The makers of the new Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma” knew something was wrong with the opinions of Americans after they did a documentary on climate change a few years ago.
They discovered while showing their 2012 film “Chasing Ice” that viewers had more than just divergent opinions about climate change, but different grasps of the facts that have led to it.
That experience spurred those Colorado film makers to delve into what was driving those diverging viewpoints, and it quickly led them to social media companies, and the algorithms they use to match users with advertising material.
“We started to hear from (Big Tech workers) that the way that the technology is designed is affecting society at scale in negative ways,” Jeff Orlowski, director of the documentary, said at a roundtable discussion on the film with Mesa County residents at Colorado Mesa University earlier this month.
“There was a concept called a filter bubble that we learned about back then where people were getting different types of information based on what the algorithms were trying to feed you individually,” he said. “We are all getting personalized (news) feeds. News should be like a shared, central truth. Everyone with there own personal news feed is on their own personal island. Our ideas, our thoughts are changing based on what the algorithms show us every day.”
While the film outlines the problem, the solution to it isn’t an easy one to find.
Lawmakers in Congress and several state legislatures around the nation are struggling with what to do about it, introducing bills that try to address the root causes of the problem.
Surveys show that an equal percentage of Republican and Democratic voters believe something needs to be done with regulating such companies as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Google, but few agree on exactly what.
A recent Gallup poll released last month showed that roughly half of Americans now believe the industry needs to be regulated, but not for the same reasons.
For Republicans, one main consternation is a belief that social media companies are biased against conservatives, and move to censure their messages or block them altogether, the survey showed.
For Democrats, the companies have gotten too big, and the power that they wield needs to be limited.
Several members of Congress have tried to address the matter in recent years, none going anywhere.
Currently, there are several measures in Congress aimed at big tech, including a bill to strengthen the nation’s anti-trust laws that could force them to break into smaller, individual companies.
U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, a Colorado Republican who represents the state’s 4th Congressional District, has introduced several measures aimed at big tech, too. Earlier this month, he and U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., introduced a bill that would allow small news outlets to band together to negotiate better news-sharing and advertising agreements with large online platforms.
Buck and others also are addressing anti-trust matters with social media companies, along with strengthening the nation’s merger laws to help stop them from getting bigger.
In December, the Federal Trade Commission and 46 states filed a lawsuit against Facebook for buying out competitors Instagram and WhatsApp over the last decade, saying that social media company has a history of buying out competitors.
“A bipartisan group of state attorneys general have filed this action against Facebook because its campaign of promising to buy or bury competitive threats has undermined competition, harmed consumers and thwarted innovation,” said Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser when the state joined the lawsuit. “Facebook’s dominance in the social network marketplace can only be challenged once its anti-competitive actions have been addressed and remedied.”
In the Colorado Legislature, Sen. Kerry Donovan, D-Vail, introduced a bill aimed at regulating digital communications that operate in the state even if they are based elsewhere in the nation.
It would have targeted any unfair or discriminatory practices, release or sharing of personal information or using facial recognition or other tracking software.
But because of the complexity of the bill and wide opposition to it, Donovan had it amended to create a special panel to study the matter instead, and come up with a different solution by next year’s legislative session.
The Colorado Senate gave that revised measure, SB132, its preliminary approval on Friday. It requires a final Senate vote, which is expected to happen this week, before it can head to the House.
All of those measures, however, don’t get at the one federal law many credit with allowing social media companies to operate as they have. That’s known as Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, the same section of law that President Donald Trump wanted Congress to eliminate before he left office earlier this year.
Under it, social media companies are considered to be distributors of news and information, rather than publishers of it. As a result, they are immune from libel lawsuits when users post inaccurate or false claims.
Congressional members continue to toy with the idea of amending or eliminating that section, but some believe doing so would solve the issue because the social media companies would be forced to curb misinformation and fake news or face costly lawsuits.
“From privacy violations to harming children to suppression of speech, the ramifications are very real,” U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said when he introduced a bill last summer to remove Section 230 immunity. “These kinds of manipulative ads are not what Congress had in mind when passing Section 230, and now is the time to put a stop to this abuse.”
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