cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/3320637
YouTube and Reddit are sued for allegedly enabling the racist mass shooting in Buffalo that left 10 dead::The complementary lawsuits claim that the massacre in 2022 was made possible by tech giants, a local gun shop, and the gunman’s parents.
Don’t blame youtube and reddit directly.
But do blame their algorithms that fuel the fires for engagement.
I blame the shooter. Motives are motives but he still pulls the trigger.
I think no one holds the shooter blameless, but that’s of more limited value. It’s straightforward to keep the shooter from doing further harm. More complicated is the task of mitigating the chances of radicalization leading to more spree shootings.
It doesn’t even necessarily have to involve limiting speech, but it does suggest that a social media feed really needs to mix it up and avoid a feedback loop of one sided thought and rage.
What if someone had repeatedly told him to do it? Wouldn’t that person also be to blame?
Algorithms show you what you want. That’s literally what they’re designed to do. There is no difference between your algorithm and the shooter’s, or mine and the shooter’s, and I see 0 of the content he saw.
They are designed to filter out everything but what you interact with the most, and what you interact with the most is going to become skewed as it becomes a closed feedback loop, or a spiral if you will. Over many iterations, what it thinks you want shapes what you think you want.
It will also see what others who want what you want want, and serve you suggestions based on that. Likewise, it will serve what you want to others who want what you want.
At some point it becomes a self-feeding echo chamber, and that is exactly what we see happening.
What if I told you that you can search for and watch videos that aren’t part of your current algorithm, and also that’s how most people interact with the service