Algorithm lobbying shows danger of big tech political power

Another important step on tackling the widespread harm of social media may about to take place in Australia – and it is bringing to the fore an argument Common Weal has been making for a while, with counterarguments which demonstrate the state of political debate on technology.

A proposed piece of legislation being put forward by Australia's communications minister would compel social media companies to allow users to switch off the algorithm. This would positively transform the experience of social media for millions, and yet there is political opposition to this move.

Common Weal has been arguing for a number of years that the threat of social harm doesn't come from social media in and of itself (the early internet had chatrooms and forums which operated in a similar way but did not generate anything like the same negative outcomes). Simply being able to create networks of personal contacts and share material with them is clearly not a bad thing.

The problem comes with monetisation-through-advertising. Because the means through which social media companies make their money isn't through selling a subscription but by selling advertising space, their profits relate directly to the amount of space they can sell. And since there is a limit to how much can be shown on a phone screen, the issue is about length of use.

The longer the phone is used, the more advertising is seen. Social media companies make a lot of arguments about algorithms being about tailoring your experience for you but in reality their purpose is solely to extend the time you spend on their platform. And of course extreme content tends to do that more – so that is what the algorithm serves.

If you switch off the algorithm, you only see posts and content shared by people you choose to follow. It does not create an attention arms race. That is an option that people do not have at the moment.

The Australian proposals are a different way to solve the problem than that proposed by Common Weal – we suggested that the use of an algorithm to determine content should be defined and regulated as publishing, making tech companies legally responsible for the output of the algorithm they created. That would make the cost of using an algorithm prohibitive.

We believe it would have effectively banned algorithms while the Australian model gives users the right to opt out. Opting out would be a major step, but it is facing what seems like inexplicable political opposition. The right of centre opposition in Australia have called this 'censorship', which makes no sense at all.

No-one is being prevented from seeing, saying or doing anything they otherwise would have been able to. All that is happening is that other people are being given better protection to choose not to hear or see what you are saying or doing if those people don't want to hear it. People not being forced to listen to you against their will is not censorship.

What this demonstrates is a significant problem – the political power of big tech is so great that it can bend political will to say in public things which are clearly not plausible or justifiable. This is happening in Scotland just now where government ministers are talking about the economic imperative of Scotland having data centres.

And yet there is no explicable reason why hosting data centres is in any way essential to your economy. Which makes the scale of political advocacy for technology issues particularly stark and particularly at odds with what appears to be reality.

The harm that has been done to our information ecosystem by the abusive power of the big tech algorithm has been well documented, along with the negative effects on human mental and physical health. Giving people the option to opt out of the worst version of this model is the least a government ought to ensure for its citizens.

This modest proposal and the political response shows just how much big tech is now a major player in our democracies and how much harder it will be to regulate them and hold them to account if we do not do something about it. This is happening in Scotland right now; we need to be much more sceptical about the talking points of the technology industry.