I can make an algorithm about who should be allowed in a WH press briefing and who out of those should be allowed to ask questions. And nobody could look at my algorithm and say it’s biased. They may see bias in the results. I may have even intended bias against the NYT but you won’t be able to tell by the algorithm.
I wonder what the NYT would think about me presenting that “unbiased algorithm” to the WH.
Purging fake news is one thing. However, the Google people have come up with a way to filter comments for ‘offensive speech’ (whatever the definition the users of the software determine it to be). This allows, according to the shtick, admins to eliminate or ‘crop’ comments quickly, thus allowing more stories to have a comment section.
The next iteration will, apparently, be able to inform the commenters if their post will be ‘offensive’ before it is posted. So they can self-censor. Free speech is dead, long live free speech.
“But you don’t need a huge amount of imagination to see how this combination of mainstream groupthink and artificial intelligence could create an Orwellian future in which only one side of a story gets told and the other side simply disappears from view. “
Norman Spinrad had a term for this sort of thing in his novel “Little Heroes”. Official Reality. A small select group of people defines what Reality is supposed to be, and then they use all information sources to make it be the Official Reality.
The media also support laws that divulge the names of individuals or businesses who contribute to various non-partisan political campaigns. Done in the name of “transparency,” it is actually an effort to discourage conservative participation in politics because of the fear of bad publicity, hostile editorials, boycotts, protests, vandalism, and so forth.