A group of bipartisan House members recently introduced a bill that would permit people to use algorithm-free tech platforms.
The House bill is sponsored by Reps. Ken Buck, R-Colo.; David Cicilline, D-R.I.; Lori Trahan, D-Mass.; and Burgess Owens, R-Utah.
The bill would require that internet platforms give users the ability to use a version of their services that isn’t run by algorithms.
These lawmakers make the claim that algorithms violate a user’s privacy, due to the nature of the way it personalized content for the user; “Consumers should have the option to engage with internet platforms without being manipulated by secret algorithms driven by user-specific data,” said Rep Ken Buck R-Colo.
David Cicilline, D-R.I. also commented on how social media platforms’ dominate a user’s experience, and how the algorithm prioritizes growth and profit. “Due to these platforms’ monopoly power and dominance, users are stuck with few alternatives to this exploitative business model, whether it is in their social media feed, on paid advertisements, or in their search results.”
One thing the bill proposes is a requirement for social media platforms to give the user a notification every time they interact with an “opaque algorithm”.
In the bill, an opaque algorithm is defined as one that “determines the order of manner that information is furnished to a user… based, in whole or in part, on user-specific data that was not expressly provided by the user to the platform for such purpose.”
The notification given to users would also give them the option to turn the algorithm off; users would also have the capability to toggle such algorithms on and off at their own convenience.
This bill is one of many that lawmakers introduced focusing specifically on the platforms and the software companies that manage the social sites. This is also a different plan of attack than the usual discussion over content moderation.
Content moderation is essentially the social networks decision to ban or allow certain content on their platform and has been the root of the controversy surrounding the existence of platforms like Facebook, who’ve been in the media a lot over the last several months for their slip-ups and misguided beliefs on what exactly should be censored online.
And while the left is demanding that these tech companies crackdown on hate speech, and censor everything that they don’t like, it’s the Republicans who want to ensure our right to free speech and to choose how we use social media.
This article omits the FACT that various algorithms are used to censor free speech on public forums and platforms. Using certain words will cause a post to be deleted or not posted at all. Inserting characters between the letters of a “sensitive” word sometimes works since the algorithm “looks” for the complete word without parsing the characters. Parsing a word character by character and a lookup takes a lot more computer resources than a simple word lookup.