Doc Hoff’s #BlogBlogProject | “Technology and Democracy” by James Love
As a professor of political communication, I’ve been sharing blogs written by my University of Delaware students for the last decade. This blog was written by James Love, a junior Psychology major at the University of Delaware for an assignment in my writing class, “Technology and Politics.” He wrote this blog as a response to our course readings on the rapid development of technology in the last century.
Since the birth of democracy, it has been thought to be the most effective system of government by putting the people in power. But there are still problems that come with democracy, and with technology rapidly advancing and becoming increasingly incorporated into peoples lives in society, problems with democracy and freedom have become more prominent.
One problem is the spread of false information. The spread of false information is much easier now and with the algorithms used on social media platforms, people can get sucked into echo chambers of false information that reinforce their beliefs. Since spreading false information can greatly affect public opinion, it would seem logical for big tech firms to limit the spread of false information, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. An article in Forbes magazine states “Simply put, misinformation gets clicks.” By allowing false information to spread, big tech companies profit because these posts get a lot of interactions.
Another problem that arises with democracy and the development of technology is the power these tech firms possess. Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk — who are the owners of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter — have an incredible amount of power just by owning and controlling these platforms, let alone the amount of money they have. They have the ability to manipulate public opinion by setting restrictions on what people post as well as flag posts they don’t like or agree with as “misinformation.”
In our required reading “Future Politics,” Jamie Susskind states that “in the digital lifeworld, almost all of our speech will be mediated and moderated by private technology firms. That’s because we will come to rely almost entirely on their platforms for communication, both with people we know and people we don’t (p. 190).” He goes on to say “we are, in short, witnessing the emergence of a historic new political balance: we are given wholly new forms and opportunities for speech, but in exchange we must accept that speech is subject to the rules set by those who control the platforms ( p. 191).” It seems we are headed in a direction where these tech firms will hold more power than the government, if not already. But by using these platforms, we are potentially limiting our freedom of speech and are also at risk of being fed misinformation.
A final problem is with the rapid advances in technology such artificial intelligence, A.I.-generated images, videos, and speech like “deep fakes.” These deep fakes are A.I.-generated content portraying someone doing something that did not happen. These deep fakes are accurate and difficult to recognize. Indeed, “deepfake video has also been used in politics. In 2018, for example, a Belgian party released a video of Donald Trump giving a speech calling on Belgium to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.” These A.I. programs pose a serious threat to our democracy. They can be used to portray a politician saying or doing something they did not do in order to manipulate the public. Currently legislation is in the works in regards to deep fakes and restricting certain content.
The relationship between democracy and technology is really so new and unknown that it’s scary. Technology is continuing to advance and become more intertwined with our everyday lives. As tech firms are getting more powerful, our freedoms are arguably being limited.
This blog was written by University of Delaware James Love for a class assignment in my class, “Digital Technology and Politics.”
