Free Speech Is Not the Same As Free Reach | WIRED

The algorithms that govern how we find information online are once again in the newsbut you have to squint to find them.

Trump Accuses Google of Burying Conservative News in Search Results, reads an August 28 New York Times headline. The piece features a bombastic president, a string of bitter tweets, and accusations of censorship. Algorithms are mentioned, but not until the twelfth paragraph.

Trumplike so many other politicians and punditshas found search and social media companies to be convenient targets in the debate over free speech and censorship online. They have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD, the president recently tweeted. He added: They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation---will be addressed!

Trump is partly right: They are controlling what we can and cannot see. But they arent the executives leading Google, Facebook, and other technology companies. They are the opaque, influential algorithms that determine what content billions of internet users read, watch, and share next.

These algorithms are invisible, but they have an outsized impact on shaping individuals experience online and society at large. Indeed, YouTubes video-recommendation algorithm inspires 700,000,000 hours of watch time per dayand can spread misinformation, disrupt elections, and incite violence. Algorithms like this need fixing.

But in this moment, the conversation we should be havinghow can we fix the algorithms?is instead being co-opted and twisted by politicians and pundits howling about censorship and miscasting content moderation as the demise of free speech online. It would be good to remind them that free speech does not mean free reach. There is no right to algorithmic amplification. In fact, thats the very problem that needs fixing.

To see how this algorithm amplification works, simply look to RT, or Russia Today, a Russian state-owned propaganda outlet thats also among the most popular YouTube presences. RT has amassed more than 6 billion views across 22 channels, more than MSNBC and Fox News combined. According to YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan, 70 percent of views on YouTube are from recommendationsso the sites algorithms are largely responsible for amplifying RTs propaganda hundreds of millions of times.

How? Most RT viewers dont set out in search of Russian propaganda. The videos that rack up the views are RTs clickbait-y, gateway content: videos of towering tsunamis, meteors striking buildings, shark attacks, amusement park accidents, some that are years old but have comments from within an hour ago. This disaster porn is highly engaging; the videos have been viewed tens of millions of times and are likely watched until the end. As a result, YouTubes algorithm likely believes other RT content is worth suggesting to the viewers of that contentand so, quickly, an American YouTube user looking for news finds themselves watching Russias take on Hillary Clinton, immigration, and current events. These videos are served up in autoplay playlists alongside content from legitimate news organizations, giving RT itself increased legitimacy by association.

The social internet is mediated by algorithms: recommendation engines, search, trending, autocomplete, and other mechanisms that predict what we want to see next. The algorithms dont understand what is propaganda and what isnt, or what is fake news and what is fact-checked. Their job is to surface relevant content (relevant to the user, of course), and they do it exceedingly well. So well, in fact, that the engineers who built these algorithms are sometimes baffled: Even the creators dont always understand why it recommends one video instead of another, says Guillaume Chaslot, an ex-YouTube engineer who worked on the sites algorithm.

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Free Speech Is Not the Same As Free Reach | WIRED