AI, Bias, and Power: Re-Thinking Content Control in the Digital Age?
Imagine, if you will, a scene straight out of “Leave it to Beaver.” The year is 1955. Society, much like a perfectly coiffed poodle, is prim, proper, and perpetually concerned with maintaining appearances. There is a chilling sameness to everything. In the quaint, seemingly perfect world, everyone was glued to their televisions, all watching the same shows, absorbing the same opinions — a vision of American virtue carefully curated by those “in the know”. What has this to do with our topic at hand? It seems, in the realm of modern technology, echoes of this era have become weirdly louder. We now witness platforms struggling with issues eerily akin to those rigid social standards and those black-and-white television broadcasts where nothing was supposed to ruffle feathers!
So there I am listening to Joe Rogan’s podcast, or to be more precise, that snippet of his show where he spoke to one of the overlords of social media. I listened very attentively.
And here we had that very gentleman discussing content moderation, a topic as murky as the coffee brewing in a diner on Route 66 and that reminded me of 1950’s norms. He starts by saying what everyone says. “Look, I mean, you got to do what you think is right. We’ve been on a journey.” This all feels very “do what your momma and Poppa said”. That’s right, the journey was paved with good intentions — just like the road to a white picket fence in suburban America, everything built on ideals that can look great on paper. These social media companies started, like good neighbors, with the noble goal of giving everyone a voice. Remember when a “dial-up” connection felt like a big thing, you know, just like a brand new Chrysler convertible and having the newest chrome plated gadget? Well, that dream got a little complex. The digital space quickly transitioned from “fun and games”, much like a sock hop at the local high school to something darker when it came to who controls what can be seen or read on screens and displays all over the globe!
The big “uh-oh” moment started in the past ten years. Imagine, if you can, when the social order was disrupted and people just couldn’t behave according to what was prescribed by those in power. “The whole point of social media is basically, you know, giving people the ability to share,” he said. That sounds as lovely as a picnic in a park on a summer afternoon — but there was that new “problem”: ideological censorship, which became more of an ever-growing cloud like smog in Los Angeles. The year 2016 saw the rise of some unusual players, just like how rock’n’roll was slowly infiltrating the well-manicured yards of America’s “perfect” little streets. Brexit, the 2016 US presidential election. Then, the 2020 COVID fiasco. All of this threw the social media world into the throes of moral outrage and what to do with different opinions that didn’t exactly reflect “common sense” — where common sense was not common after all! These events, like those pesky beatniks and their odd behavior, challenged the status quo and forced those at the very top of these big platforms into some uncomfortable corner positions.
The Slippery Slope
Our main “actor” said that in 2016, “he deferred too much” to those guys from the media. They came bearing tales of “misinformation,” akin to town gossips claiming those “good-for-nothing” rock and rollers had horns hidden under those “outrageous” haircuts. He explains how he’d always seen these companies as something designed “to give people the ability to share as much as possible”, but there were those other people in media who started clamoring about people “can’t actually believe this stuff, right, it has to be that there’s massive misinformation.”
Just like folks in the 1950s clutched their pearls, social media became obsessed with these idea, a very contemporary twist on “keeping up with the Joneses.” Our main person went along assuming everyone acted “in good faith”. A little like how people just went along with what was considered best practices back in the fifties.
They put in “systems” with fact-checkers, intending to go after the extreme stuff, you know, “like Earth is flat” level of kookiness. “And” — here’s where the humor of a 1950’s drama comes to play — “it just sort of veered from there.” Just as how teenage slang seemed to spiral away from polite conversations the job was, as they say “hijacked” by folks focused on political issues that eventually destroyed all trust with all kinds of biased opinions as a result.
The Great Mask-Off
When the pandemic took over, they started out a little timid and reasonable by giving “deference to the government” because this was “an emergency, you know you cannot yell fire in a crowded theater”. Now, you must admit: It sounded quite rational in its very logic and in a very well crafted PR style like how everything sounded rational on “The Twilight Zone”.
And as many know “that changed fast”, from flattening the curve and how “masks were not that important” to “you must always wear a mask”. All the “shifty facts” in those crazy times gave the guy the ultimate idea to finally stop all those “restrictions”. In the era of black-and-white televisions, you had some “experts” on the screen talking, giving a few basic instructions to an already very disciplined world. But the Covid times were anything but clear-cut, bringing a “shifting around” that people found extremely “difficult to follow” — particularly by those guys pushing “ the vaccine program”. Here comes another blast from the past, just as “squares” wanted everybody to stay on their own paths, those guys of power pushed very hard to censor anyone arguing against those vaccinations. And what is more the information was actually true “things that say that vaccines might have side effects” all being ruthlessly squashed! What?! Oh my… that all seems as reasonable and fair as telling a black kid in a 1950s classroom they were equal! “Ridiculous!” exclaimed the main guy! He understood they tried “to take down things that were honestly true”.
He explains that government folks screamed at his team, just as a TV dad of the 50s would use the full might of his voice against his kids — except there was email documentation, oh my!. This was not unlike how the 1950’s parents would give lectures on behaving yourself as their children were not allowed to talk back. All this push and push, like kids at a summer picnic wanting candy or when someone with no proper behavior interrupted a dance! Our tech overlord was faced with a dilemma. What would be next: taking down jokes, “satire” and true information. “We are not going to take down humor,” he proclaims, in his quest for freedom and equality and not making those terrible “decisions for everyone.”
