Before we fully understood what the term algorithm meant in regard to social media platforms, experts were already sounding the warning bells of digital and manufactured echo chambers being contrived online.
The idea that people would only subscribe to information that fit their own beliefs has, by and large, seemed to come to fruition. But how much of what we see and engage with on our social media sites is our choice?
Big tech giants have been pointing to this elusive ‘algorithm’ as if there is no real control over what shows up on social media feeds that we are constantly and mindlessly scrolling through. Ads, sponsored content, posts shared by those we know, are all selected based on content we engage with... allegedly.
But that can’t be true, can it? Often times, we won’t see original content shared by people and groups we follow, yet content we may have never subscribed to floods our social media feeds.
Why is it that social media users are shown things they haven’t subscribed to, but real things posted by people they know aren’t made accessible? The obvious answer is that social media users aren’t actually partners in the social media landscape – they are products – and the feeds they scroll through are sold to advertisers.
In the early days of Facebook, one of the first globally used social networking sites, content shared by ‘Friends’ showed up in people’s ‘News Feed’ in chronological order and displayed everyone's shared content. Now, an algorithm decides what users see and what they don’t see.
So, why can’t users determine their own algorithms?
With Google and Meta now threatening to restrict news articles from searches engine results and on social media platforms in response to Canada’s Bill C-18 – maybe it is time Canadians take control of their own algorithms.
