Drowning in Big Data: Abundance of Choice, Scarcity of Attention and the Personalization Trap. A Case for Regulation Article Swipe
The secret is out: “The technical is political.” The Internet can no longer be seen as a utopian place where everyone is equal and freedom is the status quo and not everything that has to do with technology is simply a “technical” issue. There are always values and politics involved in the structure, design and architecture of technology, and the issues involved are socio-technical and have a deep effect on what sorts of citizens we become. Market developments have introduced new points of control and will continue to do so; as such, future design choices will inevitably be subject to conflicts of interests between governments, corporate stakeholders and Internet users. The resulting choices will ultimately represent the power dynamics of the environment in which they are made and will fundamentally shape the form and structure of our society. In today’s information environment, machine-learning algorithms that conduct predictive analytics based on some type of data mining are used in just about every context. Our online experiences are not a simple series of one-to-one relationships with each service we use, but increasingly are more integrated. “Big Data collection and processing, combined with ubiquitous sensing and connectivity, create extremely powerful insights on mass populations, available to relatively few entities.” The focus of this paper is on the design choices present in the current media environment and more specifically, the social media environment that has created a new type of “platform press.” The argument advanced is that as platforms have now become significant distributers of news, the existing design choices that have been made in this context can threaten the viability of a functioning marketplace of ideas as well as the possibility for true choice about receiving valued information. A recent illustration of the concerns is the issue of fake news in the 2016 presidential election, which brought to the surface a big debate about whether such platforms are in fact media companies, what kind of responsibilities they should bear, the role of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and the correct policy approach. Part I of the paper will provide background information on the current social media environment, the algorithmic filtering that takes place in the curation of news and the problems that arise from the way it is set up, and will conclude with a call for regulation in the space. Part II will proceed to examine potential objections to regulation in this area, and argue that such objections are not irrefutable. Using examples of regulations that been introduced in somewhat analogous circumstances in the past, Part II will conclude that some types of regulation can be perfectly constitutional and can in fact promote social and Constitutional values.
