Just to be clear: Algorithms
It’s not algorithms that amplify hate speech. It’s not algorithms that filter critical comments from propaganda posts. It’s not algorithms that divide our societies.
It’s people who do that.
It’s greedy tech CEOs who choose to run their company on surveillance capitalism business models and who see fear and hate as appropriate means to increase user engagement.
It’s their managers who focus on bonus payments and instruct the teams to build these rage-fueled media hype machines.
It’s programmers who detach themselves from the real-world consequences of their work out of ignorance or career calculations and write the code.
It’s IT engineers and system administrators who maintain the servers that run this code.
Algorithms are merely an expression of business priorities. They are the codification of values that a human decided upon to govern actions. Let’s not blame algorithms. Let’s assign responsibility to the human decision makers. Let’s change the way we do tech.
