers demagoguery and populism pose to American democracy. However, these forces have always posed profound political challenges. Nearly 2,000 years before the emergence of the printing press, Plato argued that democracy inevitably leads to tyranny by elevating demagogues who are skilled at catering to voters’ prejudices.

Of course, these observations do not disprove the hypothesis that social media has exacerbated America’s epistemic challenges in recent years. Nevertheless, they serve to remind us that many of the problems attributed to social media can arise (and have historically arisen) in the absence of social media.

Moreover, such observations should encourage us to be more specific about the nature of these problems. To the extent that we lack systematic evidence that issues such as political ignorance, misperceptions, and conspiracism in the mass public are worse today than in the past, what is new about America’s current epistemic crisis?

At least relative to several decades ago, three developments stand out. First, rates of political polarization are incredibly high. Second, rates of institutional trust are low and seem to be falling. And third, even if there is little evidence that misperceptions and conspiracy theorizing are more prevalent among the mass public, they seem to play a far more consequential role among political elites, not least in the figure of Donald Trump.

To what extent can social media be blamed for such developments?…

https://asteriskmag.com/issues/11/scapegoating-the-algorithm

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It’s the age of regret: gen Z grew up glued to their screens, and missed the joy of being human

Cynical Theories

In the Depths of the Digital Age: Five books on psychological life in the internet age / We Are Hopelessly Hooked by Jacob Weisberg

John Sanbonmatsu: Postmodernism and the corruption of the academic intelligentsia (2006)

Helen Pluckrose: Postmodernism and its impact, explained Science, society and related matters: an exchange

Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know

A Lying World Order

Hans Magnus Enzensberger: The Industrialization of the Mind

The fall of Twitter is making the trolls and grifters desperate