Moderation at Scale
Remember that a social media platform is, for better or worse, “insane”: a modern-day Tower of Babel but the user-generated data is growing every second in an exponential way like kids going mad with toys from a department store! With 3.2 billion people using one single social network every day, you start understanding “moderation at scale” is quite literally insane and “just not possible.” Try imagining it: an actual army of logical, objective humans trying to analyze everything everyone does and says every minute, trying to apply reason. That would be about as crazy as suggesting there is more to the world than what’s written in your “local newspaper”! We got “mass reporting” with “bad actors” pushing against those good souls behind these platforms to do their bidding by reporting on all kinds of things, it’s “a big [ __ ] show” the “Tech titan” explained it with more colorful metaphors and in a truly blunt form. He also explained he couldn’t be working full-time on these problems as there were “AI glasses like the future of social media” in the making — just as parents had a brand new TV set while kids could enjoy their own shiny bike with a new basket. It also made it so they were building those new “features” which they were trying hard not to lose focus on. “I mean, this is complicated” said he. It most certainly was, you had those groups pushing, they scream and yell just like that drunkard uncle after Thanksgiving dinner, and you still need to solve the problems and continue forward. This seemed like something right from one of those old 1950’s movies when life looks extremely complicated!
There were different branches from that US government “basically just started investigating” they came with the proverbial hammer, and it was all “brutal”! So in that case, “It just seems very crazy”. How was he supposed to keep going in that direction.
They suppressed good metabolic health advice, with vitamin C, D3, and magnesium in particular, this very basic knowledge that “they” didn’t want people to know “because they don’t want people to get away with taking a vaccine” he explained to the podcast’s host. Here we go with echoes from the past! The “wrong speech,” the distortion of “facts” and just some plain old stubbornness for those at the top of society who are supposed to know what’s best, seemed a lot like “1984” — that very famous cautionary tale, all about not knowing how far such craziness can grow! Our main protagonist learned to change a thing or two after that all! This leads to, as some other expert would say, his own kind of “personal hero journey”!
He explained how the path is a mix of “Pro free speech free expression”. And also how his team of good people had to start being better at what they do so they don’t end up being these “deciders of what’s true”. The media was losing “Trust” with their narrative so maybe all that they were presenting “wasn’t as accurate” as before. Also those in government “were telling to censor things” and this whole new situation became, to say the least, “a disaster”. It also shows, how Co was really “this global” breakdown in the general trust in all those guys and “democratic institutions” across the globe, everywhere where it really counts and in every single corner on the world-map! That led the guy to change what the content moderation really should look like. His whole philosophy had become, he explains, as follows: “it just has to reflect mainstream discourse”, nothing too crazy nothing outside the normal. “That’s the path”, he announced.
Community Notes Are The Answer!
So what happened there and how could we see through a lens of the 1950s? This media man goes back and forth, now this way, now another and realizes that those very “third party fact-checkers” had some serious flaws: They focused too much on the politics. But that’s exactly what “everyone is upset about”! So he is going “to change all that”, now “X, or Twitter did it better, with the help of those ‘community notes’ ” — so what they had done is not unlike that new “high school rule” where more people are needed, not less, to have all kind of diverse opinions be properly considered! When these many people “usually agree on how they’re voting on a note” you have some proper “broad consensus”, with the community sharing true context, as much as possible, all those pieces that other folks just like to omit or forget or disregard because they don’t see how valuable such context actually is. Also “ nation-state interference”, a very topical example given by the protagonist is usually spotted because people can create detection tools. What else could the digital overlord possibly present as an answer to the question of the future of tech, and content moderation? This new focus “requires a lot of AI power” which goes right into the direction “that people just like weren’t acting like actual humans!” and those who weren’t will be shut down for good from all the systems and across all their different devices — it will not matter where they are or how they think they may hide away. All that will simply no longer be a place where they are allowed to play with everyone!
There’s a lot more he shared, so we cannot say everything and discuss each detail he covered as he clearly went into a lot of information in that very podcast but I must get closer to an ending because otherwise this writing may also become endless. There was a problem though, there was always the danger that it will be “precision mistakes”. Those automated tools may become a bit over-zealous and sometimes will be kicking off “innocent accounts” so it was like, is there maybe a little problem somewhere within the system? They’ve realized the issue is they were requiring classifiers “to have less precision” this made all kinds of stuff get “taken down, that are basically innocent”. The guy went over many more problems alluding to WhatsApp apps also getting canceled! He now realizes, it would be better “to set the classifiers to require more confidence,” even at the cost of some “bad stuff” getting past that barrier. It also highlights, the fact, how “the tech world” is an area where so much stuff “that I could be spending doing instead on the stuff I’m building”! And that “it has come full circle back to my initial view point” but it did that “ with a way greater view on what the policy should really look like!”.
And all that is presented with such honesty as though a wise sage with infinite wisdom just presented himself on your doorsteps with the most profound advice you have heard in a long time, he is now going “to reflect a lot more, this cultural pull, where the people really stand right now, about all of this” .
A new path and an interesting shift has began…
What we have just presented, in this essay, through the lens of a fifties backdrop that highlights modern media’s weird obsessions. These big tech guys need to balance innovation, money and what to do with censorship with actual and honest content moderation and make sure there are real solutions. It really highlights how much work has to be done so the future becomes a place we all can share, all those tools of knowledge, connection and wisdom. Just like people back in the fifties sought to uphold that idea of a more civil society in spite of the growing unease about things changing, it still very much matters in the context of technology and for those in the positions to drive progress towards something, anything actually worthy of those ideals! We can only ask: Do they remember what they set out to do when these whole thing first got off the ground? The time will show…
And so, in the quiet murmur of a late-night cafe, we reach the philosophical end. As Kant so powerfully expressed, “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.” This should act as an inner compass, always, particularly for these media titans!
P.S.: Yes. Contains irony. Plenty of it, in case you wonder.
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