It’s algorithms, not Gen AI or deepfakes, that the electorate needs to be aware of, especially when it comes to influencing people’s extreme views, according to Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales.
On the second day of London Tech Week this year the open-source online dictionary founder gave a keynote discussing online propaganda in the year of elections.
Pointing towards social media platforms such as TikTok, Wales argued that algorithms can steer viewers towards “conspiracy videos” intended to create extremist points of views.
Algorithms are programs that social media firms use to decide what appears on a user’s timeline. This is based on the relevance of the content they interact with, whether it is watching a video, liking, commenting, or viewing a profile.
Wales explained that despite using TikTok himself for cooking and entertainment videos, the platform once offered him a “weird” conspiracy video and, following his interaction with it, led to more deceptive content appearing on his timeline.
According to Wales, these types of algorithms are not only potentially misleading the 71% of young people (according to Ofcom) who use social media as their main source of news, but also older generations who are new to these platforms.
“This is a huge part of the issue of misinformation, almost more than generative AI,” he said, as algorithms are “optimised for addiction.”
Once conspiracy ideas retain a mass audience, they remain obscured from journalists who could report on the misinformation, he said.
“What’s difficult is that it’s hard for journalists to track that because everyone gets a different experience on TikTok,” he added.
He continued that while news outlets and sites such as Wikipedia can link to sources for their information, social media platforms are in a difficult position in choosing what posts should be deleted and what posts should stay live to mitigate misinformation.
“A world where Mark Zuckerberg is adjusting the algorithms so that people are persuaded in the political correction, he thinks is right, that doesn’t sound very good [either].”
He went on to say Wikipedia is having internal discussions on how to dispel a current campaign claiming that the site is being controlled by the “woke left.”
“It’s not true, but how do we fight that message?” he asked. “Frankly, it’s really hard.”
While Wales claims that Wikipedia is unbiased, he said that it’s difficult to argue against the campaigners without catering to their views and thus becoming unintentionally partial.
“How do you convince people that are already down the rabbit hole of extremism?” he said.
Optimism and advice
Nevertheless, Wales highlighted that he was more optimistic in the fact that plenty of the global population still uses traditional media outlets such as television and radio for their news.
“The media does a very good job of sifting through what’s real and what’s not real,” he said.
He also advised anyone who recognises that they are becoming more addicted to social media to turn it off and consider deleting the platform’s app from their phone.
Wales also speculated people were already doing this and it’s one of the reasons that Facebook and Twitter are experiencing significantly less traffic.
He added that, for this reason too, sites should monitor and determine harmful and misleading content.
